Imag­ine your­self bask­ing un­der the blaz­ing fur­nace in the sky, bit­ing in­to a juicy, ex­ot­ic fruit from is­land trees—or savour­ing the rich, dark sweet­ness of choco­late made from T&T’s prized co­coa beans—while a cool­ing sea breeze ca­ress­es you.

I agree—there’s nowhere on Earth quite like the Caribbean. How­ev­er, in this in­stance, I was ac­tu­al­ly de­scrib­ing Chi­na.

I have not for­sak­en my na­tive roots, but I feel com­pelled to share that be­yond the sprawl­ing con­crete jun­gle in cities like Bei­jing and Shang­hai—where sky­scrap­ers dom­i­nate and streets are packed with end­less ac­tiv­i­ty—Hainan, Chi­na’s trop­i­cal is­land province, of­fers a much-wel­comed al­ter­na­tive for those liv­ing on the oth­er side of the world.

I, along with a few of my Caribbean jour­nal­ist col­leagues, had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to vis­it Chi­na’s south­ern­most province. From the mo­ment we board­ed our Hainan Air­lines flight, our Chi­nese col­leagues beamed with ex­cite­ment about join­ing us on this trip. Al­though the pur­pose was to at­tend a se­ries of im­por­tant busi­ness meet­ings, to the Chi­nese, Hainan is much like what Tri­nis con­sid­er To­ba­go—a par­adise get­away.

While I’m ad­mit­ted­ly bi­ased to­wards my love for To­ba­go’s beau­ty, I could un­der­stand why some Chi­nese re­fer to Hainan as the “ro­mance” or “hon­ey­moon” is­land—be­cause the tem­per­a­ture was def­i­nite­ly hot!

As we ex­it­ed the air­port, I thought the tall palm trees were con­fined to the air­port grounds land­scap­ing. How­ev­er, as we drove for miles, palm and co­conut trees lined both sides of the high­way. Even­tu­al­ly, that view gave way to nu­mer­ous con­struc­tion sites, wild bushy ar­eas, and in­com­plete con­crete struc­tures (as de­vel­op­ment con­tin­ues), mak­ing me feel as though I were in cen­tral Trinidad. My Caribbean col­leagues in­ter­est­ing­ly al­so made sim­i­lar com­par­isons to their own coun­tries.

Did I men­tion how hot it was?

As ex­pect­ed, busi­ness came first and plea­sure sec­ond. Af­ter set­tling in­to our ho­tel along Sanya Bay, we de­cid­ed to ex­plore the nightlife. We didn’t ex­pect much, giv­en it was a Tues­day night, but we were in for quite a sur­prise. The loud mu­sic from var­i­ous spots along the bay beck­oned us, lead­ing us to crowds of Hainan lo­cals ... ex­er­cis­ing.

We as­sumed hun­dreds of peo­ple had gath­ered for a lo­cal Zum­ba-style event. But it turned out that the crowds were sim­ply lo­cals, hap­pi­ly per­form­ing well-chore­o­graphed ex­er­cise rou­tines, prac­tis­ing tai chi, or en­ter­tain­ing them­selves with tra­di­tion­al dances along the sandy shore­line.

And cu­ri­ous on­look­ers were not al­lowed to ab­stain from par­tic­i­pat­ing. This night stroll turned in­to an hours-long event on the beach.

In many ways, from ac­cents to lifestyle, life in Hainan was dis­tinct­ly dif­fer­ent from Bei­jing, es­pe­cial­ly when it came to the food.

Co­conut ven­dors could be found al­most every­where, as co­conut trees are grown on a large scale through­out the is­land. Pineap­ples and drag­on fruits were al­so abun­dant, be­ing har­vest­ed in every di­rec­tion. Just like in the Caribbean, the 11.5 mil­lion peo­ple of Hainan make full use of all their agri­cul­tur­al pro­duce.

With every meal, some­thing in­creas­ing­ly stood out to me. It be­gan with the abun­dance of ground pro­vi­sions, fol­lowed by rich pur­ple ‘drag­on fruit fried rice’ and a ‘cof­fee chick­en soup’, gen­er­ous­ly served to me by a lo­cal farmer.

For the record, it was de­li­cious. The flavours in Hainan’s food felt rich with their nat­ur­al in­gre­di­ents, mak­ing me feel as though I were at a Caribbean din­ing ta­ble.

With the coun­try’s deep love for cof­fee, I had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to vis­it the Longyuan Cof­fee Manor and Xin­g­long Trop­i­cal Botan­i­cal Gar­den, where co­coa beans are cul­ti­vat­ed and trans­formed in­to both cof­fee and choco­late bars.

This is some­thing I was recog­nised for by Hainan na­tives on be­half of my coun­try, as Hainan con­tin­ues to gain glob­al recog­ni­tion for pro­duc­ing some of the finest choco­late, us­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s high-qual­i­ty co­coa beans. This comes af­ter both coun­tries re­cent­ly made con­tin­ued ef­forts to en­hance their re­spec­tive co­coa in­dus­tries.

While I’m fa­mil­iar with the taste of choco­late made from our co­coa beans, I was giv­en a les­son on how choco­late is ac­tu­al­ly made—some­thing I iron­i­cal­ly hadn’t learned in my own coun­try.

Now, though small, Hainan con­tin­ues to ex­pe­ri­ence sig­nif­i­cant in­fra­struc­ture and eco­nom­ic growth, thanks to the sup­port of the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment. As the is­land de­vel­ops, it stands out for its near-ze­ro car­bon ini­tia­tives, ad­vanced ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor, and sta­tus as a glob­al free trade port.

Be­yond our shared sim­i­lar­i­ties, Hainan has po­si­tioned it­self as a mod­el for small­er coun­tries and is­lands to as­pire to.