City guide · Guangdong
The delta's slow city: a 28 km promenade, 146 islands, oysters fattened where the river meets the sea.
Reviewed by our Beijing team Updated 2026-10-10
The short version
City guide
Photographs from the coast, and what other travellers wrote afterwards.
Two trips to Zhuhai, one in March and one in April, and each was different and each stayed with me. I have fallen for this garden of a seaside city — the holidays, the shopping, the eating and drinking, the slowness of it.
A traveller's note, 'Zhuhai You Have Not Seen'
Nobody who lives in Zhuhai fails to love it. Friends of mine left for other cities and came back years later, after travelling the country, because they could not shake it. It is a genuinely slow city, and you have to feel it rather than rush it.
A traveller's note, 'Falling for a Slow City'
Zhuhai sits on the south-western corner of the Pearl River estuary, Hong Kong across the water to the east and Macau stitched to its southern edge. It was one of China's first special economic zones, and it has spent four decades carefully not turning into Shenzhen: low buildings, wide sky, palms, and 604 km of coastline with 146 islands scattered over it. Locals sum up the life here in nine words — live by the sea, play on the sea, eat from the sea.
The spine of the city is Lovers' Road, 28 km of shore paved in square blocks of conglomerate, running from the Zhongshan border in the north to the Zhuhai Avenue and Modaomen junction in the south-west. Locals will tell you the road has no end, because it is as long as the coastline and as long as the walk a couple takes through a life together. Half an hour on it at dusk explains the civic pride.
The landmarks are small and specific rather than monumental. The Fisher Girl is an 8.7 m statue raised on the rocks at Xianglu Bay in 1982, China's first large seaside sculpture, holding a pearl above her head. Behind her, Shijingshan park has a cable car to the top and a 650 m gravity slide back down. Further west, Yuanming New Park rebuilds 18 of the 40 scenes of Beijing's Old Summer Palace at full scale, free with an ID card.
Then there are the islands. Dong'ao has a fort, a beacon tower and beaches; Wailingding is where you fish, swim and eat; and Miaowan, nearly three hours out, has coral sand, red coral below the water and a reputation as the diving island. Food is the rest of the argument: where the Pearl's fresh water meets the South China Sea's salt, shellfish fatten, and Zhuhai cooks them simply.
Zhuhai
Seven things that are worth rearranging a day for.
Highlights
Lovers' Road is paved in square blocks of conglomerate the whole way along the coast, and the city treats it as its front room. Walk a stretch at dusk, start at the Fisher Girl, and you will pass runners, cyclists, wedding photographers and people doing nothing at all with real commitment.
Zhuhai administers 146 islands, which is why it calls itself the city of a hundred islands. Dong'ao and Wailingding are the easy overnights; Miaowan, three hours out, has white coral sand, red coral underwater and a serious claim to being the finest water in the province.
Where the Pearl River's fresh water meets the sea, oysters grow fat. Hengqin's are famous by a five-point standard — big, fat, white, tender, crisp — and the island is lined with oyster farms and kitchens that will cook you a tray for very little money.
The border is at the bottom of the city. Cross at Gongbei and you are in Macau for egg tarts and Portuguese ruins; or stay on the Zhuhai side and take the Macau island cruise from Jiuzhou Port, five sailings a day, an hour to circle the whole peninsula.
Zhuhai markets itself on islands, hot springs and golf. Haiquanwan is the big marine-spring resort with its own theme park and theatre; the international circuit offers public karting; and every even-numbered November the city hosts one of the world's five major airshows.
Shijingshan park behind the Fisher Girl is the best viewpoint over Zhuhai and Macau, and it has two ways off the hill: a cable car, or the world's first tube-rail gravity slide — 650 m long, average gradient 10.2 degrees, speed controlled by your own hand.
Suggested routes
The short version: the emblems on day one, water and oysters on day two.
Start at the Fisher Girl on the rocks at Xianglu Bay, then walk a stretch of Lovers' Road and let the coast set the pace.
Take the cable car up Shijingshan for the view over Zhuhai and Macau, and come back down on the 650 m slide if your nerves allow it. In the afternoon, the Macau island cruise from Gongbei dock — about an hour, five sailings a day.
Eat seafood near the dock in the evening and buy your souvenirs there; the night market side of the crossing is where the salted fish and dried seafood stalls are.
Stops: Fisher GirlShijingshan ParkMacau island cruise
A slow day at Haiquanwan in the south-west of the city: the marine hot spring, the Mystery Island rides, the water-screen film, or a round of golf if that is your thing. It runs from 9:00 to 2:00 the next morning, so there is no rush.
Toward evening, cross to Hengqin and eat oysters where they are farmed. The oyster park sits at the south-east end of the island, and the whole island is one long seafood kitchen.
Stops: HaiquanwanHengqin oyster park
A day for the coast, a day for the parks, a day for water and oysters.
Morning on the coast: the Fisher Girl, a walk along Lovers' Road, and the Seaside Park between the road and Xianglu Bay, where the trees come down to the water.
Afternoon on Yeli Island, the island nearest the city, joined to the shore by the Haiyan Bridge. Walk the loop, then climb Shijingshan late in the day for the panorama. Evening: the duty-free malls and shopping streets nearby.
Stops: Lovers' RoadSeaside ParkYeli IslandShijingshan
Morning at Nongke Qiguan, the agricultural park at the foot of Meixi, where hydroponics grows melons, roses and orchids out of troughs and gravel. Then the Dream Water City next door, an Egyptian-themed water park, if it is hot.
Afternoon at Yuanming New Park — 18 of the 40 scenes of the Old Summer Palace rebuilt at 1:1, free with ID — and stay for the evening show. Gongbei food street is right beside it for dinner, or the bar strip if you still have energy.
