浪漫海岸 Làng màn hǎi àn is the styled end of the 电白 Diàn bái coast, a private seaside resort at 尖岗 in 博贺镇 Bó hè zhèn in 茂名市 Mào míng shì, and it is a different proposition from the open beach next door. It has five and a third kilometres of coastline inside a gate, five thousand-odd casuarina trees planted along it, buildings put up in a south-east Asian idiom with white walls and dark timber, and a style of service that assumes you have come to be photographed. The district calls it one of its ten cultural name cards, the province named it one of its ten most popular beaches in 2020, and the market has nicknamed it the 中国巴厘岛 Zhōng guó Bā lí dǎo, the Bali of China.
What is inside the gate is a set of small attractions rather than one. There is a 渔家部落 yú jiā bù luò, a fishing-family village, and a 海上墟 hǎi shàng xū, a floating market, both reconstructions of the coastal trading life that used to happen on this shore. There is a 疍家记忆馆 Dàn jiā jì yì guǎn, a small museum of the boat-dwelling 疍家 Dàn jiā people who worked these waters for centuries and whose descendants still live along the coast between here and 电城. There is a wedding chapel, a lovers’ rock, a beach for watersports, and a hot-spring pool complex called 望海温泉 Wàng hǎi wēn quán inside the resort hotel. The eating is the district’s own and this is the easiest place on the coast to find it in one sitting: 墨鱼饼 mò yú bǐng, the cuttlefish cakes from the harbour two kilometres away, grilled oysters, and the local 打边炉 dǎ biān lú hotpot.
The resort sits inside a stretch of coast that is otherwise working, which is worth knowing because it changes what you can do either side of the gate. 博贺 Bó hè is one of the ten largest fishing harbours in the country, a few minutes up the road, and the market on the quay there in the morning is a real one: boats in before dawn, boxes of cuttlefish and mackerel, ice, noise. 放鸡岛 Fàng jī dǎo, the dive island, is offshore from the same harbour. East along the coast the sand continues under its own name, and west lies the peninsula and 中国第一滩. So the resort is best treated as a base with a gate rather than as the whole coast: sleep and eat inside it, and use it as the point from which to see the harbour, the island and the beach.
The style will not suit everyone and it is honest to say so. This is a managed beach with an entrance charge, not a public shore; the architecture is themed, the attractions are small, and the whole place is designed around couples and families taking pictures. Against that, the sand is cleaned, the water is swimmable, the trees are mature enough to give real shade, and the facilities – changing rooms, showers, restaurants, a hotel with sea-view rooms – work. For anyone who wants a coast without a gate there is the open beach twenty minutes away and the peninsula beyond it, and the two together make a reasonable stay: the open shore by day and the managed one in the evening.
Practicalities
Tickets. Admission is charged: around ¥50 for an adult in ordinary periods and about ¥25 for a child, a student or an elderly visitor, with the hotel and the hot-spring pools priced separately. The ticket is for the day, and the resort runs its own parking and shuttle arrangements.
Opening hours. The resort is open through the day and into the evening, with the beach accessible for hotel guests outside the day-ticket hours; the hot-spring pools keep their own, generally longer, schedule. Two to three hours covers the beach and the small attractions, and the light in the last hour before sunset is why most people come.
Getting there. The resort is at 尖岗 in 博贺镇 Bó hè zhèn, in 电白区 in 茂名市, about forty-five minutes to an hour by road from 茂名站 Mào míng zhàn on the 深湛 railway and roughly two and a half hours from 广州 by train plus the drive; the coast road links it directly to 博贺 harbour and to the 中国第一滩 peninsula. There is no airport in the city.
Closing day. The resort is open every day of the week and has no closing day; what shuts it is weather, because the coast is in the typhoon belt and the gate and the beach close when a warning is up. Some of the smaller attractions and the watersports operators run only in the warmer half of the year, so a winter visit is a walk, a meal and a hot-spring bath rather than a swim.
flowcloud would say that the same five kilometres of sand can be sold two ways, and that this coast has decided to sell one of them behind a gate with a wedding chapel in it while leaving the other twenty kilometres open and free, which is either a sensible division of the market or the most honest thing about the place.
Getting there: 浪漫海岸 is at 尖岗 in 博贺镇, 电白区, 茂名市, on the coast road about forty-five minutes to an hour by road from 茂名站 Mào míng zhàn on the 深湛 railway; it is the next stretch of coast east of the 中国第一滩 peninsula and a few minutes from the harbour at 博贺 Bó hè, and it has its own car park and day-ticket gate.