The streets along the seafront are the liveliest - most buildings are either restaurants, with crabs and prawns bobbing about in buckets outside, or shops selling bikinis, inflatables, snorkels and souvenirs. Moving away from the sea, up the hill, the tree-lined streets are much quieter, and many of the buildings are guesthouses.

Of the three beaches, Middle Beach , really many small beaches with rocky outcrops in between, is the most convenient and popular. The promenade at the back is lined with soft-drink vendors, photo stalls, hoopla games, and bathing huts that look like moon dwellings from a 1950s science fiction movie. You can get your photograph taken on top of a stuffed tiger or in a cardboard speedboat, or dressed up like an emperor. West Beach is more of the same, but a little quieter. East of the resort (bus #3 or #4), stretching fifteen kilometres to Qinhuangdao, is East Beach , popular with cadres and sanatorium patients for its more sedate atmosphere. The beach is long enough for you to be able to find a spot where you can be alone, though much of the muddy shoreline is not very attractive. At low tide its wide expanse is dotted with seaweed collectors in rubber boots. At the beach's western tip is Pigeon Nest Park , a twenty-metre-high rocky outcrop named after the seagulls fond of perching here, obviously by someone who wasn't hot on bird identification. It's a popular spot for watching the sunrise. Mao sat here in 1954 and wrote a poem, "Ripples sifting sand/Beidaihe," which probably loses something in translation. To get here take bus #21 from Zhonghaitan Lu.

Just before Pigeon Nest Park, the bus stops near the dock for Beidaihe's sight-seeing boats . In season, boats leave regularly during the day and chug up and down the coast, which isn't really that spectacular (2hr; ¥30). The highlight of the trip is passing the strange Biluo Pagoda , a hotel on the coast south of the dock, which resembles a seven-storey concrete conch shell.

On the far western side of town, 500m back from the beach, Lianfengshan Park , a hill of dense pines with picturesque pavilions and odd little caves, is a good place to wander and get away from the crowds for a while. On top of the hill is the Sea Admiring Pavilion , which has good views of the coast. There are also a couple of unexciting historical sites and the quiet temple, Guanyin Si .