"Offbeat" is a SmartShanghai column about stuff to look at or do in Shanghai that's interesting or weird (relatively, of course), that doesn't fit anywhere else. It appears weekly, monthly, or maybe even annually, when we're not busy working on other superfluous column ideas.

One of the very first things you learn in Mandarin class is that "Shang Hai" means 'above the ocean'. It's a clever bit of marketing -- 'City by the Sea' has quite the alluring ring to it.

But no one teaches you how to find the damn thing -- the coast is all but absent from day-to-day life; it exists just as an abstract concept in mental maps of the city; it's seen, if at all, only on take-off from PVG.

So it seems quite right that the first attempt to find it be paid for in sweat. Lactic acid. Broken bicycle gear-cogs. The first beach we found was 40km, give or take, riding due east across Pudong all the way to the water. You're tracing Subway Line 2 most of the way, but after Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park you're on our own. Unfinished highways converge on future super-junctions, but the road signs gradually fall away and you're left crawling through muddy allotments for want of better directions. Only a running tally of oddities -- a vast cactus farm, an early warning radar station -- keeps you moving forward.

By the time you arrive, it's getting dark; tall pine trees on either side of the path foreshadowing the gloom, the first approach lights of the airport runway ablaze in the fields away to your right. And the coastline is, of course, as barren as you'd always known it would be.



Grey tidal defenses stacked up like old man's lego, drainage canals coughing up silt. There's enough sediment in the water to walk on, and someone has taken an eraser to the dividing line between sea and sky. What sulfurous light remains picks out toy tankers adrift in the two-dimensional gloom.



Others, though, have brought their imagination -- a young couple on a borrowed motorcycle, gazing first out to sea and then, more nervously, at each other; a fisherman peeing against the sea wall, trusting in the evening wind to spare him indignity.

Such things as you'd hope to find on any coastline in the world.



***

The alternative -- a sedate trip to the beach in Jinshan -- is an altogether different proposition. It involves very little cramping of the calves, offers less obtuse pleasures, is much more readily repeatable; a bus from close to Shanghai Stadium whisks you to distant Jinshan in under an hour. From there, it's a twenty-minute walk, or five minute rickshaw ride, to a 1.3km stretch of imported golden sand.



The beach runs down to a too-blue-to-be-true lagoon -- a trick not of the eyes but of the filtration system embedded in the encircling sea wall (magical filtration system pictured in the top photograph). You can jet-ski, ride around on giant floating tricycles, or pay someone else to pedal for you. Dragon-boat racers train furiously along the perimeter, and there's even space set aside for swimming -- electric police buggies patrol the sand in search of anyone ducking below the surface.



Life on land is more sedate -- parasols and barbecues for rent, a promenade to walk along before lunch. Afternoons are for wedding photos, frisbee, the ogling of beach volleyball trials. Look closely and there's even a welcome edginess to it all -- the kind endemic to suburban weekends, that sees teenage boys substitute revved motorcycle engines for conversation, and stalk the sand in matching boardshorts. If there were more waves here, these are the guys who'd be punching out-of-towners off them.



Of course, it doesn't stack up against the world's better-known urban beaches. It's certainly no Bondi; if anyone's penned a "Girl from Jinshan" ditty it's likely too crude for the mass market; the Neapolitan dream of fresh ice cream, limoncello, and mob-affiliated garbage-men is disappointingly absent. There are far too few bikinis and finding a sunset bar involves getting creative with a bucket and spade. There is, though, a very real sense of fun. Of sand being kicked in the face of inhibition. It's certainly worth staying the night -- the beach doesn't close until 8pm, and the newly-opened Royal Tulip hotel offers standard rooms with beach views for just 500rmb.

Behind that same hotel, where the sand peters out and the seashell stands give way once more to heavy industry, there's a discernible swell -- unfiltered brown waves rolling in gently across the bay. Skinny horses wait impatiently for an excuse to gallop across the mud flats, and daytrippers tip-toe out to the farthest rocks, steadying themselves on the damp, dark moss, venting their fears in a chorus of whoops and screams. Perhaps it's just relief they all feel.

Perhaps they, too, have spent a long time in the search.

***

Buses to Jinshan Beach leave from the bus station immediately south of Jinjiang Park subway station (line 1), every fifteen minutes or so at weekends. One-way tickets are 10rmb. Coming back, you have to stand in line for the next bus with room, so leave plenty of time. Entry is 50rmb.

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