The three-meal restaurant, cooled by the surrounding pond, juts out into the park-like landscape. In the foreground is a special space for dances and other performances, which can be viewed by people seated on the lawn.
A humorous sandstone mural depicts the rural Chinese moving to the beach in search of sun and sand. Although our client did not fully understand why we put so much emphasis on the design of each garden area, the concept was based on the premise that people would come here for at least three or four days and they should have an opportunity to experience every one of the gardens, and to use them, not just look at them from the balconies of their rooms. The biggest challenge to our design was the existence of the sand dune on the beach. Around 16 feet (5 meters) high, some of it natural, some of it man-made, the dune obscured the view of the ocean—the very thing that world-weary travelers come to see—from the ground floor of the hotel. Our solution was to carve a corridor through the dune. Oceanographers were asked to come and examine it, and they concluded that we could reduce its height by 6–9 feet (2–3 meters) without compromising its role as a natural protection barrier for the site. With government approval, obtained only towards the end of the resort’s construction, we were able to go ahead, thus contributing to the success of our tropical ocean-facing garden, a unique attraction in China. Local artisans on Hainan Island were commissioned to carve the huge sandstone sculptures that are a stunning feature of the resort. The ones in the dining area comprise a series of 8 foot (2.5 meter) high abstract human figures pulling in a fishing net from the sea. Brian Sherman, our company director and a landscape architect, got the inspiration for this while jogging down the beach one morning. He saw some fishermen on the beach, their boat grounded on the sand and 20–30 men pulling the net in from the sea (with not much fish in it—the sea is pretty overfished here!).
