Where to Sleep on Murui Mountain, Hainan’s Red Cradle
母瑞山 Mǔruì Shān is the mountain in the south of 定安县 Dìng’ān Xiàn, in 翰林镇 Hànlín Zhèn and the community of 中瑞居 Zhōngruì Jū, which is what the old 中瑞农场 Zhōngruì Nóngchǎng state farm is called now. It is written into the island’s history as the place where the Communist movement on Hainan survived its worst years, and the names it is given are large: 琼崖革命的摇篮, the cradle of the Qiongya revolution, and 海南的小井冈, Hainan’s little Jinggangshan. It is the 山 of the county’s 一城两山一湖一泉 that is not a temple, and the way to it is a mountain road with few buses, an hour from the county town.
The biggest building on the mountain is not a hotel and does not pretend to be. 母瑞山干部学院 Mǔruì Shān Gànbù Xuéyuàn, the Murui Mountain cadre academy, stands on the site of the 中瑞农场中学 school, less than a kilometre from the north-west corner of the memorial park, and it is the reason the mountain has beds at all. It occupies 118.5 mu and 10,441.17 square metres, with four student dormitories, a canteen, a teaching block and two staff blocks: a 216-seat hall, six classrooms, eight seminar rooms, room to feed 300 and sleep 174 at once, and a second phase planned for 500. The county report gives 174 beds and 200 trainees in two different sentences.
It was built quickly and it has run hard. Work started in July 2018 and the academy came out in March 2021 as 母瑞山干部学院（筹）, going into trial operation that month; 王蕊 Wáng Ruǐ, the deputy head of the county party school, was quoted at the time saying the phone would not stop ringing with units wanting to book. Since then it reports more than 230 courses and 15,000 trainees, on a curriculum built around the island’s revolutionary history and the free-trade port in seven series. In February 2026 the logistics contract, covering the canteen, the dormitories, reception, security, cleaning and repairs, went to 绿城物业服务集团有限公司 for 3,359,002.72 yuan.
The village beds are a different proposition and their numbers are the firmest here. 母瑞七队 Mǔruì Qī Duì was rebuilt in 2018 as 34 blocks holding 64 two-storey houses in the 琼北民居 Qióngběi Mínjū style of northern Hainan, with more than 40 million yuan from 海垦集团 Hǎikěn Jítuán, the island’s state farms group. 海南农垦母瑞山农场有限公司 turned 56 of those units into the 母瑞山红军旅租 Mǔruì Shān Hóngjūn Lǚzū, the Red Army lodging house, four beds to a unit and 224 beds in total, and on 14 October 2021 it was graded a bronze rural guesthouse, 铜宿级 tóng sù jí, in the province’s third round, the only state-farm property among thirty. Families let the rooms they do not use, about 30 square metres each.
What the Rooms Are Like
A room here is a house in a village that was poor until the visitors came. The 琼北民居 blocks are grey-roofed and white-walled, the room is the family’s spare half, and the householder will often walk you round the memorial park next morning; 41 household guesthouses in the village have taken close to 4,000 guests and 120,000 yuan since 2021. The 红军旅馆 was the farm’s old hostel, refurbished in early 2018 for more than 1.6 million yuan, with red paintings on the walls and a dining room serving 革命菜, the guerrillas’ wild vegetables, five-colour rice and 槟榔鸡. The rain is heavy from May to October and the three-kilometre 重走红军路 wants grippy shoes.
Practicalities
Price. The academy is a training institution and no public rate for walk-in guests exists, so nothing here invents one. Around it the figures come from reporting and from guides rather than from a booking site: the farm guesthouse opposite the memorial park was quoted at about 200 yuan a night, the 红军旅馆 and the village rooms at a reference price of about 288, and the share a household earns is put at 150 to 200 yuan a day, with one resident, 王琼美 Wáng Qióngměi, saying she clears two or three thousand yuan in a month. There is no listing page to check any of it against.
Address. The beds are on 母瑞山 Mǔruì Shān in 翰林镇 Hànlín Zhèn, 定安县 Dìng’ān Xiàn, in the layers the address system actually uses: county, then town, then 中瑞居 Zhōngruì Jū, then 母瑞七队 Mǔruì Qī Duì. The academy is on the old school site under a kilometre from the memorial park, and the village is close enough that guests describe seeing the park’s grey roofs and white walls from the window. Nothing is walkable to a town and the mountain road is slow.
Rooms. Ask whether you are booking into a household room or the 红军旅租, since the two are not the same transaction, and ask whether meals are included, because the eating here is the point: 革命菜, five-colour rice and 槟榔鸡 at the guesthouse, and 翰林焖猪蹄, braised pig’s trotter, in 翰林镇 a few minutes away. Ask for a room with the park in the window rather than the lane, and pack for the rain, heaviest from May to October.
Getting there. 定安县 Dìng’ān Xiàn has no railway passenger station and the mountain has no bus worth relying on, so the arrival is by car, usually a hired one: 海口东站 Hǎikǒu Dōng Zhàn or 海口美兰国际机场 Hǎikǒu Měilán Guójì Jīchǎng, then about 40 minutes of road to the county town and an hour beyond it to 翰林镇, with the last stretch winding. The memorial park at the foot of the mountain opened in 1996 after the province decided to build it in 1993, was graded 4A on 24 June 2021 and unveiled on 29 June as the first red-tourism 4A area in Hainan, and is on the country’s list of a hundred classic red-tourism sites.
Where to stay: a household room or a unit of 母瑞山红军旅租 Mǔruì Shān Hóngjūn Lǚzū in 母瑞七队 Mǔruì Qī Duì, 中瑞居 Zhōngruì Jū, 翰林镇 Hànlín Zhèn, 定安县 Dìng’ān Xiàn, within walking distance of 母瑞山革命根据地纪念园 Mǔruì Shān Gémìng Gēnjùdì Jìniànyuán. Come in the weeks around 1 July or in the training season if you want the mountain busy, and between November and April if you would rather have it to yourself.
flowcloud would say that a mountain which was itself the last hiding place of a movement has ended up feeding its guests the same wild vegetables the guerrillas ate and paying the villagers to tell the story, and that the correct way to sleep here is in a household’s spare room rather than a hotel, because in 母瑞七队 the household is the exhibit.