Rizhao — "first light" — is the quiet southern end of the Shandong coast: sixty-some kilometers of unbroken golden sand facing the Yellow Sea, a sailing harbor built for championship racing, and a pace of life the bigger beach cities lost years ago. Its name comes from the old claim that the sunrise reaches here before anywhere else, and mornings here are taken seriously — swimmers at dawn, retirees walking the tideline, and clam-diggers working the flats as the tide drops.
