It is pre-modern, the kind of scene that westerners visit and photograph or encapsulate for later conversation: on Hainan Island, off the Leizhan Peninsula and a 50-minute flight south from Hong Kong, Chinese peasants toil in paddy fields. They wear straw hats and use water buffalo to plough the fields.
Then, suddenly, the paddy fields stop and the tropical resort of Boao begins. Hotels stretch out to form an archipelago of luxury with palm trees, manicured lawns, landscaped gardens, swimming pools and golf courses so perfect that they look like computer animations. On the one side not surrounded by the paddy fields and the toiling peasants, sparkles the glorious, emerald South China Sea.
