Why a half-day here
Not everyone wants a hill, a monastery or a market. Repulse Bay is the shortest useful escape from the city that Hong Kong offers: over the hill from Central in twenty minutes, a long south-facing beach, no entrance fee, and - for guests with a walking difficulty or travelling with small children - barely a step to climb. This is the programme we suggest when the request is simply to sit by the sea for a few hours.
The bay
The bay is a crescent, the sand is fine, the water is shallow, and it takes its English name from a Royal Navy vessel that was once stationed in it against the pirates. It is free and open, with changing facilities and lifeguards, and behind the beach the hillside is one of the most expensive addresses in the world.
The statues
At the eastern end of the beach, in front of the shrine known as Chun Hai Lau, stand two figures facing the water, each more than ten metres high: Tin Hau, the patroness of fishermen, and Kwun Yam, the bodhisattva of compassion. This was a fishing coast long before it was a resort, and the pair are the reason local families still come here with offerings rather than with towels. Around them are the Dragon King, the River Lord, Maitreya and the three star deities of fortune, prosperity and longevity, a Longevity Bridge that is crossed for luck, a long-life pavilion, a bronze turtle and a small seven-coloured lighthouse. It is a folk pantheon assembled on a beach, and it is entirely typical of how religion works in this city.
Cultural Insight
The white building behind the beach is The Repulse Bay, and it stands on the site of the Repulse Bay Hotel of 1920. That hotel was opened by a governor and spent sixty years as the social centre of the colony; the guest list is said to have included George Bernard Shaw and Marlon Brando, and Eileen Chang put the meeting of the lovers in Love in a Fallen City on its terrace. In the war it served as a British post and then as a hospital. It was demolished in the early 1990s and rebuilt as serviced apartments with shops and restaurants; the Verandah, its arcaded restaurant, survives in the same position and still serves afternoon tea in the old manner. Tea there is at your own expense, and worth it.
The Hong Kong Life Saving Society at the eastern end of the beach occupies a traditional Chinese building with dragons coiled along its roof, and its garden opens directly onto the sand.
The shore walk
If the group wants to move rather than sit, the coast road walk from the bay towards Deep Water Bay is flat, shaded in part, and takes about forty minutes one way; Ocean Park sits on the headland across the water. The vehicle meets you at the far end so that you do not have to walk back.
Lunch
We eat at a seafront restaurant above the bay, with the beach and the statues in front of the table. The afternoon tea at the Verandah is a separate thing and is not part of the price.
Meals
Lunch
Accommodation
Day programme - no hotel night included.
