Rising out of the South China Sea between Guangdong and Vietnam, Hainan Island marks the southernmost undisputed limit of Chinese authority, a three-hundred-kilometre-broad spread of beaches, mountain scenery, history, myth and - most of all - the effects of exploitation. Today a province in its own right, Hainan was historically the "Tail of the Dragon", an enigmatic full stop to the Han empire inhabited by unspeakably backward races, only surfacing into popular consciousness when it could be of use. Han settlements were established around the coast in 200 AD, but for millennia Hainan was only seen fit to be a place of exile. Later, even Western powers largely ignored the island, though noting its strategic position between China and their concerns in the rest of Southeast Asia. So complete was Hainan's isolation that, as recently as the 1930s, ethnic Li , who first settled here more than two thousand years ago, still lived a hunter-gatherer existence in the interior highlands.

Modern Hainan is no primitive paradise, however. After two years of naval bombardments, the Japanese occupied the island in 1939, and by the end of the war had executed a full third of Hainan's male population in retaliation for raids on their forces by Chinese guerrillas. It was closed to general access throughout the Vietnam War - when the US briefly considered invading after a B-52 was shot down during the "Rolling Thunder" operation - and in the 1980s by China's own conflict with Vietnam. Hainan's current status as a Special Economic Zone seems simply to have been a licence for a succession of governments to strip its natural resources and abandon the inhabitants to fend for themselves. It would be harder to imagine a worse example of economic mismanagement : there might be skyscrapers and modern factories around the cities, but you'll also see country people so poor that they live in lean-tos made of mud and straw, which have to be rebuilt after each wet season. Some of these are locals, others are recent migrants, either resettled by the government or drawn by the official promotion of Hainan as an easy place to get rich. With no experience of garnering a living in a tropical climate, they blindly experiment with different crops - rubber, mango, coconuts and coffee, in the hope that a market will emerge. Forestry used to be a mainstay but now there is no forest left, with the exception of ragged remnants clinging to the very tips of Hainan's mountains. Tourism seems to be the sole reliable source of income, and everyone is desperate to be involved. Persistent marketing has made Hainan the place that all Chinese want to come for a holiday, but investment has been wildly over-optimistic, with numerous hotels and entertainment complexes around the place standing empty, unfinished or never used.

Yet despite all this, Hainan as a whole remains one of China's most unexplored corners. For foreign and domestic tourists alike, the most obvious reason to come here is to flop down on the warm, sandy beaches near the southern city of Sanya , and, as a rest cure after months on the mainland, it's a very good one. Initially there doesn't seem much more to get excited about. Haikou , Hainan's capital, bears evidence of brief colonial occupation, but its primary importance is as a transit point between the island and mainland, while Han towns along the east coast have only slightly more character and scenic appeal. Spend a little time and effort elsewhere, however, and things start to get more interesting: the highlands around the town of Tongshi are the place to start looking for Li culture , and the mountainous southwest hides some forgotten nature reserves , where what's left of Hainan's indigenous flora and fauna hangs by a thread. There are even a handful of underwater sites off the southern coast, the only place in provincial China where those with the necessary qualifications can go scuba diving .

Getting to Hainan is straightforward, with daily flights from all over the country to Haikou and Sanya, and regular ferries from Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Zhanjiang and Beihai. Once here, getting around is easy: there are highways and roads all over Hainan, covered by a prolific quantity of local transport , the legacy of an illicit manoeuvre by the local government during the mid-1980s which saw a quarter of a million vehicles of all shapes and sizes imported on to the island. High-speed buses link Haikou and Sanya in just three hours, while you can easily hop around the rest of the island by bus and minibus. Sanya is also one of only three cities in China where you can rent a car and drive around on your own, though this is not a cheap option. Indeed, its financial plight, and the fact that everyone on the island is hungry to make money, means that Hainan is noticeably more expensive than the adjacent mainland - even Chinese tourists grumble about being constantly overcharged.

Hainan's extremely hot and humid wet season lasts from June to October. It's better to visit between December and April, when the climate is generally dry and tropically moderate, sunny days peaking around 25°C on the southern coast. Note that many towns here have different local and Chinese names. As the latter occur more frequently on maps and bus timetables, Chinese names are used below in the main text and character boxes, with local names indicated in brackets.