Wenchang Thermal Resort

Wenchang Thermal Resort draws bicarbonate-enriched geothermal waters in the eastern Hainan coastal city of Wenchang, whose remarkable dual fame rests on being the ancestral hometown of the majority of overseas Chinese Hainanese diaspora worldwide—whose remittance architecture of Nanyang-style villas in Wenchang's villages testifies to generations of emigration to Southeast Asia—and on hosting China's most important space launch facility, the Wenchang Space Launch Center on Longlou Cape, where Long March rockets carry Tianhe space station modules and Chang'e lunar probes into orbit in missions visible from the island's beaches. The thermal waters of Wenchang's resort provide warm mineral relaxation in a city where the cultural reach of Hainanese migration and the scientific ambition of China's space program create an unusual juxtaposition of ancestral village heritage and cutting-edge aerospace achievement. The Wenchang Aerospace Science Park, the Nanyang-style overseas Chinese architecture of historic villages, and the warm geothermal pools combine history and futurity in a distinctly 21st-century Chinese thermal spa experience.