202050909 Tuesday, September 9, 2025 Pingtan Island

202050909 Tuesday, September 9, 2025 Pingtan Island

The ship was slowly cruising through the Haitan Strait, which separates the Chinese Mainland and Pingtan Island when we awoke.  Pingtan Island is the largest island in Fujian Province and the 4th largest in China.  It is connected to the mainland by a bridge and high speed rail line, making the closest land connected to the Chinese mainland to Taiwan.  Taiwan is only 140km (87mi) from Pingtan, separated by the Taiwan strait.  If China does go ahead with its plans to take back Taiwan, this will almost certainly be where amphibious troops will be deployed from. As the ship approached its mooring, an ominous looking radar installation sat atop an adjacent tiny island.

In its early days, Pingtan was a hard scrabble fishing village. Near constant winds form between the Haitan Strait and Taiwan Strait, which are a notable environmental factor.  Pingtan became increasingly important as a coastal defense facility as people became seafarers and pirates.  Early on, the main concern were Japanese pirates, but later, the Dutch and other Europeans looking to colonize the world became more of a concern.  

To deal with the severe winds, homes were usually constructed with stones and had small windows.  These traditional Pingtan homes now appear to be more inland because the Chinese government has been utilizing extensive land reclamation to extend Pingtan into the sea and develop it. 

It’s unclear who they are developing the land for because there are dozens of huge high rise apartment buildings that stand vacant, and four to six lane boulevards with absolutely no traffic on them.  But such infrastructure may be more intended for future military use. 

Our included tour today was to “Haitan Ancient Town”.  When we signed up for it, it sounded like we were going to visit an ancient Haitan fishing village, but it turns out that the Chinese government has built a huge tourism complex for both domestic and foreign tourism like a theme park and simply named it “Haitan Ancient Town”.

Construction was completed in 2015 and it opened to visitors in 2017, so it really isn’t ancient at all.  It was designed to reflect an idealized Chinese city from the Late Ming and Early Qing Dynasties.  In reality, it is more of a giant pedestrian shopping boulevard laid out like a Classical Chinese city with a main gate and central square.  

Shops, restaurants, bars and hotels occupy what would have been government buildings.  

Where we spent most of our time was taking a guided tour of a Maritime Defense museum on the city square.  It was modern and air conditioned, so suitable for western tourists, aside from a lack of western styled toilets in the bathrooms- all squat style toilets in the museum.  

In the center of the museum, which was 3 stories tall, was a full sized replica of a Chinese sailing ship from the 1700’s.  The impression was similar to the Vasa Museum in Stockholm, but on a much smaller scale and the ship was entirely a reproduction.  The museum did have some interesting artifacts and reproductions representing the evolution of Pingtan as a naval defensive facility, but very few (maybe 3) displays had English explanatory panels.  

Even though the Viking buses were somewhat staggered, the tour groups tended to bunch up and cause the exhibition rooms to be overcrowded.  Although our guides stopped to expound on numerous exhibits, there was always a huge crowd around that particular item so you couldn’t see it until they had moved on to another exhibit. 

Each bus appeared to have over 30 passengers assigned to each guide.  We got spoiled during our overland excursions which had half that many people assigned per guide.  The sun was out in full blaze and it was oppressively hot and humid.  We were glad to get back on the ship where we could cool off and relax.  

Ben worked on updating the blog because internet connectivity on the ship has been terrible (<1Mbps speed) while relaxing in the thermal spa and Janet got another load of laundry done.  

We converged for afternoon tea.  They offered an oolong tea, which we both tried since that is the main tea produced by Fujian Province.  It was served in a pot with strainer containing the tea so that we could control the steeping time, and do repeated steeping if we desired by getting refills of hot water into the pots.  We were a little puzzled to find what looked like floral buds mixed in with the tea within the strainers, but they didn’t seem to affect the flavor.  

Flute and cello duet 

The tea service comes with a 3 high stack of finger snacks.  The top had a pair of scones with a tiny bit of cream and jam.  We thought they were pretty stingy with the cream, but the scones were good.  The second tier had little finger sandwiches, but there were three different sandwiches which appeared more intended for a single person, rather than a couple to share.  It was the same problem with the third tier which were sweets- a single macaroon, a single mini cheese cake, a single chocolate dipped Madeline.  We had to use a knife to cut each in half, which was hard to do with small finger sandwiches and cakes.  It seems like an odd place for Viking to try to economize.  

We attended the port talk for our next port of call Dongtuo, but came in late.  Ben had a hard time staying awake through that.

We watched the ship sail away as the sun set.  While we were on our balcony, our room stewards came into the room to do the evening turn down service.  We could watch them through the balcony sliding glass door, and they did a meticulous job of straightening out the wrinkles in the pillows and sheets, recoiling ear piece wires on our Quiet Vox units and placing them properly in the chargers, and tidying up things in general.  

Then the gal pulled the curtains closed and then locked the sliding door.  We pounded on the door frantically to let her know we were on the balcony.  She apparently couldn’t see us because the windows act like one way glass.  She was a bit embarrassed that she had nearly locked us out on our balcony.  We’re not sure how we’d escape the balcony had we not immediately gotten her attention.  
We had diner in the Restaurant.  There was an excellent roasted tomato soup that was the highlight of the meal despite having a nice big spiny lobster tail for the main and Eton Mess for dessert.  

The lobster had a slightly mealy texture and tasted a bit overcharred, but it wasn’t bad.  The Eton Mess was pretty messed up though.  They tried to create something that was half Pavlova and half Eton Mess, but the texture was neither creamy, nor puffy.  It was part gritty powder and part butter frosting.  It was memorable for being disappointing.  Ben had to go up to the World Cafe for a proper gelato dessert, and also a small plate of sushi, which was also being served upstairs. 

 
Our excursion tomorrow will be a trip to the Wanghai tower in Dongtou. This is another coastal island.  We have traversed from the South China Sea into the East China Sea, and the Dongtou district consists of 300 islands in the immediate area.

This tower is a modern reconstruction of a structure that was originally built in 5th century on the same site.