The most comfortable means to spend the summer at leisure in a coastal city is “sea-bathing”. Surrounded by the sea on three sides, Qingdao boasts a long coastline on which beaches are soft and delicate. Jiaozhou Bay looks like an enclosed sea providing the most favorable conditions for bathing beaches featuring small waves. A dozen of bathing beaches in Qingdao are mostly located in the downtown, and as accessible for citizens as swimming pools in their backyards.

In Qingdao, there are several distinctive ways of “sea-bathing”.

Winter swimming. Swimming leisure in ice-cold sea water on piercingly chilly winter days can not only meet extreme mental and physical challenges, but also invite exclusive admiration from audiences.

“Da Fei Yan Er”. It is called “diving” in Chinese mandarin and “Zha Meng” in Qingdao dialect. It is a comprehensive test for sea-bathing takers’ courage, skills and ability in swimming. With short videos going viral in recent years, videos on Qingdao swimming enthusiasts diving into water are widely spread, helping the city to garner a lot of attention.

Swimming in the areas where shark nets are installed. It is not the highest accomplishment for sea-bathing takers to swim over and over around shark nets. It is more important for them to swim in the areas, where shark nets are erected, to breathe fresh air in the depth of the sea.

Night swimming. Sea-bathing at night is a fabulous experience. The pale moonshine glimmer on the sea surface, resembling silver scraps. Little fish with shiny scales swim around from time to time. At such a moment like this, the swimmer feels like he or she was a small fish.

Chen Di, a tourist from Beijing, used to work in Qingdao when he was young. He has later thought Qingdao was his second hometown, so he and his family take a holiday in Qingdao every summer. “All my memory associated with Qingdao is inseparable from the salty taste of sea water.” According to Chen Di, it has become my family tradition to come back to Qingdao for “sea-bathing” every year, and a summer cannot be called complete if we don’t amuse ourselves in seawater in Qingdao.  (Cui Yan)

The Golden Beach Bathing Beach in the West Coast Area of Qingdao is packed with people. By Liang Chao