The central beach at Beidaihe stretches for about three kilometres along the Bohai Sea, with pale sand and shallow, calm water that is safe for children. The bottom shelves gently, and you can wade a long way out before the water reaches your chest. By Chinese coastal standards, the beach is clean and reasonably well managed, though in July and August it fills with families from Beijing and beyond and the crowds can be intense.
The beach comes with the full resort infrastructure: sun loungers, umbrella hire, speedboat trips, horse rides across the tidal flats at low tide, and a long promenade backed by seafood restaurants and ice cream stalls. Outside of summer, particularly in October, the beach thins out dramatically and the whole atmosphere changes. The off-season visitor gets something closer to what the European and American diplomats were looking for when they developed the resort in the 1890s: pine-scented air, wide empty sands, and the particular melancholy of a seaside town at rest.