A Seaview Resort on Xunliao Bay’s White Sand
You notice the sound before the view. The room faces the water, the window is open, and what comes through it is a low, continuous wash of surf with no traffic and no voices in it — the particular quiet of a coast where the buildings are set back and the beach in front of them belongs to nobody in particular. Then you look. The sand is almost white, the shallows are a pale green over it, and further out the water goes a flat grey-blue to a horizon interrupted by two or three headlands and a scatter of fishing boats. 巽寮湾 Xùnliáo Wān, Xunliao Bay, is the most popular stretch of coast in 惠东县 Huìdōng Xiàn, and the resorts along its shore are built to do exactly one thing: put that view in front of you and then get out of the way.
The bay sits on the 稔平半岛 Rěnpíng Bàndǎo, the peninsula that forms the eastern shoulder of Huizhou’s coastline, and it is a genuinely long arc of sand rather than a cove. The water is unusually clear for this part of Guangdong — the local promotional language calls the place 蓝色翡翠 lánsè fěicuì, blue jade, and the beach 天赐白金堤 tiāncì báijīn dī, the gift of a white-gold dyke, which is grandiose but not inaccurate about the sand. The reason for the colour is the shape of the peninsula: it turns the bay away from the muddy outflow of the Pearl River and faces it south-east into cleaner water, so swimming here is a different experience from swimming off Guangzhou or Shenzhen. The other half of the bay’s character is stone. At the western end, 磨子石公园 Mòzǐshí Gōngyuán is a beach of large rounded granite boulders worn into shapes that visitors insist on naming, and it is the place to be at sunset, when the rock turns orange and the sea behind it goes silver.
Practicalities
Price. A sea-view room in one of the larger resort hotels runs roughly ¥450 to ¥1,100 a night in the warm months, and the range is driven almost entirely by whether the room is front-row on the water or set back behind the road. Off-season and midweek, the same rooms fall to around ¥300 to ¥500. Smaller guesthouses a street back from the sand go for ¥200 to ¥350, and the difference in what you get is mostly the view, not the bed.
Address. The resort belt runs along the coast road through the 巽寮 Xùnliáo resort area and west towards 磨子石 Mòzǐshí, all inside 惠东县 Huìdōng Xiàn on the 稔平半岛 Rěnpíng Bàndǎo. When booking, the map is more useful than the address: anything with the sand on one side and nothing on the other is what you want, and anything described as being in the 金海湾 Jīn Hǎiwān area is at the busy end.
Rooms. Expect a modern, brightly lit hotel room — tiled floors, a balcony with two chairs, air conditioning that works hard from May to September, and in the better properties a bath rather than only a shower. Sea-view is a category that hotels here sell honestly, but confirm that the balcony faces the water and not the car park. Family rooms and two-bedroom apartments are common, because this is a beach that Guangzhou and Shenzhen families drive to for weekends.
Getting there. By car, about 1.5 hours from 深圳 Shēnzhèn and around 2 hours from 广州 Guǎngzhōu, following the coastal expressway to the 惠东 Huìdōng exits and then the coast road south. There are also buses from 惠州 Huìzhōu city and from 惠东 Huìdōng town, and high-speed rail to 惠东站 Huìdōng Zhàn puts you within a taxi ride of the bay, which is the easiest option if you are coming from outside the province. Within the bay, a car or a scooter is genuinely useful; the resorts are spread over several kilometres of coast road.
flowcloud would say that Xunliao Bay is the rare Chinese beach resort where the water is worth the trip on its own, and that the correct plan is to arrive, swim, eat seafood and do nothing else at all.
Where to stay: on the water if you can, in a property with a beach gate rather than a beach view, and on the western side if you want the rocks and the sunset. Ask whether the hotel has its own stretch of sand or shares a public one, check that the balcony faces out to sea, and if you are there for the seafood, pick a place within walking distance of the 海鲜市场 hǎixiān shìchǎng, the wet market, so you can buy the catch and have a restaurant cook it.