Dameisha Beach

This guide to Dameisha Beach traces its name, Big Plum Sand, back to a quiet coastline of fishing boats and salt flats before Deng Xiaoping declared this area China's first Special Economic Zone in 1980. It follows the decades that turned a handful of villages into a booming city, and the question of what to do with the shoreline left behind as factories and skyscrapers rose around it. The guide reaches its 1999 opening as a public seaside park, built with a promenade and plazas for a city suddenly full of new residents. Look along the arc of sand toward the mountains behind it, older than any of that history.