China (Mainland) as a new dive destination.

The recent Dive Expo in Shanghai this year, show's the dive industry's interest in the Mainland market. Bidplayers liek Mares, Cresi and Suunto were there, advertising the "wealthy", worldly and sophisted sport of scuba diving.

The following is a few brief overviews on what is currently available & what may become available in the future:

Currently, there are only a few dive operators in China. They are mainly located on the Island of Hainan, aka the Hawai of China. Located at the very southern tip of China, across from Vietnam, the Hainanese share the same ethnic and cultural heritage as the Northern Vietnamese across the bay and many still speak their own local dialect. There is an abudance of seafood and oean products fished from its own waters. Exotic sealife (sea turtles, rays and eels) find themselves for sale in large tanks in front of the numerous seafood restaurants along the harbourfront. Coral branches, shells and tortoise shell products are sold in the tourist markets.

Over the past decade Hainan Island has seen an explosion in tourist development with most of the resorts in the Southern Part of the island. This area, known as Sanya, has everything from paragliding, waterskiiing and banana boat rides to snuba and scuba diving. Unfortunately, white sand beaches are spoiled by the litter and sharp bleached branches of dead coral that is washed along its shores. These beaches are not meant for walking barefoot! The 2 dive operations in Sanya are shady at best. They have some of the latest and greatest Scubapro gear that could not have hit the market more than 3 months ago, yet show the wear & tear and lack of maintenance that is truly scary. The compressor is in a small wood hut with its back panel open and the tanks look abused and neglected.

The second DS in Hainan, is on a small patch of island that was made into a theme park. It can be reached by a 10-min tourist-ferry from the harbourfront. Everyone was lining up for a "discover scuba" experience as that was the thing to do while on holiday in Hainan. There were over 200 people in the water with less than 10 DMs divided amongst them! They were all floating in a big group (all 200 of them), doggy paddling, kicking, complaining on top of one another. After watching for 30mins, I don't even know if anyone or group actually decended. The amazing thing was that everyone seemed to leave the water smiling and saying how wonderful "diving" was. And that no one died in that 30mins!

The resorts were all 5* and Hainan has its own hotsprings. However, many brand new resorts were already redocrating due to the wear and tear in just under 2 years.

Shanghai
Shangahi is gorgeous and in its insatiable thirst to be the best at everything, it is now also offering Great White Cage Diving. I called the operation advertising this a few years back when on a business trip to the Mainland and wasn't given much confidence in their abilities by the man who answered the phone. If anyone has experienced cage diving or great white shark baiting in China please let me know. I will probably try to visit the shop in person on my next trip.

Thousand Islands.
The Thousand Islands are actually the hill tops of over a hundred little valleys that were flooded in the nameof develpment in the past half-century. The flood waters rose faster than calculated and as a result, the 5 towns were not demolished as planned but instead abandoned. The result? 5 towns with carved stone monuments and buildings dating back well over 2000years. Only 2 are still reachable but past recreational standards while the 3rd is at the tec limit, the 4th & 5th are buried in silt. The main problem is that there hasn't been any real diving there and any diving would probably have to be on an anthro context under the supervision of a Large University & the Department of Culture. & there are pirates on this huge man-made lake. :eek:

The 3 Gorges
These are category 4+ waters with over 1000s of years of shipwrecks and sharp things poking out all over the place. No diving here.

Mainland China has so much potential as a place with truly historic and challenging dive sites. It is a pity that there are no laws to establish safe diving practices to make it profitable and accessible to all. I hope that when they finally get their act together, there will be still something to see under those waters.

I had thought about diving Hainan Island for several years. I had a friend there who taught English slang to Chinese nationals. However, after he married his Chinese girlfriend, they moved back to my island and then to New Mexico. Just saw them today and they want me to come travel with them in China and possibly Vietnam when they go back.