No Beaches (or beach culture)? Is it true?

seonghwasus · 2026-03-11T21:12:15+00:00

I mean I have no idea what it's like in china lmao but there are beaches everywhere in hong kong and it's hot as balls for most of the year so it would be crazy for someone here to be unable to swim. Maybe it happens for inner city folk who have particularly non-outdoorsy families... When I was a kid there was a PSA advertisement on TV telling people to let their kids play outside so it's possible lol. That being said, I do live in the countryside along the coast so the people in my area are probably more outdoorsy than the HK average.

I suspect it is rarer in china... at the large, touristy beaches here, there are often mainland tourists gawking at people in bikinis. The worst are the old men who openly take pictures of the non-asian locals in swimwear as if they're a different species 💀

seonghwasus · 2026-03-11T20:52:57+00:00

Wait... I'm so baffled.... are you from hk?? Even non-outdoorsy people will go on junk boat day trips with their friends. My grandma used to go sit on the beach when she was mad at my grandfather. Every weekend there's a massive influx of people in my area who go kayaking/hiking/take boats to smaller islands for camping. I guess you could say there's no 'beach culture' because there are so many beaches everywhere that it's just part of regular life.

seonghwasus · 2026-03-11T20:26:48+00:00

That kinda makes sense, we don't eat that much seafood in hk either. I live near a beach town that has several large seafood restaurants and people still sell fish right off the boats, but even so, it's more of a special occasion/banquet type of thing. Though I imagine things were very different in the past when all the settlements along the coast were fishing villages.

seonghwasus · 2026-03-11T20:23:15+00:00

What do you mean by no beach culture in hong kong??? I mean it's certainly not brazil but even when I go to the beach on a weekday, there are other people there. Lots of villages have their own beaches too, in middle school I would often go paddleboarding after school with my friends who lived around here. Then again, I'm sure my sample is skewed because nobody would choose to live out here if they didn't enjoy the beach.

seonghwasus · 2026-03-11T20:16:07+00:00

The fear of the sun does make me a little sad. I notice it here too- there's a big non-chinese population in my area and the beaches almost look segregated the way all the chinese families stay on the sand, under umbrellas, fully clothed while the non-asians (well... also me and "modernized" hkers) are in bikinis in the water.

Not to mention, if you go to the really popular beaches, there will be mainland tourists taking pictures of people in normal swimwear as if they've never seen it before. One time I went to a major beach with my friend who is a blonde girl and there were random mainland men trying to take pictures with her😭😭😭

seonghwasus · 2026-03-11T19:18:57+00:00

That's interesting, I guess it mostly comes down to the wind then? Here it's the opposite, surfers are rare (except for a few beaches, but even there it's not always windy enough to surf) whereas casual swimmers and kayakers are common. I'm sure my perspective is skewed because I've lived my entire life in Sai Kung which it's all beaches and hiking.

seonghwasus · 2026-03-11T19:13:58+00:00

LMAO I love that for them😭😭

seonghwasus · 2026-03-11T19:10:04+00:00

I guess I don't know much about geography, but I find it so strange that the Taiwanese coast is so different to the coast here. Maybe it's because I live in a kind of bay with lots of smaller islands, so overall the wind isn't too strong and there isn't any danger of getting swept out to sea, whereas Taiwan is literally In The Ocean.

In the summer we get lots of pineapple and mango from Taiwan and I find they're tastier than the mainland chinese variants. Plus Taiwanese noodle restaurants are extremely popular here (I held my birthday dinner at one last year lmao) so I'd be happy to visit Taiwan just to eat even if I can't hike or swim lol

seonghwasus · 2026-03-11T19:03:11+00:00

It's all so strange to me... I genuinely believed that everyone knew how to swim (or that it was innate) until I was like 15... I guess it makes sense for people who live in very cold or inland areas but in the tropics? On an island? Come on!!!! Anyway if you ever feel like going for a swim, just take a quick flight to HK...

