Four dishes and a night market

Four dishes, three places

Hainan speaks of its “four famous dishes”: Wenchang chicken, Jiaji duck, Dongshan goat and Hele crab. Each bears the name of its place of origin, and all come from the east coast — from Wenchang, from Qionghai, whose town centre is called Jiaji, and from Wanning, to which Dongshan and Hele belong.

For travellers who have crossed the island from south to north, that makes a nice tally: Jiaji duck in the evening in Qionghai, Wenchang chicken in the coconut hot pot in Dongjiao, and on the way through Wanning you passed Dongshan and Hele. In Haikou you'll find all four in the big restaurants.

Wenchang chicken

The best-known of the four is Wenchang chicken. According to tradition it comes from a village where the chickens lived under big banyan trees and ate their seeds. A Wenchang official in the Ming era is said to have brought some chickens to the imperial court, the emperor was delighted — and ever since the village has been called “gifted by heaven”.

The chickens are small, with thin skin and tender meat. They're classically poached, cut cold and dipped in a sauce of garlic, soy sauce and the juice of a small green citrus fruit. With them comes rice cooked in the chicken stock. On Hainan they say: without Wenchang chicken it's not a feast.

From Hainan chicken to Hainanese chicken rice

If you've been to Singapore or Malaysia, you know the dish under another name: Hainanese chicken rice. Emigrants from Wenchang and the surrounding area took the recipe to Southeast Asia, sold it there at food stalls and made it one of Singapore's best-known dishes.

Today it's almost a national dish in Singapore, while at home it's simply called “chicken rice”. It's a story that keeps cropping up on this trip: what the emigrants took with them and what they brought back still shapes the island today.

Jiaji duck

Jiaji duck is actually a Muscovy duck, called “fan duck” on Hainan. In Hainanese colloquial speech “fan” means roughly Southeast Asia — whoever emigrated to Malaysia or Singapore went “to the fan”. So the breed came to the island with the returnees from Southeast Asia.

It has been raised in Qionghai for more than 150 years. Traditionally the ducks are kept in cages for the last weeks and hand-fattened, which makes the skin thin and the meat tender. Like the chicken, it's usually poached and eaten with a sauce made from its own stock.

Dongshan goat

Dongshan is a small mountain near Wanning, not even two hundred metres high but a popular excursion spot for a long time. The goats grazing on its slopes eat herbs and shrubs there, and their meat is therefore considered particularly tender and without the strong flavour many dislike in goat.

It's prepared in many ways: braised, in a hot pot, grilled or cooked in coconut milk. If you don't like goat at home, you should still try it here.

Hele crab

Hele crab is the only seafood dish of the four. These are mud crabs from the sea off Hele near Wanning, famous for their hard shell and above all their roe: golden yellow, firm and reminiscent of salted duck egg in flavour.

It's best simply steamed so that flavour and colour are preserved. Like all seafood, crabs are sold by weight, per jin, and prices vary greatly by season and size — ask the price before ordering.

The night market at the university's south gate

You eat the four big dishes in a restaurant. The city's evening life, on the other hand, happens at the night markets, and the best-known is on Haidian Island in front of Hainan University's south gate, just a few minutes from the InterContinental. A street is closed to traffic for it every evening.

Uniform stalls with red lanterns line up along about half a kilometre, food on one side, clothes, phone accessories and fruit on the other. It's open from about 18:00 until after midnight, busiest between 19:00 and 21:00. Rumours of the market moving were officially denied in 2023; in 2026 it even hosted the city's Spring Festival celebrations.

What people eat there

If you want to get to know the island's cuisine in one evening, this is the place. There's qingbuliang, the cold coconut soup with beans and fruit, Lingshui sour noodles, Hainanese rice noodles, fried snacks, grilled oysters and a sour-spicy soup of fermented rice that's popular here with seafood. Add fresh coconuts and tropical fruit.

Many stalls also sell snacks from all over China, from Changsha stinky tofu to Xi'an meat buns. A dinner of several small dishes usually costs around 50 yuan per person.

More markets and a few rules

If you want more: old Fucheng has a food lane right by the old city wall with many local dishes, and the Jinpan night market, one of the city's oldest and biggest, offers dishes from every province. Both are quickly reached by Didi.

Almost everywhere you pay by Alipay or WeChat, but a little cash doesn't hurt. For seafood and raw food, eat at busy stalls where things are freshly prepared. And watch your bag and phone in the crowds.