Qionghai sits on the Wanquan River on Hainan's east coast, midway between Haikou and Sanya, and is known across China primarily for two things: Jiaji duck, one of the four famous dishes of Hainanese cuisine, slow-braised with herbs and served at low wooden tables along the riverbank; and the Red Detachment of Women, the real-life female Communist military unit whose story became one of the most famous revolutionary ballets of the Mao era. The memorial park dedicated to that unit is still a significant draw for Chinese tour groups.
The city's connection to the overseas Hainanese diaspora in Southeast Asia is strong — Qionghai is the ancestral hometown of a large portion of Hainanese communities in Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam — and this gives it a quiet international consciousness unusual in a county-level city. The Coconut Village Battle Site commemorates a 1927 engagement that was the first battle of the Chinese Civil War fought on Hainan, and the small museum attached to it has the slightly melancholy quality of a conflict that most outsiders have never heard of but that matters enormously to those who grew up nearby.
For most travellers Qionghai works best as a lunch stop: arrive by high-speed rail from Haikou, eat duck at a riverside restaurant, visit whichever monument your travelling companions can agree on, and continue south. Bo'ao, with its beaches and fishing port, is only half an hour away by road.