Hainan Dream

In the winter of 1987/88 the German businessman and artist Burkhard Eiswaldt started a trip to China. His purpose was to meet a German philologist, who had been living in various countries in Asia. At that time China was for most Western people still an unexplored country, just at the point of opening to the world, the time of experiments and overtures to the Western world. The friends had decided to meet in Beijing in order to travel around China.But once in China, things changed for him. Everyone there was talking about Hainan, a tropical island and hundreds of thousands of young Chinese were moving, like a big caravan, from the north to this place in the south, full of hopes and dreams about the new golden future on a sunny island. Both friends followed the caravan to the south, and while his friend returned to Thailand, Burkhard Eiswaldt was fascinated from the outset with the young people staying in Hainan. This was the start of a long history that connected his future life to this country.