Haikou
— — a tropical port where the coconut palms outnumber the lampposts.
Not only on a wall.
“The capital of Hainan, on the island's north shore. Old arcaded streets in Qilou survive from the trading years; the Hai Kou Bay opens onto the Qiongzhou Strait. Volcanic cones rise inland at Shishan, where the lava walls hold the heat through the wet season. The harbour fills with squid boats at dusk and the air carries salt and frangipani. — from the studio
Haikou, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Haikou is the provincial capital of Hainan, China's southernmost island province, sitting on the northern coast where the Nandu River meets the Qiongzhou Strait. The metropolitan population is around 2.9 million. The city pairs a tropical climate with a long maritime trading history; the Qilou arcade district along Zhongshan Road preserves shophouses from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, built when Hainanese traders moved between Southeast Asia and the mainland. The Haikou Volcanic Cluster Geopark, fifteen kilometres south, holds dormant cones from a Pleistocene field.
Haikou sits in a tropical monsoon climate, with average daily highs around 32°C in summer and rarely below 17°C in winter. Typhoon season runs August through October. The city is one of the most humid in China; the locals call the late-summer afternoons the time when the streets begin to breathe. Sea breeze off the strait keeps the coastal blocks cooler than the inland Xiuying district, and the coconut palms that line every major avenue are the reason Haikou is nicknamed Coconut City.
The Qilou arcaded shophouses along Zhongshan, Bo'ai, and Xinhua roads were built between roughly 1849 and 1932 by returning Hainanese merchants. Stucco facades carry a fusion of Southern Chinese woodwork, Portuguese balconies, and Southeast Asian colonial detail; the ground-floor arcades let shoppers walk under cover through the wet season. The Haikou Qilou Old Street has been a protected cultural area since 2009. Inland, the Shishan volcanic field shows lava-stone village walls a thousand years old, built in dry-stack courses.