Yinggeling, the Parrot Beak That Is Hainan’s Second Peak
The news from 鹦哥岭 Yīnggē lǐng arrived in September 2026: for the first time, the massif’s Yingzui ecological experience zone opened to ordinary visitors, free of charge, on a real-name booking system – a carefully rationed key to the biggest block of old-growth rainforest on Hainan. The mountain itself never needed an introduction: 鹦嘴峰 Yīngzuǐ fēng, the Parrot Beak, stands 1,812 metres, the second-highest summit on the island after the second finger of 五指山 Wǔzhǐ shān, and the protected land around it is the block the planners call the central pivot of the Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park.
Two administrative geographies share the name, and they do not have the same edges. The national park’s Yinggeling block spans four cities and counties – Baisha, Qiongzhong, Ledong and Wuzhishan – over 861.7 square kilometres, with 452 of them in core protection. The Yinggeling National Nature Reserve, the older legal skin, stretches across five counties – Changjiang added – and seven townships, and its main ridgeline lies mostly on the Baisha side. Qiongzhong holds the southwestern flank: 什运乡 Shíyùn xiāng is the county’s gateway township, reached on the G361, and the reserve’s drama is best read from here, looking up.
The protection record runs in clean steps. In 1981 the autonomous prefecture’s forestry bureau set the mountain aside as a state water-source forest; in July 2004 the provincial government made it the Yinggeling Provincial Nature Reserve by formal document; a management station followed in 2006; and in December 2014 the State Council raised it to national rank – at the time the youngest and the largest national nature reserve in Hainan. Since 2019 it has sat inside the national park. The numbers behind the titles: 50,464 hectares, 33 kilometres north to south and 39 east to west, the largest land nature reserve on the island, and the wellspring of the 南渡江 Nándù jiāng, Hainan’s first river, and the 昌化江 Chānghuà jiāng, its second – hence the nickname the water tower of Hainan, its streams clean enough that freshwater jellyfish turn up in them as living quality certificates.
Science keeps finding firsts here. The 2024 ledger records 2,323 plant species, 512 vertebrates, 1,276 insects and 232 large fungi, with some fifty species new to science found this century – the Yinggeling tree frog among them, its description filling a gap in the international literature. Four plants of the first national protection class grow in the reserve: 坡垒 pólěi, the Hainan ironwood, the Hainan and Taiwan cycads, and 伯乐树 Bólè shù, Bretschneidera. The human story is its own exhibit: in 2007 the provincial forestry bureau recruited twenty-seven university graduates – two PhDs, four master’s degrees, twenty-one bachelors – to staff the mountain; the team won the China Youth May Fourth Medal as a collective in 2012; and 389 rangers now walk the boundary. In 1943 the mountain played its part in history too: after the Baisha Uprising failed, 王国兴 Wáng Guóxīng pulled his fighters back into these forests to hold on – the memorial to that rising stands in Qiongzhong, one highway stop away.
The Qiongzhong side is a looking-at mountain, and the province’s own itinerary says so: from the county seat, run the memorial park of the Baisha Uprising at 红毛镇 Hóngmáo zhèn, the Li village of 番道村 Fāndào cūn in Shiyun, and the old 琼崖纵队 Qióngyá zòngduì headquarters site at 便文村 Biànwén cūn, with the Parrot Beak cresting the horizon in cloud the whole way. Independent trekkers aim instead for the Yinggeling waterfall, a roadside cascade on the G361 in Shiyun township – free, about a fifteen-minute walk in from the road, at its fullest in the wet months. For the booked experience zone itself, though, the gate is on the Baisha side, and a Qiongzhong base should budget half a day of driving around.
Practicalities
Tickets. The reserve sells nothing – there is no traditional scenic area and no commercial ticket. The new Yingzui experience zone is free with real-name booking as of September 2026; daily numbers are capped by the ecosystem’s carrying capacity, turn-up entry is not accepted beyond a small on-site margin, and the G361 waterfall is a free roadside sight.
Opening hours. The experience zone opens only on released booking slots, not as a daily-gated scenic area: it ran trial slots through the 2026 Mid-Autumn and National Day window, with quotas to follow for park open days, holidays and weekends and separate arrangements for research groups. Check-in windows on booked days are 08:00 to 09:00 and 14:30 to 15:30.
Closing day. No public closing day exists because casual entry is closed by design: any day without a released quota is a closed day, the wider reserve remains off-limits to unbooked walkers, and the core protection zone is never open.
Getting there. Booking runs only through the WeChat account 海南白沙旅文体 – Hainan Baisha LvWenTi – via the 一机游白沙 mini-programme’s Yingzui booking page: five rainforest-protection quiz questions, a signed visitor pledge and real-name details, one to four days ahead in holiday periods. Verification happens in Baisha county town, at the Baisha Farm Group hall, or at the zone entrance; the access road is a single-lane mountain track, so verify in town first and collect the vehicle pass. From Qiongzhong, the G361 through Shiyun township reaches the waterfall and the looking-at viewpoints; the experience zone lies around by Baisha.
flowcloud would say that Yinggeling handles fame the way a watershed handles rain – slowly, and by its own schedule – and that a mountain which answered a medal-winning generation of young scientists with fifty new species in twenty years was always going to ration its visitors the way it rations the island’s water: strictly, and for everyone’s good.
Getting there: 鹦哥岭 Yīnggē lǐng is reached from Qiongzhong by the G361 through 什运乡 Shíyùn xiāng, about 17 kilometres from the county seat to the township, for the roadside waterfall and the official looking-at route past the Baisha Uprising memorial and the Bianwen headquarters site; the free Yingzui experience zone books only via the WeChat account 海南白沙旅文体, with quiz, pledge and real-name check-in at 08:00-09:00 or 14:30-15:30 on released slot days (checked September 2026), verification in Baisha county town recommended before the single-lane mountain road, and the core protection zone is closed to all visitors.