At ten to six in the evening the woman who runs the place comes up the stairs with a plate of sliced watermelon and tells everyone on the roof that it is eleven minutes away. Nobody has to ask eleven minutes from what. There are sixteen people sitting on plastic stools on a concrete roof in a fishing town at the eastern tip of 海南 Hǎinán, facing south-west across a bay at a low grey structure four kilometres away, and every single one of them is looking at a phone, because the countdown is on the official stream and nobody wants to be the person who missed it because they were talking.
This is 龙楼镇 Lónglóuzhèn, in 文昌 Wénchāng, and the structure is the 文昌航天发射场 Wénchāng Hángtiān Fāshèchǎng, the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site. Until 2016 this was a town of fishermen and coconut farmers with a rocky coast and one good hill. Then they built a spaceport next door, and the guesthouses discovered that their roofs now had the best seats in China for a rocket launch, and the whole economy of the place reorganised itself around a calendar that is published a few weeks in advance and sometimes moves.
The Rooftop Is the Room
The minsu I stayed in is a four-storey house on a lane behind the main road, tiled inside and out, with eight rooms, a shared kitchen, and a roof that has been set up with a low parapet, two strings of bulbs, and about twenty plastic chairs. That roof is the entire reason anyone books it. On an ordinary Tuesday it is where you drink a beer and watch the fishing boats and the lights of the bay. On a launch night it is a small theatre.
The rooms are simple in the way that 民宿 mínsù rooms in Hainan are simple: a bed, air conditioning that works hard, a bathroom with a shower head over a drain, a kettle, and a window. There is no lift, which is fine, and no restaurant, which is also fine because there are four good seafood places within a five-minute walk and the family will cook for you at cost if you bring back a fish.
What you are actually paying for is information. The host knows the launch window, knows which direction to face, knows that the sound arrives twenty seconds after the light and that the roof shakes slightly when it does, and knows which of the local beaches the crowd will be on so that you can avoid it. Ask her, before you book, what the launch schedule looks like for your dates. If there is nothing scheduled, this is a perfectly good quiet seaside guesthouse and nothing more.
Launch Night
The sequence is worth describing because nobody quite believes it the first time.
The rocket becomes visible as a small bright point of light with a tail, rising fast and then going quiet, because it is four kilometres away and sound takes its time. Then the sound arrives — not a bang so much as a long, low, physical roll that you feel in the concrete through the soles of your feet before you properly hear it, and that goes on for longer than you expect. Then everybody on the roof says the same syllable at the same moment, which is a very human and very consistent sound.
Afterwards the town empties into the streets and eats. Restaurants that have been shut all afternoon open at nine at night and run until two, and there is a particular local enthusiasm for 文昌鸡 Wénchāng jī and cold beer that reaches its full expression around eleven. If you have booked a room, you will be asleep before the last table clears, and you will not mind the noise.
Practicalities
Price. On an ordinary night a double room is ¥160–260. On a launch night the same room goes for ¥600–1,200, and the few places with a genuinely unobstructed roof view ask more. The price moves with the schedule and is not negotiable, so book the moment a launch date is announced if that is why you are coming.
Address. 龙楼镇 (Lónglóuzhèn), 文昌 (Wénchāng), north-east 海南 (Hǎinán) — a lane off the main street, about ten minutes by car from 铜鼓岭 (Tónggǔlǐng) and the coast at 淇水湾 (Qíshuǐwān), and roughly forty minutes from 文昌 (Wénchāng) high-speed rail station.
Rooms. Eight rooms over four floors, doubles and twins, all with air conditioning and hot water, none with a sea view because the houses here face each other rather than the water. Ask for a room on the top two floors so that the walk to the roof is short on launch night. Bring mosquito repellent; the coast is breezy but the roof lights are not.
Getting there. 文昌 (Wénchāng) has its own station on the island’s east high-speed rail loop — about twenty minutes from 海口美兰 (Hǎikǒu Měilán) airport and an hour and a half from 三亚 (Sānyà) — and from the station it is forty minutes by taxi or a very slow local bus to 龙楼. By car it is a straightforward coastal run from 文城 Wénchéng, the Wenchang town centre. There is no need for a car once you are here; the beach, the hill and the restaurants are all within a walk or a five-minute ride.
flowcloud would say that a fishing town which put chairs on its roofs and learned the launch calendar is a better example of human adaptability than anything you will read in a strategy document, and that watching a rocket go up with sixteen strangers on a concrete roof is the closest thing to a national ceremony that happens without a ticket.
Where to stay: Rocket View Minsu, 龙楼镇 (Lónglóuzhèn), 文昌 (Wénchāng), north-east Hainan — the cluster of family guesthouses in the lanes off the main street, most of them with a rooftop set up for launch viewing. Doubles ¥160–260 on ordinary nights, ¥600–1,200 on launch nights. About twenty minutes by high-speed rail from 海口美兰 (Hǎikǒu Měilán) airport to 文昌 (Wénchāng) station, then forty minutes by taxi. Book the instant a launch date is announced, ask for a top-floor room, and put a bottle of cold water on the roof before you go up.