From quiet fishing post to film set and tourism hot spot

Set-jetting is simple: watch a film, then visit its location.

Ya Lan has done it twice, traveling to the same island 11 years apart.

What she saw in between was not just an island changing, but time, tourism and cinema quietly rewriting its soul.

Back in April 2015, after watching director Han Han's 2014 debut film The Continent — a road movie featuring three young people growing up on Dongji Island — she learned about the filming location, which was the island itself. Known collectively as the Dongji Islands, they are the easternmost inhabited group of islands of the Chinese mainland, located in Zhejiang province, and mainly comprise four inhabited islands: Miaozihu, Qingbang, Dongfushan, and Huangxing.

Among them, Dongfushan is promoted as the place where the first ray of sunlight of the 21st century fell on the Chinese mainland.

Drawn by its romantic geography, she decided to see Dongfushan for herself.

What stayed with her were the layered stone houses climbing the hillside, the four-hour hike around the isle, modest guesthouses with no Wi-Fi, frequent power outages, and a handful of restaurants.

That was it. That was Dongfushan.