Sanya, Hainan, China.......An Unexpected Turn of Events

   I was in Sanya, Hainan, the most southern city of China and had planned to meet my young Chinese friend for lunch. I got to a beach that is frequented by Russian tourists about 3 hours early and planned to walk the coast line for photo's. As I traversed over the rocks by the sea the water began crashing higher against the bluff. Once I got to a point where I could not navigate further along the waters edge I wondered if I should turn around and find somewhere else for photo's. Up often gives the best opportunity for scenery photo's so I give little thought to attempting to climb the cliff.
   At about 30 metres (100 feet) I was finding the rise more difficult but still manageable. I focused on a tree that was growing out of the rock, this tree would help me to pass a tough section. I pulled on this tree to test it's strength and was satisfied that it was strong enough to hold me. I jumped hand over hand to climb the tree which released 100's of large, red bull ants which started biting me all over my body. Frantically I got back down to a ledge that was my jumping platform and stripped my clothes off, at that time trying to slap the ants as I was disrobing. After assessing the damage... my scraped arms and legs....I found a crack which supported my thought to continue ascending the cliff. After some careful climbing I reached a place that afforded me good views for my photo's.
   Once I gathered my legs I continued to climb; seemed like going down the face of the cliff was not an option. Once I reached the top of this 100 metre cliff I found that it was a military mountain which was flat on top with a helicopter pad, some barracks, and other assorted buildings. At first a few of the 50 some odd soldiers approached with shocked looks on their faces, they were immediately very pleasant. A couple of them took me to a building and give me a glass of water (it was very hot)...they were so shy. I am not sure what they thought of this 50 year old foreigner who was cut up and sweaty.
   The atmosphere quickly changed when the head officer came in, he was very intense and not exactly the most polite guy I have met in a white uniform. Immediately he raised his voice to the sociable young soldiers and gestured for my camera and phone (of which he removed the batteries). To jump ahead.....I sat in the one room building for 2 hours with one of the junior men, who spoke very few words of English, he managed to articulate that I needed to stay there. Soon after 5 expensive vehicles pulled up containing about 14 top officials. I watched them out of the window and the head honcho was so serious looking. Another vehicle pulled up about 30 minutes later which contained 3 secret service agents, one who was a translator. By this time I was getting impatient and the mid-20's translator kept saying "no problem sir" while I said "yes there is a problem, I want to walk down your road and get out of here."
    After 5 hours of them talking Chinese and the translator asking me questions it was obvious that THEY THOUGHT I WAS A SPY.   When I mentioned that my wife and daughter were traveling with me the translator asked "what did you tell them?"They took me outside and asked me for seemingly the 20th time, "how did you get up this mountain?". I told the translator that rock climbing is very popular in the west....they just could not believe I climbed the cliff. I tried to get through to them that a spy was not going to walk around on top of the mountain in front of them. One of the men got me to go over to a car and he put a blindfold on me so we could drive down the mountain using their access road, seems as though they wanted to see from which point I started to ascend the mountain. Some officers were beside me while others were off the beach; laying down in the long grass some 10 metres from the edge of the sea was a sign which read in Chinese, Russian, and English, "Chinese Military Installation, absolutely no entrance beyond this point."
   It seemed apparent that while up on the mountain that the head officers thought the sign was  standing, not laying down in the long grass. Surely THIS is why they kept screaming in Chinese while they looked at me. If that sign was standing I am sure they would have put me in jail. After 8 hours with me and an interrogation of my young friend they let me go, but not before closing off my floor of the hotel and searching my backpack. I sat in a room at the hotel while they drafted up a document that they wanted me to sign. The 10 page document that was written in Chinese only supposedly said "I willingly entered China's most southern military installation." I was very angry by the end (as angry as one could realistically get with these guys). I demanded my camera card back since I had so many photo's of China and they agreed to put the photo's on a disk and they kept the card. When we walked out of the hotel to go to a camera shop there was a big crowd on the street....these guys blocked so much of the sidewalk with their vehicles, maybe they thought I was a murderer ?. When the translator went to get in his vehicle I said to him "Hey, I will meet you there tomorrow to put up the sign". Two days later I checked my e-mails and there was a message from my wife that said "Daddy...be careful."