Stops: Nongke QiguanDream Water CityYuanming New Park
Either the full Haiquanwan day — water-screen film, Mystery Island, golf, hot spring — or a run out west to Feisha Beach on Gaolan Island, one of Zhuhai's ten scenic spots, where the sand is fine and the hills hold the mist after rain.
Finish with seafood: Wanzai on the way back into town, or Hengqin if you have not had your fill of oysters yet.
Stops: HaiquanwanFeisha BeachWanzai seafood street
For when the city is not the point. Pick Dong'ao for comfort, Miaowan for coral.
Boat out in the morning — Dong'ao is about 45 minutes from Hengqin or 50 from Xiangzhou; Miaowan is a longer haul, usually via Wailingding or by yacht from the marina at Yeli Island.
Arrive, eat something straight out of the water, and spend the afternoon on the sand or on the hill: Dong'ao has its fort, beacon tower and cliff carvings; Miaowan has coral, and a crew to take you diving.
Sleep on the island. Dong'ao has a handful of hotels with limited capacity, so book ahead, or camp on the beach and fall asleep to the water.
Stops: Dong'ao IslandMiaowan Island
Up before the light for sunrise, then beach volleyball, a swim, or a line off the rocks — the fishing here is genuinely good and the gear is cheap to hire.
Lunch on the island and the boat back to the city in the afternoon. On Miaowan there are only two restaurants and two guesthouses, prices are high, and fresh water is precious: bring your own food, and never drink the island spring water, which carries heavy metals.
Stops: Dong'aoWailingdingBack to Xiangzhou
Sights
City emblem
Zhuhai's symbol, raised on the rocks at Xianglu Bay in the autumn of 1982 and standing 8.7 m tall — China's first large seaside sculpture. She wears a pearl necklace, carries a net, and holds a pearl above her head with both hands: the city's offer of light to the world and treasure to humankind. Free, and the natural start of any walk along Lovers' Road.
Tip Come at low tide if you want to walk out toward her, and at dusk if you want her lit against a pink sky. Ten minutes is enough unless you are photographing.
The promenade
Called Zhuhai's Great Wall by locals: 28 km of coast paved end to end in square blocks of conglomerate, running north to the Zhongshan boundary and south-west to where Zhuhai Avenue meets Modaomen. It is the city's living room — walkers, cyclists, buskers, fishermen and, on most evenings, at least one wedding shoot.
Tip You do not walk all 28 km. Do the stretch between the Fisher Girl and the Seaside Park slowly, then pick a second stretch near Yeli Island. Sunset and the hour after are worth planning around.
Viewpoint and slide
A hillside park between the road and the sea, famous for its odd rock formations and for being the best lookout over Zhuhai, Macau and, on a clear day, Hong Kong. The cable car takes you up; the world's first tube-rail gravity slide — 650 m, average gradient 10.2 degrees, hovering less than a metre off the ground — brings you down at whatever speed you dare.
Tip Buy the slide ticket with the cable car; doing one without the other misses the point. Weekend queues are worse than weekday ones, so come on a weekday morning if you can.
Rebuilt imperial garden
One of China's first 4A scenic areas and billed as the only imperial garden in south China: 18 of the 40 scenes of Beijing's Old Summer Palace rebuilt at 1:1 against a wooded hill on the west side of the city. Pavilions, terraces and towers in the Qing manner, plus large-scale dance performances in the evening.
Tip Bring your passport or ID card or you will not get in. Arrive before the evening cut-off if you want it free, and eat afterwards on Gongbei food street, which is right next door.
Island and shore
Yeli Island, off Xiangzhou in the east, is the island closest to the city, joined to the mainland by the Haiyan Bridge and circled by Lovers' Road on three sides. The Seaside Park sits between the road and Xianglu Bay, north of Shijingshan, shady and quiet, with the Fisher Girl on its rocks. Both are free and both are what residents actually do on a Sunday.
Tip Walk the Yeli Island loop at sunset — the city skyline across the water is the best free view in Zhuhai, and the bridge brings you back into the restaurant district.
Historic architecture
A cluster of stone archways at Meixi village in Qianshan, raised by imperial decree of the Guangxu emperor to honour Chen Fang, the Qing consul in Hawaii, and his family. Western decorative detail grafted onto a Chinese structural frame, and rare in south China for that reason. The archways sit among old lanes, a pavilion, a temple, Chen's former residence and a Western-style garden cemetery.
Tip Half a morning is plenty, and it pairs naturally with Nongke Qiguan, which is on the same road. The photography is best in the morning, when the light comes across the stone.
Island
The classic of Zhuhai's island trips, out in the Wanshan group: blue water, woodsmoke from the village, a Ming-era fort and beacon tower, cliff carvings, beaches below, and the Fudan Mountain path up to the Honeymoon Pavilion lookout. Sandy beaches for swimming, sunbathing, beach volleyball and diving.
Tip There are hotels on the island but capacity is tiny — book before you board, or bring a tent and sleep on the sand. Visit the fort and the beacon tower in the morning while it is cool.
Island
Southeast of Xiangzhou, alone in the estuary and outside Inner Lingding, hence the name. This is where Wen Tianxiang is said to have written his most famous lines. The island is rocky, green and quiet: the Stone Garden, the Dadong Bay beach, the Beidi bell at dawn, and the Lingfeng viewpoint over the scattered archipelago. Fishing, swimming and boarding are what people come for.
Tip Two boats a day in each direction and no others — miss the 14:30 and you are not going. Take the early one, and eat on the island: the seafood here is the reason locals make the trip.
Diving and coral
The most striking of Zhuhai's hundred-odd islands, in the middle of the Jiapeng group southeast of the city. Wind-carved rocks, reefs scattered offshore, coral-white sand, water so clear it looks doctored, and rare red coral below the surface. South-east Asia's anglers know it; Chinese travellers call it the Maldives of China.
