China Vacations | Dongfang (Basuo)

Location of Dongfang City (pink) and the subdivisions directly administered by the province (yellow) within Hainan Province of China.

This image is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License and sourced from Wikipedia.

View more images, from this part of Hainan, in this Flickr Set on Dongfang!

In the background, behind the tree, is the stone with a legend carved into it. The legend states that, when the deer looked back, it turned into a beautiful girl and the hunter ended up with her for the rest of their days! - drs2biz

Situated about 10 km away from Dongfang, the Datian Eld's Deer Nature Reserve was established in 1976 for the conservation of the endangered Eld's deer (Cervus Eldi Hainanus) in Hainan province. Only 26 of the deer were sighted that year, as a result of heavy poaching and habitat loss. Visitors can stay in Dongfang and reach the park by taxi or motor cycle in around 30 minutes.

The Eld's Deer is found elsewhere in Asia, but can only be seen on Hainan in rural areas and are under first-level State protection. They have two lines of white dots running parallel to a dark brown strip on the back.

The conservation policy being adopted is to breed deer and release them to the wild. The deer population is around 2,000, of which more than 800 live on this 26,000 hectare reserve. Most of the rest have been farmed out to other reserves on the island, though some 200 of them roam free in the park's 2,000-hectare central area.

Admission ~ 20 Yuan (RMB)

Power is very expensive in Hainan (and all over China). It is good to see alternative technology being deployed here. This headland is a very windy location, so the advantages are obvious! The haze is from sea spray, not pollution, as Hainan is a very clean island (even though you can see a "smoke stack" in the background).

There are nineteen (19) turbines here, with a 9.0 Megawatt capacity. Dongfang Electric Group is developing and manufacturing 1.5 megawatt wind turbines with German company REPower's license. By the end of 2004, China produced 200,000 off-grid wind turbine generators, ranking it number one in the world. For further information about wind power in China, you can refer to this article from ECOworld!

Image by drs2biz! These goats were happily grazing near the main beach at Dongfang. When I came along they became skittish, and even more so when I pulled out my camera.