A Straight Line of Sand, and the Boats That Use It

Rizhao's coastline runs 99.6 kilometres, from the mouth of the Tianshui river in the north to the mouth of the Xiuzhen river in the south, and it is comparatively straight: a bedrock sand and gravel shore. Two natural bays break it, at Shijiu and at Foshou, and the port group of the city is made up of Rizhao Port and Lanshan Port. Near the coast stand the islands of Taohua and Chufeng, and further out three small islands, Pingdao, Dashan and Che'niu Shan, with a combined area of 0.321 square kilometres. The land and the shallow water behind are given over to the sea as well: 76,000 mu of coastal tidal flat, water inside the 10-metre depth line across 300,000 mu, and inside the 20-metre line an area of 1,000,000 mu judged suitable for aquaculture.

The sea here feeds people before it amuses them. The coast produces more than eighty kinds of economic fish, with shrimp, scallops and razor clams, and the water inside the 20-metre line is counted as a million mu of aquaculture ground. The Port of Rizhao stands 620 kilometres north of Shanghai and handles iron ore and coal among other cargoes; an iron ore port opened nearby in 2014, and in 2011 Rizhao joined Qingdao, Weihai and Yantai in a shipping alliance with Busan, the largest port of the Republic of Korea. Behind the working shore the bathing beaches carry the same national grade: Wanpingkou Beach and Rizhao Beach National Park both hold four stars. Inland from the water the city has also been building in the present tense, with the Zaishui Art Museum on an artificial lake completed in December 2023.

The city's name means that it is the first place the light reaches, and since the early 1990s it has treated that as a resource to be managed. It averages 2,310 hours of bright sunshine a year, it began requiring solar water heaters in new buildings in 1992, and by 2007 ninety-nine per cent of households in the central districts had them. The policy brought the World Clean Energy Award in 2007, made the city in February 2008 the first Chinese pioneer in the United Nations environment programme's climate neutral network, and in October 2009 brought it the United Nations Habitat Award, the eleventh Chinese city to receive it. The same coast calls itself the capital of water sports: its Olympic Water Park opened in July 2004, and in 2005 it hosted the European-level sailing world championships and the world windsurfing championships.