Tip Two restaurants, two guesthouses, high prices and almost no fresh water — carry your own food and drink, buy fish off the boats, and treat every drop of water as precious. Do not drink the island spring water: it carries heavy metals.
Hot spring resort
A huge marine-hot-spring resort on the south-west coast, built around a spring whose well jets 11 m on its own pressure. Two five-star hotels, the Mystery Island theme park, a fisherman's wharf of restaurants and shows, a high-tech theatre, a sports club, a Caribbean-style waterfront, golf, and a national-level self-drive campground. The scale is absurd and the queues are not.
Tip This is a full day and a separate budget line. Come on a weekday and you will have the rides and the pools almost to yourself, which is the whole appeal compared with the big-city parks.
Beach
On the south-east corner of Gaolan Island in western Zhuhai, rated one of the city's ten scenic spots. Green hills on both sides, odd rocks, a broad flat hinterland and thick vegetation; after summer rain the mist hangs on the hillsides like gauze. Green water, fine sand, and mostly locals on public holidays rather than tour groups.
Tip Bring cash for the motorbike leg and swim shoes. It is a local beach, not a resort, which is exactly why it is worth the awkward last half hour.
Food
The tides around Hengqin run clean, the salinity and temperature sit right, and the water is fertile and unpolluted, so the oysters grow enormous. The local standard is fivefold: big, fat, white, tender, crisp. Eat them grilled, in abalone sauce, or baked with cheese — and eat more than you think is sensible.
A crab that moults with the old shell still attached, living in the brackish water around Doumen. It is genuinely rare — about ten jin can be picked out of every thousand — glossy, sweet, tender and rich in protein. It has a reputation across Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and Zhuhai for good reason.
Grown wild and untreated in Baiteng Lake, and famous for being the lotus root that breaks without the strings: fat, starchy, and it falls apart in the mouth. Braised with pork belly or with frog, it turns up at banquets across Hong Kong and Macau as a matter of course.
One of the eight treasures of the sea, farmed in the Wanshan fishing grounds for decades. Steamed or fried, folded into dumplings or used as the centrepiece of a dish, they are the prawn the city's banquet kitchens reach for first.
The rest of the table is Guangdong: roast goose, char siu and crisped pork belly from a shop counter, and sweet things afterward — steamed buns, egg custards, mango and sago. A decade-old roast-meat shop in Xiangzhou still sells a plate for under ten yuan.
Zhuhai voted for its ten signature dishes in 2006, and the list is a good order to eat through: oysters in abalone sauce, the city's number-one oyster, prawn and dragon arrangements, the resort's fisherman's evening, secret-recipe double-shell crab, eel dishes, goose liver with double-shell crab in rice wine, white pigeon fish baked in black bean sauce.
Where to eat
Cantonese and seafood
A restaurant built as a royal pleasure boat, moored off Yeli Island in the Mingting Park beside Lovers' Road — the structure is the reason people photograph it, and the Cantonese seafood is the reason they come back. Big tables, big windows, big bills by Zhuhai standards.
Oysters
At the south-eastern end of Hengqin, the biggest of Zhuhai's 146 islands, where every household in the village farms oysters. You eat in the middle of the industry: oysters straight out of the beds, cooked a dozen ways, at prices that reflect the short distance travelled.
Seafood street
Zhuhai's most famous seafood street, on Nanwan Avenue facing Macau across the water. More than a hundred stalls selling live seafood line a single lane in two facing rows; you walk down the middle, choose from both sides, and hand your choices to a kitchen to cook. Fresh, cheap by restaurant standards, and enormous fun.
Seafood restaurant
A long-running seafood house out in Tangjiawan, pricier than the street stalls and worth it for the kitchen's confidence. The signature is oysters baked under cheese — strong cheese, fat oyster, and the dish the place is known for. Dim sum and stir-fries are careful too.
Seafood street
On the shore of Baiteng Lake in Doumen, the district that supplies much of what Zhuhai eats — double-shell crab, river prawns, rice-field eels, lychees. Locals describe it as Zhuhai's seafood buffet street: pick, weigh, cook, repeat, with the lake out front.
Roast meats
A tiny, cramped, fifteen-year-old shop on a wholesale lane in Xiangzhou, with Cantonese roast meats that hold their own against far grander kitchens. A plate of roast pork over rice costs about what a fast-food meal would, and the queue at noon tells you everything.
Where to stay
Mid-range
On Haibin North Road beside Xianglu Bay, at the foot of Shijingshan: the Fisher Girl, Mingting Park, Yeli Island, the duty-free mall and the Jida shopping streets are all within a short walk. Hills behind, sea in front, and the best location-per-yuan of any hotel on this list.
Sea-view
On the shore at Xianglu Bay right beside Lovers' Road, backed by green hills and facing open water. A three-star business hotel, and the only one in Zhuhai whose rooms are floor-to-ceiling glass onto the sea — sunrise from the bed, and the sound of the water at night.
Five-star resort
A hill-and-sea resort in Jida, known locally as the garden inside the garden city, and the only leisure resort among China's five-star hotels when it was rated. Three consecutive years as one of the country's best star hotels, with awards for its presidential suite and its restaurants.
Business, near the border
Next to Zhuhai's busiest shopping street and a few steps from Lovers' Road, looking across the barrier to Macau. More than half the rooms have sea views, and the revolving restaurant on the top floor is the only one in the city — the whole Zhuhai-Macau panorama turns past your table.
Hostel
One of China's first three student hostels, set inside the grounds of the five-star Holiday Resort with the hill behind and the sea in front. Dorm beds and cheap set meals, in a garden that costs a fraction of what the hotel next door charges. Book ahead in summer.
Resort
The two five-star hotels inside the Haiquanwan resort, if the point of the trip is the hot spring and the theme park rather than the city. You walk out of your room into the pools, the wharf restaurants and the theatre, and you never queue for anything.
