Silver Beach, about ten kilometres south of the city centre, is the finest beach in Guangxi and one of the better ones on the Chinese mainland. The sand is pale and fine — quartz rather than the yellowish silicate found on most Chinese beaches — and the water is calm, warm for most of the year, and clear enough to see the bottom in waist-deep water. On clear summer nights, bioluminescence in the waves makes swimming after dark an unforgettable experience.
The beach has been developed but not ruined: there is infrastructure (umbrellas, changing rooms, seafood restaurants), but the scale is manageable rather than overwhelming. The western end, away from the main development, is considerably quieter. Come early in the morning before the midday heat drives everyone to the water, or arrive in the late afternoon and stay for sunset. The beach road from the city is a straightforward bus journey.