Chengmai County
A county since the Sui dynasty, Chengmai saw Su Shi pen verses at the Tongchao Pavilion on his voyage home, and is famed for Fushan coffee.
A place shaped through time
Chengmai spreads across northern Hainan beside Haikou, some fifty kilometres wide and seventy kilometres from north to south. The county was founded in 607 on the site of the older Gouzhong county, keeping its name ever since and answering to Qiongzhou from the Song onwards. In 1100 Su Shi, pardoned and sailing home, wrote his celebrated line about a single strand of green hills marking the mainland at Chengmai's Tongchao Pavilion. Pirate raids in the Ming and Qing repeatedly prompted debates over moving the county seat, which finally settled at Jinjiang in the late Qing. Coffee grown on the volcanic red soils around Fushan is renowned across the island.