Dapeng Peninsula: the Ming Fort and the Good Beaches

The reason Shenzhen is called Peng City. Dapeng Fortress - in full the Dapeng Guard-and-Defence Battalion Town - was built in 1394 as a Ming coastal garrison, 345 metres east to west and 285 north to south, and it is the city's first nationally protected monument (State Council, 2001). The walled town is open around the clock and you simply walk in; inside are lanes of Qing houses and three things worth timing your visit around: the South Gate, the mansion of Lai Enjue, the admiral who fought the British in the 1839 Battle of Kowloon at the start of the First Opium War, and the district museum's history hall in Yiwen Lou. Those halls keep museum hours, 09:00-17:00, closed Mondays.

The village under the fortress walls that turned into a guesthouse town. Its name means 'the end of the drill ground': the Ming garrison ran out of room and laid out a western parade ground, and the village grew at its tail. Most of the original families moved out after the 1980s, the empty houses became guesthouses, and the district now counts more than 400 of them along a 3 km strip of beach facing Longqi Bay. The beach is free, open all day and you can swim; at low tide the flats run out a long way. It is the obvious place to sleep if you want to do the Dapeng Peninsula as two days rather than one long one.

What the district calls Shenzhen's biggest beach: 3.3 km of sand in a bay enclosed by headlands, with a lagoon and a windbreak of casuarinas behind it, split into four numbered beaches with separate gates. It is the western end of the Dongchong-Xichong coastal walk, and since April 2023 the village has been certified an International Dark Sky Community - fireflies along the river path after sunset, stars when the sky is clear. On the eastern cliff sits the Shenzhen Observatory, run by the city weather bureau: free, booked in advance, closed Mondays. The beach itself charges admission at the gates.

The mountain behind the beaches. The geopark covers 46 km² of the peninsula's south, built on volcanic rock from about 145 million years ago, with 98% forest cover, seven streams with falls and cascades, and Qiniang Mountain (869 m, per the district) at its centre. It has two parts for visitors: a geology museum at the foot - six halls on the earth, the peninsula, minerals and the city's ground, walk-in with no booking (no official price published; platforms say free) - and two marked climbing trails to the summit ridge and to Dayan Ding. It is Shenzhen's only national geopark. The trails are the reason to come and the part that shuts first: the park closes them whenever a storm warning is up.

The quieter end of the coast walk. Dongchong is a village at the far south-east of the peninsula, hemmed in by hills on three sides, with a white-sand beach of 600-odd metres, a lagoon edged by the district's largest mangrove stand, and a mangrove wetland park with raised walkways. Down the coast to the southwest is Chuanbiyan, a sea arch about 20 metres high cut through a sandstone headland, which local media call Shenzhen's version of Tibet's Holy Elephant Gate. The beach is where the Dongchong-Xichong coastal walk starts. Since 1 December 2025 the operator has let people onto the beach free while its beach club is rebuilt; it has not said when charging resumes.

The fortress's temple, an arrow's flight outside its East Gate on Longtou Hill, looking down over the bay. The district dates its founding to the Ming, with a rebuild in the fourth year of Xianfeng (1854); the characters 'Dongshan Gu Si' over the first gate are said to be in the hand of Lai Enjue, the fortress's admiral. The district says the stone archway at the foot, inscribed 'Jiufeng Shengjing', was first built in that same year, 1854. The city's heritage list names the archway, not the temple, as a municipal protected site (second batch), filed under modern historic sites of the War of Resistance period - which does not square with the 1854 date, and we have found no explanation. The halls you walk through today are a modern renovation - the district's own page says the temple has been 'restored as new'. It is a working Buddhist temple and costs nothing to enter.

The single most misread rule in Shenzhen. From 1 May to 7 October 2026, on every weekend and public holiday, the traffic police close all roads south of Diefushan Tunnel to private cars that have not booked a slot - but the booking is for the car, not for you. Buses, taxis, licensed ride-hailing cars and coaches of ten seats or more are exempt, so a visitor who is not driving books nothing. Since 28 December 2025 the easiest way in is Metro Line 8 to its new terminus at Xichong (溪涌), then the E91 bus to the old fortress and Jiaochangwei or the E92 towards Nan'ao; the older route is the E11 or E26 express bus to Dapeng Centre and a local M-line from there.

Nan'ao is the fishing town at the south of the peninsula, and eating here works differently from a city restaurant: you pick live fish, shellfish and crab from the tanks, your pick is weighed and priced by the kilogram, and the kitchen cooks it the way you ask. The main places are Nan'ao seafood street in the town itself and Shuitou seafood street in Dapeng town on the way in. Also in Nan'ao, the dried-seafood street - about 500 m long and some forty years old - is where Hong Kong and Pearl River Delta shoppers come for abalone, dried fish and laver. In late spring look for Nan'ao sea-urchin zongzi, on the city's intangible heritage list.

The easy beach. Rose Coast is a 1.5 km stretch of soft sand on Dapeng Bay at Kuiyong, built up as a wedding-photography park - chapels, castles, a flower field, a Mediterranean-style village - and graded a 3A scenic area in 2019. It is one of the Kuiyong beaches outside the weekend car-permit zone, and since the end of 2025 it has been a short hop from the metro: Line 8's Xichong terminus is about 1.9 km away (OSM). Expect bridal couples and photographers on every photogenic corner; the beach itself has swimming, beach sports and rentals.

Two places on one road, at the north-east tip of the peninsula facing Daya Bay. Yangmeikeng is a stream-mouth village with a long gentle beach where the buses stop; from there a coastal road and a two-level sea-wall path run east to Lujui (鹿嘴), about 3.2 km away in a straight line (OSM). Lujui is the headland the district names as a filming location for the film The Mermaid (美人鱼) and where Shenzhen sees its sunrise first. The strip was graded a 3A scenic area in 2024 as the Dongshan Lujui Tourism Zone. With Qiniang Mountain behind and open sea in front, it is a walk or a ride, open all day.