Getting around
Zhuhai has no conventional railway, but the Guangzhou–Zhuhai intercity line covers 177.3 km and opened end to end on 31 December 2012; the fastest Guangzhou South to Zhuhai run takes 72 minutes. Zhuhai station sits immediately west of the Gongbei crossing, which is why the train is the obvious arrival from Guangzhou.
Zhuhai Jinwan International Airport sits on the west bank of the estuary in Jinwan district, about 35 km from both the city and Macau. It handles domestic routes to Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Chengdu, Chongqing, Xi'an, Sanya and more, with express coaches straight into Zhuhai, Macau, Zhongshan and Jiangmen.
Jiuzhou Port is the maritime hub for this corner of the estuary, with sailings to Hong Kong, Shenzhen's Shekou, the Macau island cruise and an evening harbour cruise, plus the eastern island routes. It is also the fastest way to reach Hong Kong without a border queue.
Three long-distance stations handle the road traffic. The main state-run station in Xiangzhou runs services to Guangxi, Hunan, Jiangxi and across Guangdong with the densest timetable; Qiguan serves Guangzhou, Zhongshan, Dongguan and Shantou; Gongbei serves Guangzhou, Foshan, Hainan, Hunan and Henan.
Buses reach everywhere and cost very little: ¥2 on air-conditioned services, ¥1.5 on ordinary ones, with most routes self-service and no change given. The shelters are the famous harbour-style garden structures. The sightseeing bus runs two loops — the east line every 30 minutes, the west every 20 — for ¥2, from 7:00 to 21:00.
More than a thousand taxis work the city, hailed anywhere and metered by law. The flagfall is ¥10 and the rate ¥2.4 per kilometre; after midnight the flagfall rises to ¥13, with a 30 per cent night surcharge between midnight and six, and a further 30 per cent empty-run charge after 20 km. Tolls are the passenger's.
Shopping
Zhuhai's oysters are large and meaty, and the sauce made from them at Dieshi sells across Hong Kong, Macau and South-east Asia. It is the single most sensible thing to bring back from this city: it keeps, it travels, and a spoonful changes a plate of vegetables.
Grown in the orchards on the western slope of Huangyang Mountain and around Lianxi, these are unusually large, thick-fleshed, jade-green and almost translucent — crisp, and sweet as honey. They travel badly, so buy them to eat over the next two days rather than to post home.
Named for the hill it grows on. The peel carries an aromatic oil and is used both as food and as a flavouring, credited with clearing phlegm and opening the appetite; trained as a pot plant it is also a traditional Zhuhai new-year purchase.
Wanzai was a fishing village, and when the city grew around it the fishermen turned to curing and selling salted fish — now a brand with a market of its own beside the seafood street. Strong, salty and very Cantonese; wrap it well.
For ordinary shopping, Gongbei is the old, dense, busiest district — the rectangle between Yingbin Road, Yuehai East Road, Qinglü South Road and the crossing. On the coast, a newer seaside district has grown around Ridong Plaza and the bathing beach: discount outlets, hotels, a congress centre and a strip of Western restaurants and bars.
Practical
Two cautions that catch people out. First, the island logistics are thin: Wailingding gets two boats a day, Dong'ao has a handful of hotel rooms, Miaowan has two restaurants and two guesthouses, and all of them stop running when a typhoon crosses. Second, if you have children in tow, the Chimelong ocean park on Hengqin is a full day of its own and worth planning around rather than squeezing in.
| Best months | March–April and October–December; the rainy season is May–October |
|---|---|
| Typhoons | June to October, about four a year, one severe enough to matter — island ferries go first |
| Air | About 225 days a year at grade I and 140 at grade II — among the cleanest in the delta |
| Intercity rail | Guangzhou South to Zhuhai, fastest 72 minutes, 25 trains a day from 7:00 to 22:40 |
| City buses | ¥2 air-conditioned, ¥1.5 ordinary; sightseeing bus ¥2, 7:00–21:00 |
| Taxis | ¥10 flagfall then ¥2.4 per km; ¥13 after midnight; complaints 0756-2261133 |
| Island ferries | Wailingding ¥85 from Xiangzhou Beidi, two boats a day; Dong'ao ¥10 entry, 45 min from Hengqin |
| Hospitals | People's Hospital 0756-2222571; Chinese Medicine Hospital 0756-3351343; Gongbei Hospital 0756-8885463 |
| Tourism | Tourism bureau 0756-3366901; complaints 0756-3336061 |
Tips
Ten to twenty minutes per soak is the rule. At 34–36°C you can stay in a little longer; at 39–42°C you should not. Do not go in drunk, not in the half hour before a meal or the hour after one, and drink water the whole time — the heat pulls fluid out of you faster than you notice.
Do not eat shellfish undercooked; do not eat dead shellfish; no vitamin C with seafood; no fruit with seafood; no beer with seafood; and no strong tea immediately afterward. The last four are folk wisdom rather than chemistry, but the first two are not negotiable.
Dong'ao's hotels have very little capacity — book before you board, or camp on the sand. Miaowan has two restaurants and two guesthouses at high prices, so carry food; fresh water is scarce, and the island spring water contains heavy metals and must not be drunk.
Roughly four typhoons a year pass this coast between June and October, and about one is serious. Ferries are the first thing cancelled and the last to resume. If you are island-bound in summer, keep a buffer day on either side of your booking.
The China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition lands every even-numbered November — one of the world's five major airshows. The half marathon runs in December along Lovers' Road, the beach music party in early October, dragon boat races on an 800 m course at Duanwu, and the folk art parade on the fifteenth of the first lunar month.
This is one of the easiest cities in China for older visitors: flat, walkable, clean and green. Hot springs, farmhouse restaurants out in the counties and autumn hill walking are what the city does best, and none of them asks much of your knees.
