East China

East China surf travel guide

Shandong Province

Northern water temperatures drop drastically in wintertime, bottoming out at 4ºC in Qingdao, the northern city of Shandong province. Qingdao's buildings and breweries exhibit its German colonial past and a group of about 30 locals enjoy the shifty sandbanks of Shilaoren Beach, a south-facing bay extracting the best from typhoon action and southerly windswells. Summer is hugely popular with swimmers and beach goers becoming a hazard, both here and down the coast at Golden Sands Beach, which picks up NE swell.

Zhejiang Province

The Zhejiang coast becomes shallow, marshy and muddy down to Hangzhou Bay. The 100km wide Hangzhou Bay, home to the mega-cities of Shanghai, Hangzhou and Ningbo. As the bay compresses the 8.93m tides, the world's biggest tidal bore appears on the Qiantang River, surging up to 4m high and producing rides up to 90mins. Known as the 'Silver Dragon', it is the home of the yearly RedBull Shootout, but with many spectators lives lost every year, access is strictly forbidden with heavy fines imposed on those caught entering the water.

Outside the bay, the Zhoushan archipelago offers a choice of low quality N and S-facing polluted beachbreak on the island of Shengsi or cleaner summer peaks on Zhujia Island.

Heading south the unexplored coast is directly exposed to Pacific E swell, down to the consistent sand and rock setup of Airport Lefts, where there's some protection from the E and NE wind. Haitan or Pingtan Island is China's 5th biggest and marks the beginning of the South China Sea.

Fujian Province

NE-E swells hit a number of expert reefbreaks around Junshan village and the South Bay beside Pingtan's main sandy beach has high tide quality rides. Fujian Province is 'terra incognita' boasting hundreds of kilometres of promising, untapped coast behind Taiwan. Wujiao Bay, on Dongshan Island also has good exposure to S and NE swell offering punchy beachbreak by the jetty and more windy, exposed beaches at Jinluan and Maluan where the kiters go. Another 200kms of SE-facing beachbreaks leads to subtropical Guangdong.