Beihai sits on the northeast corner of the Beibu Gulf in Guangxi, where Guangxi's proverb points you when the karst is done: "In the north, Guilin's mountains; in the south, Beihai's Silver Beach." It is a slow, sunny, inexpensive city — a century-old arcade street from its treaty-port days, a 24-kilometer beach of famous quartz sand, and offshore one of China's youngest volcanoes turned subtropical island. Three days is the classic rhythm: city, island, sunrise.
