Lingshui County occupies a stretch of Hainan's southeastern coast that has so far escaped the full resort treatment, which is both its main selling point and the reason most Chinese tourists bypass it. The beaches here — particularly Perfume Bay, still largely undeveloped — are the quiet, slightly scruffy version of what Sanya's beaches looked like before the hotels arrived. Getting to them requires a bit of effort, which naturally keeps the crowds thin.
The county's most visited attraction is Nanwan Monkey Island, a nature reserve on a small peninsula accessible by what is marketed as China's longest cable car crossing a body of water — a 2,138-metre span above the strait. Around 2,000 macaques live here in semi-wild conditions; the reserve does active work on macaque rehabilitation and population management, though the show element — monkeys performing tricks for tourists — can feel at odds with the conservation mission. The Lingshui Railway Station on the island's high-speed ring railway puts both the monkey island and Perfume Bay within easy reach without a car.
Lingshui is also where the Hainan Incident of 2001 took place — the mid-air collision between a US Navy EP-3 surveillance aircraft and a Chinese fighter jet that triggered a diplomatic crisis and left the American crew detained on the island for eleven days. The Wang Wei memorial near the airbase marks the Chinese pilot who died in the collision. It is not a tourist site but is oddly moving if you seek it out.