Guide has passion for visitors, monkeys

During Spring Festival, the most important Chinese holiday for family gatherings, 30-yearold Chao Zhuanai greeted visitors from around the world with her crowds of rhesus monkeys at Nanwan Monkey Island, a national nature reserve in southern Hainan, China’s only tropical province.

This was Chao’s ninth Spring Festival spent working.

“If you’re lucky you can see the monkeys fight for the ‘throne’ of monkey king on the island, which usually happens during the winter season. Every four years, different groups of monkeys will have a cruel and bloody ‘campaign’,” she said.

Visitors can learn many interesting stories and knowledge about the monkeys, which Chao herself learned from books or research at Nanwan, the world’s only tropical island for rhesus monkeys.

The nationally protected monkeys, which numbered about 100 on the island in the 1960s, have increased to the current 2,500 due to protection of the local environment. The monkeys have formed themselves into 29 groups, and on a whistle the well-trained monkeys will rush down from the mountains in minutes for food and games.

“I have spent eight Spring Festivals at the monkey island because I enjoy the holiday atmosphere here and I learn a lot from tourists with different backgrounds. While helping tourists know more about the life of the monkeys and the nature reserve, I enrich my life experience through exchanges with visitors,” Chao said.