Yalong Bay

Yalong Bay is east of Sanya, on the southern coast of Hainan, China's tropical island province in the South China Sea. It is a seven-kilometre crescent of white sand backed by a continuous line of large hotels.

The scale of what happened here is the point. Hainan was a poor agricultural province and a place of political exile for most of its history; it became a special economic zone in 1988, and Yalong Bay was designated as a state-level resort district in 1992. What was fishing village and scrub is now a resort strip comparable in density to anything in the Caribbean, and it was built essentially within two decades. China has since designated the whole island a free trade port with the stated aim of making it an international tourism destination.

The bay itself is genuinely good: white sand, shallow reef-protected water on a sheltered south-facing crescent, and a gradual entry. It is warm year-round — this is the same latitude as Hawaii — and the winter season, when the rest of China is cold, is the busy one. The bay is one of four resort districts along Sanya's coast, and Dadonghai and Sanya Bay closer to the city are the ones locals use.

Development is a wall of hotels with public access points between them; Chinese law makes beaches public and the sand is walkable, though the frontage is allocated. Domestic visitors dominate overwhelmingly, and the beach culture — full sun protection, facekinis, swimming at dawn and dusk — is different from the western default in ways worth noticing. Wuzhizhou Island offshore has the snorkelling, and the Hainan interior holds Li and Miao communities and rainforest that most visitors never reach.

Seven kilometres of white sand built into a resort district between 1992 and now, on an island that was a place of political exile. The season is the northern winter, when the rest of China is cold. The beach is public and walkable, the crowd is domestic, and the sun avoidance — long sleeves, facekinis, swimming at either end of the day — is the local norm rather than a curiosity.