Background
There are several stories about the name Zhuhai, and the one that holds up best is the plainest: the city sits at the south-west of the Pearl River mouth, where the Pearl empties into the South China Sea, and it took its name from that water. The Tang family genealogy records a man named Tang Zhuhai in the Ming Yongle period, and a school song from the early republic, at Tangjia's Sanfeng Primary School, has the line 'Zhuhai in front, Goose Peak behind' — so the name was already in use for this stretch of coast long before the county was organised.
There is also a prettier version. In the Tang dynasty, the story goes, an Arab merchant ship carrying a cargo of jewels capsized here in a storm, and for a long time afterwards people could still dredge jewellery out of the water, so they called the place Zhuhai — the pearl sea. The city uses both, depending on the audience.
Zhuhai is on the south-western side of the Pearl River estuary, facing Hong Kong across the water to the east and joined to Macau on its southern edge. The mainland part is mostly plain and low hills, with mudflats and a few low mountains, and the coastline runs 604 km with 146 islands of every size — hence the city of a hundred islands.
The climate is subtropical marine: mild winters, no great summer heat, frequent thunder from the south and, above all, clean air — roughly 225 days a year at the top grade and 140 more at good. The danger is weather rather than temperature. Typhoons come between June and October, about four a year, with one severe enough to close things down; heavy rainstorms happen around five times a year, and occasional winter cold snaps reach this far south.
Travel with them
Directed by and starring Stephen Chow, 2001
The kung-fu football comedy that swept the Hong Kong Film Awards, shot partly in Zhuhai. The little store on Guangming Street in Xiangzhou still hangs the Sweet-in-the-Heart Steamed Bun sign from the film — the shop where Chow's character first meets the baker played by Zhao Wei.
Lifestyle Guide magazine
Built around four colours and four journeys: green Eden for the ecology, orange energy for the adrenaline, blue coast for the romance, and red temptation for the table. Reading it is a decent way to understand why Zhuhai keeps polling as one of China's happiest cities.
Chen Yueping
A geographer looks at the city's landscapes and reads the science hidden inside them — rock, coast, estuary, vegetation. It will change what you see on an ordinary walk along the shore.
Teresa Carpio
The theme song of a television drama about two rival warlords on the Pearl River delta, with a six-way love story tangled through it and Leslie Cheung among the cast. Recorded later on a Warner compilation.
Qiao Xianhua
A song about sea wind, palms on the shore and couples walking the sand, and about the affection everyone who has lived here seems to carry away with them. Play it on Lovers' Road at dusk and resist it if you can.
The questions visitors ask us most about Zhuhai, answered plainly.
Prices and practical details are reviewed every month by our Beijing team and updated the day a rule changes.
Yes, if you want the calm half of the Pearl River Delta. Zhuhai gives you a 28 km coastal promenade, 146 islands, some of the best shellfish in Guangdong, and a border you can walk across into Macau. It will not dazzle you the way Hong Kong or Shenzhen does, and that is the point — it is the city in this corner of China built for doing nothing in particular, well.
March to April and October to December. Zhuhai has a subtropical marine climate — mild winters, no real extremes — so it is visitable all year, but May to October is the rainy season, and June to October brings roughly four typhoons a year with one severe enough to matter. The comfortable, clear months are the ones to aim for.
Walk across at Gongbei, the customs gate right beside Zhuhai station at the city's southern edge, or use Hengqin if you are heading for the Cotai strip. You need a passport and the correct entry permit for your nationality — mainland Chinese travellers need a two-way permit. If you would rather stay on the water, the Macau island cruise leaves from Jiuzhou Port, with five sailings a day, and takes about an hour to circle.
Two answers. For oysters, go to Hengqin, where the tidal flow and brackish water produce shellfish graded on five counts — big, fat, white, tender, crisp. For variety, go to the Wanzai seafood street: more than a hundred stalls line a single lane, you buy off the ice and hand it to a kitchen next door to cook. Expect ¥50 to ¥100 a head at Wanzai and around ¥135 at the grander restaurant boats.
Take the intercity rail from Guangzhou South — 25 departures a day, first train at 7:00 and last at 22:40, and the fastest runs take about 72 minutes. Zhuhai station sits immediately west of the Gongbei crossing, so you arrive at the Macau border. There is also a Zhuhai North station in the high-tech zone, served by buses K1, 3A and 65.
No. Zhuhai has been a migration city since it became a special economic zone, and its service industry runs on Mandarin. You will hear Cantonese in the markets and in older neighbourhoods, but a Mandarin speaker has no practical problem anywhere here. English works in hotels and the bigger restaurants and not much beyond that.
Dong'ao for a first trip — beaches, a walkable hill with a Ming fort and a beacon tower, and 45 minutes by high-speed ferry from Hengqin. Wailingding for seafood, fishing and quiet coves, about 1.5 hours and ¥85 from Xiangzhou. Miaowan for diving and coral, nearly three hours out, with only two restaurants and two guesthouses on the whole island.
Yes, unusually so. It is flat, walkable, green and clean, with 225 days a year at the top air-quality grade. The things older visitors enjoy here — hot springs, farmhouse restaurants out in the counties, and autumn hill walking in the cooler months — are exactly what the city does well, and none of it requires a demanding day.
Plan this trip
The same places, with a driver, an English-speaking guide and the tickets already bought.
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Shuhe
City guide · 12 tours
The quiet version of Lijiang — a Tea Horse Road village of canals, stone bridges and slow afternoons, 4 km from the crowds.
Lijiang
City guide · 12 tours
A UNESCO Naxi old town of canals and cobbles beneath a 5,596 m snow mountain — the cultural heart of north-west Yunnan.
Xiamen
City guide · 12 tours
A subtropical island city of temples, fishing-village lanes and the best street food in Fujian — with the car-free islet of Gulangyu a 20-minute ferry away.
Gulangyu
City guide · 12 tours
A car-free island of colonial villas, pianos and cats, twenty minutes off Xiamen — and the one place where the trick is simply to stay the night.
Fuzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A 2,200-year-old capital of banyan trees and mountains-within-the-city, where the Ming lanes of Sanfang Qixiang meet the dockyard that built China's modern navy.
Lugu Lake
City guide · 12 tours
A 2,680 m lake on the Yunnan–Sichuan border, home to China's last matrilineal people, pig-trough canoes and a great deal of doing nothing.
Xishuangbanna
City guide · 12 tours
China's tropical south — rainforest, wild elephants, Dai villages and the Mekong, wrapped around the gateway city of Jinghong.
Shangri-La
City guide · 12 tours
A Tibetan town at 3,300 m in Yunnan's Diqing prefecture — monasteries, grassland, prayer wheels and cold thin air.
Nanchang
City guide · 12 tours
Jiangxi's 'hero city' on the Gan River — one great Tang pavilion, a 160-metre Ferris wheel, and the best claypot soup you will eat in China.
Hefei
City guide · 12 tours
Anhui's 2,000-year-old capital: the hometown of China's model judge, a moat-turned-garden ring, and the fast rail gateway to Huangshan.
Hongcun
City guide · 12 tours
A 900-year-old Hui village laid out as an ox, with water running to every door and a mirror-still crescent pond at its heart.
Wuhan
City guide · 12 tours
Three towns, two rivers and the best breakfast in China — a huge, blunt river city of bridges, lakes and cheap, brilliant street food.
Changsha
City guide · 12 tours
Hunan's loud, young capital: a 3,000-year-old city that eats chilli-hot food, stays up all night and treats foot massage as a civic duty.
Fenghuang Ancient Town
City guide · 12 tours
The stilt-house river town of Shen Congwen's 'Border Town' — glowing lanterns, stepping stones and the best two nights in western Hunan.
Lushan
City guide · 12 tours
A cloud-wrapped granite mountain with a Victorian hill station on top, waterfalls in three tiers, and the mist that Su Shi said you could never see through.
Wuyuan
City guide · 12 tours
China's 'most beautiful countryside' — dozens of white-walled Huizhou villages strung along streams and terraced into the hills, and two weeks a year of gold.
Mount Heng (Hengshan, Hunan)
City guide · 12 tours
The South Great Peak: a pilgrimage mountain of 72 summits where the temples run all the way to the top, and the sunrise over the cloud sea is the whole point.
Huangshan
City guide · 12 tours
Yellow Mountain: 82 granite peaks of twisted pines and grotesque rock, a sea of cloud that changes by the hour, and hot springs at the foot.
Wudang Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
The Taoist first mountain of China — a gilded bronze hall on a 1,612 m summit, temples hung off cliff faces, and the birthplace of tai chi.
Luoyang
City guide · 12 tours
Thirteen dynasties, 100,000 Buddhas carved into a river cliff, China's first Buddhist temple — and a whole city that turns peony-pink every April.
Yuntai Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
A UNESCO geopark in Henan where red-stone gorges squeeze a river to a slot, a 314 m waterfall drops in one plunge, and every path leads to another pool.
Rizhao
City guide · 12 tours
A low-key Shandong beach town where the sun rises straight out of the Yellow Sea, the sand runs 60 km and a seafood dinner costs less than a coffee in Shanghai.
Yantai
City guide · 12 tours
A northern Shandong port of fairy-tale cliffs, wine cellars and long golden beaches — where emperors once hunted the elixir of life and China's wine industry still begins.
Lianyungang
City guide · 12 tours
A working Jiangsu port with a myth in the middle of it — the Flower-Fruit Mountain of Journey to the West, a sea causeway to a big island beach, and some of the cheapest seafood on the coast.
Sanqing Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
A vertical forest of granite pillars in Jiangxi — the Python Out of the Mountain, the Goddess of the East Sea, two cable cars and a cliff-hugging walkway at 1,660 metres.
Tianjin
City guide · 12 tours
Beijing's port city next door — a river of 24 bridges, 2,000 colonial villas, and the best street breakfast in northern China.
Datong
City guide · 12 tours
A frontier capital of carved Buddhas — the Yungang Grottoes, a temple pinned to a cliff, and the oldest wooden tower in China.
Taiyuan
City guide · 12 tours
Shanxi's provincial capital and noodle heartland — the spring of Jinci, two Ming pagodas, and a museum that explains the whole province.
Pingyao
City guide · 12 tours
China's best-preserved ancient walled town — a Ming wall, the first Chinese bank, and two temples of painted clay just outside the gates.
Wutai Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
China's foremost Buddhist mountain — fifty-plus temples in one valley, crowned by five flat-topped peaks up to 3,058 m.
Hulunbuir
City guide · 12 tours
China's finest grassland — a 263,000 km² sweep of steppe, birch forest and border river, best driven with the windows down.
The Forbidden City
City guide · 12 tours
Beijing's 600-year imperial palace — 8,700 rooms behind a 72-hectare wall, and the largest surviving wooden palace complex on earth.
Sanya
City guide · 12 tours
China's only true winter-sun coast — four very different bays, a coral island and a 108 m sea Buddha, all at 18° north.
Haikou
City guide · 12 tours
Hainan's capital is the island's living city — 600-year-old arcade streets, a volcanic village, and a morning-tea-to-midnight food culture.
Beihai
City guide · 12 tours
24 km of fine white sand on one side, a volcanic island of coral and lava on the other — plus a 19th-century arcade old street in between.
Nanning
City guide · 12 tours
Guangxi's green capital is a gateway to Detian Falls, Beihai and Vietnam — and a genuinely excellent food city if you let it slow you down.
Guangxi
City guide · 12 tours
One autonomous region, a dozen landscapes — limestone peaks and rice terraces in the north, a Vietnam border and a warm gulf coast in the south.
Huizhou
City guide · 12 tours
A free West Lake, a Taoist mountain and 200 km of white-sand coast — the Pearl River Delta's most underrated weekend.
