National tropical agricultural park in Haikou ready to open

Tourists to Haikou, capital city of tropical Hainan province in South China, will get a bonus attraction for their Spring Festival travel plans, with Guilinyang National Tropical Agriculture Park set to open on Thursday, Huang Zhuohua, head of the agriculture park, said on Monday.

The huge agriculture park, one of Hainan's key projects for its 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020), covers 1,066 hectares in eastern Haikou. It includes a 21-hectare "Agriculture Dream Factory", a traditional village with charming rural scenes and an agriculture park.

"We are building a tropical flower seedling research base, which will be the first of its kind in the country, in cooperation with international agriculture experts the Netherlands, Ecuador and Colombia in a 70,000-square meters green house within the tropical agriculture park, " Huang said.

The base, with a planned investment of 250 million yuan, will introduce more best quality tropical flower seed categories from outside of China to cultivate better seed plants for the island," Huang added.

Tourists will be able to sit and enjoy traditional Hainan food in restaurants that can accommodate 1,600 people, which will be surrounded by fresh flowers and unique tropical plants.

The national park also has prepared fields for tourists and netizens around the country to share. They can rent a certain piece of land and let local farmers plant whatever vegetable they want.

"Our workers will take care of their fields (gardens) and make sure they have a good harvest with the support of our high technology farming. We also can provide delivery service to grantee buyers can get the most fresh vegetables from their own gardens in the national park," Huang said.

Hainan has many advantages in developing tropical agriculture, as it is blessed with warm weather and abundant sunshine. The park will integrate its tropical advantages with modern technology and its tourism resources to build a national tropical agriculture demonstration zone and a 5A attraction spot, according to its development plan.