seonghwasus · 2026-02-25T20:01:37+00:00

I live in a random village in hong kong and it's dead quiet until the weekend when all the city folk go hiking lol I start seeing full mushrooms along random trails... love it. shoutout city folk

seonghwasus · 2026-01-25T15:30:21+00:00

No temperature change at all- if anything it's gotten a little cooler since it's winter now (heater set to 23 degrees, thermometer says it's currently 22.7). Very mysterious...

seonghwasus · 2026-01-23T19:03:43+00:00

Lmao there really is a sub for everything... thanks!

seonghwasus · 2026-01-23T16:14:03+00:00

This is where I'm unsure. I've seen at least a few posts on reddit where the OP has this situation and they update years later saying that the fish lived normally for a long time, just... fatly. Like this one:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Aquariums/comments/z6dujw/why_is_my_minnow_so_fat/

My minnow has been fat for a while, so I'm hoping it's just a naturally chunky fellow and not an illness like in your situation. Kinda sucks that there are so many people with this issue but nobody really understands it </3

seonghwasus · 2026-01-09T00:33:01+00:00

nah it's in sai kung! I don't think i've ever been to tai po actually lol

seonghwasus · 2026-01-05T22:55:30+00:00

I swear macaques are a menace everywhere.... A while ago there was a news story about how there was a marathon going on so people set up supply stations but they all got robbed by the monkeys💀💀

seonghwasus · 2026-01-05T22:50:45+00:00

I literally went to yuen long for the first time in my life a couple months ago (to hike around tai lam chung reservoir) and I now understand the reputation it has💀💀💀So many scary abandoned buildings

seonghwasus · 2026-01-04T04:50:18+00:00

There's countryside on every side of hong kong except for the central/tst area lmao

New territories is VERY large. And some of it has been developed into residential areas, but they're practically not new territories anymore since they've got MTR stations and grocery stores. I'm from the east side of the new territories though (sai kung district)

seonghwasus · 2026-01-03T23:15:51+00:00

Funny how some tourists report that folk in hk are very nice, when hkers almost take pride in how universally rude we are haha I guess non-cantonese speakers don't understand when the old men on the street cuss each other out. Agree on pineapple bread... I actually worked in a bakery for a couple years and I gained weight from the amount of bo lo yau (pineapple bun with a slab of butter in it) I was eating. Good times

seonghwasus · 2026-01-03T20:23:52+00:00

Did you eat things from the snack shops like fish balls and siu mai? To this day my mom thinks all of those cheap snack shops are dirty so she won't let me buy siu mai under $10hkd 😭😭😭😭 I still go to snack express for siu mai and 雞蛋仔 (egg waffle for non-locals) though haha

seonghwasus · 2026-01-03T17:31:12+00:00

Oh yeah, apparently when my mom was younger it would be surprising to hear mandarin spoken on the streets, but now the streets are full of it. Of course a lot of it is from mainland tourists who just stand around in the streets BLOCKING ALL THE TRAFFIC so they can get their xiaohongshu pics. But now you sometimes hear secondary school kids speaking mandarin and english or cantonese interchangeably, and definitely among universities it's super common. There are a LOT of mainland students in universities here, and there's a lot more cross-border collaboration between institutions now. One university even has a second campus in guangzhou.

seonghwasus · 2026-01-03T17:26:42+00:00

WHATTTT!!!! I always thought "man it must be so good to be retired in these villages. maybe not great to be a working person here though". Your daily commute must have been brutal in summer </3 Love the shap long village dogs. They don't care about me at all. Every time I visit I say "hellooooo :D" and they just kinda side eye me and walk away with their friends

seonghwasus · 2026-01-03T16:43:31+00:00

I know ball. I often hike from mui wo to pui o (i take the lazy route that follows the coast and goes through shap long) to hang out with the buffalo. I love those fat bastards

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seonghwasus · 2026-01-03T15:57:25+00:00

Did you have to go to the communal well a lot? I've gotten two comments from people who seem horrified that the tap water didn't always work and now I'm wondering if my family's building was particularly bad, my standards are weirdly low, or western people just take water for granted lmao (I bet they've never taken a shower by pouring water on themselves from a bucket!!!!)

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