Beidaihe
City guide · 12 tours
Northern China's classic beach escape — one sunrise headland, 10 km of calm swimming water, and a bird flyway overhead twice a year.
Shanhaiguan
City guide · 12 tours
The town where the Great Wall stops being a rumour of mountains and walks into the Bohai Sea.
Baiyangdian
City guide · 12 tours
The biggest freshwater lake on the North China Plain — and almost none of it can be reached except by boat.
Qinhuangdao
City guide · 12 tours
126 km of Bohai coast in one municipality — a working port, two famous resorts, and the only desert dunes that meet this sea.
Yesanpo
City guide · 12 tours
Gorge country where the Taihang and Yan ranges collide — 52.5 km of canyon walls, a cave that spits fish, and a river to fall off.
Wuyi Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
Nine bends of clear water, red sandstone cliffs, and the tea that made a mountain's name.
Jiuzhaigou
City guide · 12 tours
108 mineral-blue lakes in one 55 km valley — the place that ruins water everywhere else for you.
Mount Siguniang
City guide · 12 tours
Four snow peaks, three valleys, and the friendliest 5,000 m mountain in China to stand on top of.
Hailuogou
City guide · 12 tours
A glacier that comes down to 2,850 m, hot springs in the forest, and Gongga Shan filling the sky above both.
Daocheng Yading
City guide · 12 tours
Three 6,000 m sacred peaks, glacial lakes at 4,600 m and twenty hours of road — the hardest, highest payoff in Sichuan.
Shunan Bamboo Sea
City guide · 12 tours
Seventy thousand mu of bamboo over twenty-eight hills, a red sandstone corridor under a closed green roof, and a banquet made entirely of bamboo.
Dujiangyan
City guide · 12 tours
Not a monument but a machine: three pieces of engineering with no dam, still doing their job after 2,270 years.
Qingcheng Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
The mountain where Daoism was organised, and the one Chengdu escapes to when the basin turns into an oven.
Qingdao
City guide · 12 tours
Red-tiled roofs, cold beer and a granite mountain that walks straight into the sea — the easiest good time on the Yellow Sea.
Mount Tai
City guide · 12 tours
1,545 metres, 6,290 stone steps and three thousand years of emperors — the one mountain in China that is also a document.
Jinan
City guide · 12 tours
A provincial capital with 700 springs under the pavement — people still queue at the spouts to fill their kettles.
Weihai
City guide · 12 tours
1,000 km of clean coast, a free bathing beach, the island where the Beiyang Fleet died — and thousands of wild swans every winter.
Qufu
City guide · 12 tours
One family, two thousand years of steles, and a ¥150 pass that covers the lot — the easiest serious day trip in Shandong.
Penglai
City guide · 12 tours
China's immortals' coast — a Song-dynasty naval harbour you can walk for free, a mythology nobody ever found, and the ferry to 32 islands.
Changdao
City guide · 12 tours
32 islands, one causeway, a ¥150 land pass, tens of thousands of gulls and nowhere you can drive — the place where everything happens by boat.
Nanjing
City guide · 12 tours
Capital of six dynasties, capital of the Republic, and the city that eats more duck than anywhere else on earth.
Suzhou
City guide · 12 tours
Two thousand five hundred years of canals, sixty surviving gardens, and a city that shuts its gates at half past five.
Zhouzhuang
City guide · 12 tours
Nine hundred years, fourteen bridges, one ticket — and a town that only makes sense before eight in the morning.
Tongli
City guide · 12 tours
Fifteen canals, seven islets, forty-nine bridges — and a town that still gets up at dawn because it lives here.
Wuxi
City guide · 12 tours
Taihu on one side, a Grand Buddha on the next hill, and ribs sweet enough to argue about — the most underrated city on the Yangtze delta.
Yangzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A city built by salt merchants who had more money than restraint — gardens, a narrow lake, and the best breakfast in China.
Zhenjiang
City guide · 12 tours
Three hills, one ferry landing, and an unreasonable share of Chinese literature — the Yangtze city people drive past.
Changzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A 2,500-year-old canal city that built a dinosaur park and refuses to apologise for it.
Wuzhen
City guide · 12 tours
A town that is two towns: the older, quieter East Zone and the lit-up West Zone you sleep inside.
Xitang
City guide · 12 tours
Nine canals, 122 lanes, one long roofed corridor — and a town that still works for a living.
Hangzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A lake in the middle of a city, a tea village in the hills, and two thousand years of getting the mood right.
Xixi Wetland
City guide · 12 tours
Ten square kilometres of marsh inside Hangzhou, and the only way into half of it is a boat.
Ningbo
City guide · 12 tours
A 7,000-year-old port with Asia's oldest private library, a free waterfront 20 years older than Shanghai's, and the best seafood before the islands.
Mount Putuo
City guide · 12 tours
A Buddhist island with no cars, three great temples and a ¥10 lunch that is the point of the place.
Qiandao Lake
City guide · 12 tours
A thousand islands that did not exist sixty years ago, and the cleanest big-lake water in China.
Shaoxing
City guide · 12 tours
Two and a half thousand years of water-town China, and Lu Xun's house is free.
Zhoushan
City guide · 12 tours
1,390 islands, one road bridge in, and a harbour that lands more fish than almost anywhere on earth.
Hengdian
City guide · 12 tours
A backlot the size of a town, where the palaces are copies and the film crews are real.
Yandang Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
A volcano that weathering turned into scenery — 500-odd sights of peak, cave and waterfall across eight scenic areas.
Zhejiang
City guide · 12 tours
One small, mountainous, absurdly rich province that holds a lake, two canal towns, a Buddhist island and a dead volcano.
Hong Kong Outlying Islands
City guide · 12 tours
Two hundred-odd islands, half an hour of ferry from the financial district, and not a car on three of them.
