The beach of Yongxing Island offers clean sand and water. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Cruises offer laid-back lifestyle and maritime romance

When I stepped on the bobbing vessel heading for the Xisha Islands, two words that have frequently appeared in my daily news reports, I was expecting an arduous week on a remote island.

However, after an exhausting 15-hour trip from Wenchang, Hainan province, I was astonished by the dreamlike light-green morning sea stretching in front of me as we approached the harbor of Yongxing Island.

The spectrum of colors was more vibrant, more gasp-inducing than I had seen in the Maldives.

It was a perfect start to the Xisha trip, in which my colleagues and I cast our media net, like fishermen, to gather stories of the island, the location of Sansha, the southernmost Chinese city which administers an area of about 2 million square kilometers in the South China Sea. We also got a chance to truly appreciate its scenic lure and enjoy the laid-back island lifestyle.