By staff reporter YI FAN

The beauty of Dajiao Bay on Hailing Island has earned it the name "Hawaii of the Orient."

YANGJIANG in Guangdong Province can be summed up by the superlative "largest." The city is the largest fruit jelly producer in Southeast Asia, the largest knife producer and exporter, and the largest shark fin producer in China. It is also the hometown of kites and has recently emerged as a popular tourist city.

Tourism Resources

Yangjiang has 2.5 million people. When I was here a few years ago, it had neither decent roads nor traffic lights, but on a recent visit, I was surprised to see row upon row of apartment buildings, and wide streets and roads lined by coconut trees.

Yangjiang's 7.4-km-long Silver Beach is a beautiful site to enjoy the South China Sea.

Yangjiang has a rich historic and cultural heritage. Its North Mountain Stone Pagoda and the palaeoanthropological cave dwellings at Dushizi attract many tourists every year. Embraced by mountains and the sea, the city has a congenial climate and plenty of sunshine. Along its 476-km-long coastline are the broad and beautiful beaches of Mawei Island, Silver Beach, and Moon and Dajiao bays, where people from all over the world come to enjoy the South China Sea. The beauty of the Dajiao Bay in particular has earned it the name "Hawaii of the Orient."

The 7.4-km-long Silver Beach has been listed the world's longest in the Shanghai Branch of the Guinness Book of World Records. Speedboats zip over the water surface, and close to the shore swimmers and sunbathers enjoy the beach and the sea in the time honored manner. The seawater and sand here are of top quality, the water crystalline green and calm, and the sand fine and golden yellow.

The beaches at Yangjiang are a total length of 35.4 kilometers, and suitable for development. Along the coastline are seafood restaurants and local residences. Visitors can also go on board fishing boats and pull in the catch with local fishermen.

Yangjiang's karstic mountain landscape extends for over 100 kilometers, and the city also boasts scenic views of forests, waterfalls, lakes and hot springs. A popular pastime in Yangjiang is the sport the city helped make famous: kite flying. The Double Ninth Festival is a special kite-flying occasion for locals, when the people flock to beaches and lakeshores to fly kites.

Yangjiang is concentrating on the development of ecologically friendly fishery and agriculture tours. In 2002 the city received 2.3 million tourists and earned 1.167 billion yuan from tourism.

Getting Ahead in the IT Sector

The Yangjiang New and High Technology Industrial Development Zone, composed of six parks, was launched early this year. It is located within a network of convenient land and sea transport, five kilometers from the Yangjiang Harbor and traversed by several expressways and national highways. A number of enterprises have set up their properties in the zone.

Kite flying has a history of 1,400 years in Yangjiang. During the Double Ninth Festival, local people flock to beaches and lakeshores to fly kites.

The Angyang Enterprise Park, devoted to tourism, has a beautiful view of hills and seascape from its vantage point on Hailing Island against hills and facing the sea. The Suitong and Jianshan parks, respectively located at the northern and southern parts of the urban districts, are designated as demonstration parks for upgrading traditional enterprises through technology.

This zone encourages investors and scientific and technological workers to seek development by providing preferential policies for land, water and electricity usage, fee collection, administration, and services. They include an advantageous rate of 30 percent for the world's top 500 enterprises, famous domestic and international enterprises and listed companies, and of 20 percent for land leases that surpass 100,000 square meters and projects whose total investment exceeds 200 million yuan.

The opening of the Kaiping-Yangjiang Expressway on September 3, 2003 brings Yangjiang to within a two-hour drive from Guangzhou and an hour and a half drive from Zhuhai. Convenient transportation has made Yangjiang a new investment choice for Chinese and foreign investors.