Hong Kong Shopping
City guide · 12 tours
A duty-free port where the tag starts lower, two citywide sale seasons knock a third off, and every mall sits on an MTR exit.
Macao
City guide · 12 tours
Four hundred years of Portuguese streets, a fake Venice under a painted sky, and the best egg tart in Asia.
Urumqi
City guide · 12 tours
The city furthest from the sea, with a snow range on its doorstep and dinner starting at nine.
Hong Kong SAR, China
City guide · 11 tours
A harbour skyline you already know by heart, dim sum trolleys at dawn, and 260 islands an hour from the neon.
Taiwan, China
City guide · 11 tours
Night-market alleys, high-mountain railways, and a coastline that changes character every hundred kilometres.
Qinghai Lake
City guide · 12 tours
A 4,400 sq km inland sea at 3,200 m, ringed by rapeseed gold, prayer flags and the best cycling road in China.
Mount Emei
City guide · 11 tours
A 3,099-metre Buddhist summit you can reach by cable car before lunch — and a mountain full of monkeys that will absolutely rob you.
Beijing
City guide · 11 tours
Six centuries of imperial red walls, a Great Wall you can climb before lunch, and the best roast duck on earth.
Taipei
City guide · 11 tours
A 24-hour bookstore, a night market that never stops sizzling, and a city that apologises when you bump into it.
North Xinjiang
City guide · 11 tours
Alpine lakes the colour of poured enamel, a village of log cabins under birch trees, and the last tear the Atlantic ever sheds.
Lanzhou
City guide · 11 tours
A city split in half by the Yellow River, where beef noodles are a breakfast ritual and the Silk Road still runs through the streets.
Mount Hua
City guide · 11 tours
Five granite peaks, one plank road bolted to a cliff face, and a sunrise that justifies the 2am start.
Dunhuang
City guide · 11 tours
A desert oasis where Buddhist cave art survived a thousand years and a crescent lake refused to dry up.
Gannan
City guide · 11 tours
433 kilometres of the Yellow River's first bend, a 3.5 km prayer-wheel circuit, and Tibetan grasslands almost nobody has commercialised yet.
Sichuan–Tibet Highway
City guide · 11 tours
2,142 kilometres of cliff-edge switchbacks, four of China's most beautiful mountains, and a road the Tibetans walk on their knees.
Kangding
City guide · 11 tours
The town that gave Asia its most famous love song, a 7,556m sacred peak on its doorstep, and the last real Tibetan town before the road climbs to Lhasa.
Lhasa
City guide · 12 tours
A city of prayer wheels and butter lamps at 3,700 metres, where the sun shines 3,000 hours a year and the world's highest palace watches over it all.
Nyingchi
City guide · 11 tours
Tibet's greenest corner — peach blossom valleys, a 7,782 m peak that hides from almost everyone, and the world's deepest canyon.
Namtso
City guide · 11 tours
A 1,920-square-kilometre sheet of impossible blue at 4,718 metres, ringed by snow peaks and prayer flags.
Chongqing
City guide · 12 tours
A vertical city of fog, cable cars and cliff-side stilt houses, where the火锅 never stops boiling and the night skyline outshines Hong Kong.
Qiandongnan
City guide · 11 tours
A thousand Miao households stacked up a mountainside, drum towers and wind-rain bridges in Dong villages, and a 600-year-old Ming garrison town on the road to Guiyang.
Libo
City guide · 11 tours
Emerald rivers threading through karst peaks, a 600-metre forest growing out of a riverbed, and China's largest wild plum grove.
Guiyang
City guide · 11 tours
China's summer capital at 1,100 metres, where the nights run on sour fish soup, street-side barbecue and mahjong that never quite stops.
Zhenyuan
City guide · 11 tours
A 2,000-year-old river town where the Wuyang River carves an S through the mountains and every lane hides a story.
Huangguoshu
City guide · 11 tours
Asia's biggest waterfall, and the only one on earth you can walk behind, above and around — plus 600-year-old Ming dynasty villages a short drive away.
Harbin
City guide · 11 tours
Minus 30 degrees, a frozen river you can walk across, and a cathedral built by Russians who never went home.
Yunnan
City guide · 11 tours
Snow mountains, tropical rainforest, twenty-five minorities and a plate of rice noodles — all in one province.
Shanghai
City guide · 11 tours
A 1920s waterfront of colonial banks facing a science-fiction skyline, soup dumplings you eat with a straw, and 20 million people moving like clockwork.
Zhangjiajie
City guide · 11 tours
Three thousand sandstone pillars straight out of Avatar, a glass skywalk bolted to a cliff, and a cable car that leaves from downtown.
Guangzhou
City guide · 11 tours
A 2,200-year-old trading port where dim sum is a religion, colonial islands sit beside 600-metre towers, and the food never stops.
Guilin
City guide · 11 tours
Karst peaks rising straight out of a green river, rice terraces carved into mountainsides, and the best bowl of noodles you'll eat in China.
Shenzhen
City guide · 11 tours
A fishing village that became a megacity in forty years — and it still has 500-year-old banyans, empty beaches and dim sum worth the border crossing.
Chengdu
City guide · 11 tours
A 3,000-year-old city where the schedule is tea, mahjong and hotpot — and the pandas are just the opening act.
Xinjiang
City guide · 11 tours
Snow peaks, grassland, desert and oasis — one-sixth of China, and the longest road you will ever ride.
Xi'an
City guide · 14 tours
Thirteen dynasties of emperors, a terracotta army buried for 2,200 years, and a walled city you can cycle in 100 minutes.
Qinghai
City guide · 11 tours
China's high-altitude blue heart: a salt lake you can walk on, a 3,200-metre sea, and yak butter tea at the roof of the world.
Tibet
City guide · 11 tours
A plateau the size of Western Europe where the sky starts at your feet, prayer flags carry the wind, and the roads run past 8,000-metre peaks.
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