Currently, most of the top courses in China are tied to resorts, and many of those are located on Hainan Island. Fifteen miles off the southern tip of the mainland, Hainan is China's Hawaii, abundant in luscious mountain scenery, coffee plantations, ancient culture and pristine sand beaches. With nearly a thousand miles of coastline and 300 days a year of sunshine, it's no surprise that dozens of courses are currently under way in Hainan.

The standard is Yalong Bay, a Robert Trent Jones Jr. design near the city of Sanya on the island's southern coast. Like Sand River, it's a course akin to the best of Palm Beach or Palm Springs, with broad fairways, grasping bunkers and a variety of native vegetation adding to the challenge and charm. Small lakes border over half the holes; many call for heroic risk/reward decisions off the tee and into the green.

On the day I played a gale blew in, with gusts as strong as any I had seen in Scotland, but the generous driving areas and open approaches to most greens allowed the course to be played as a links, albeit without the same firmness and roll.

Two first-class hotels serve Yalong Bay, one a low-rise tropical design hard by the course, and the other a new beachfront Sheraton, just across the street. After dinner you can head out for some more golf because, like Mission Hills, Yalong Bay lights up like Yankee Stadium.

China has an even greater diversity of natural beauty than the U.S., as I discovered the next morning. A flight of barely three hours transported me from the equivalents of Maui to Switzerland, and I went from perspiring in 85-degree heat to having my noon tee time delayed because the course had a dusting of snow.

The ancient city of Lijiang is in the Yunnan Province of southwestern China, on the border of Tibet. Sitting at 10,000 feet in the foothills of the Himalayas, the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain course (pictured left) is breathtaking, both scenically and literally. In its rarefied air, a golf ball flies almost 20 percent longer than at sea level. Nonetheless, it was a kick to knock my 3-wood second shot onto the green of the opening hole, a par 5 of 606 yards. (The back tees measure 8,548 yards.)

Jade Dragon was designed in 2001 by Haworth, who has installed himself in Singapore and with his partner, Nelson, is producing some of China's best courses. Both nines return to the clubhouse at the top of the property, but Haworth routed his holes skillfully so that only one hole plays straight uphill.

Carts are absolutely mandatory here unless you?re an Ironman competitor or have Sherpa blood. But if the notion of hitting 300-yard drives from elevated tees toward a backdrop of massive snow-capped peaks appeals to you, Jade Dragon is your ticket.

All that fresh mountain air had left me ravenous, and my gracious host had arranged for a special dinner at a local family restaurant in Lijiang. The locale turned out to be a small apartment, which Westerners would characterize charitably as a tenement, where our party of eight entered a room as bleak as a prison cell and sat on wooden stools surrounding a steaming cauldron of broth into which our chef deposited numerous unidentifiable specimens of macerated flora and fauna. After it had all simmered a bit, we were invited to pluck out the various bits.

One item-a brownish-maroon colored meat that had been sliced thinly and seasoned exquisitely-appealed to me. I scarfed down several pieces before asking what it was.

"Ah, that is local delicacy," said my host. "Yak."