I’d had been wanting to go to Sheng Si Islands ever since one of my French students, showed me pictures of golden sandy beaches and rocky formations. The May public holiday looked ideal and I decided on Friday night to go the next morning as the weather looked perfect and in any case, Saturday was a working day for office workers. This would mean it would be fairly quiet there.
I got to Nanpu Bridge bus station at 8 o’clock to buy a ticket but had to wait 1:30 hours to get the bus (note to self, buy the ticket the day before!). We set off 15 minutes early as everyone was aboard and got to the port nearly two hours later.
The port is accessible by driving over a very long sea wall. The view would have been excellent were there no sea fog. Sadly the weather conditions were against us and by the time I got through security and entered the waiting room, there were passengers due to travel on earlier ferries, still waiting to board.
11:30 came and went, as did 12:30 and an hour later, two hours late we were finally allowed to board. The fog meant that there wasn’t much to see but despite that, there was an air of excitement throughout the 1:30mins journey. Children ran around, young people took selfies against the greyness of the mist and old people snoozed in their seats.
I sat on the floor next to an electric socket with my iPhone plugged in and reading ‘Finding Gobi’. I was sorry the book was so short and the wait so long – I was getting through the book far too quickly. I had to ration it so I plugged in my headphones and listened to some podcasts.
Finding accommodation was the trickiest part of the whole endevour, although there were plenty of hotels and B&B’s. I had hoped to stay by the long beach on Hutan Bay the east side of the island. There is a little town there (walkable from the main town of Cai Yuan) called XiaoJiHu where every building is a seafood restaurant with rooms.
I called at a number of these and ended up enlisting the help of a girl with an e.bike but no hotel or B&B would take me. It’s just too difficult for the owners to go through the online foreigner registration system which the authorities require. They would rather wait for Chinese tourists who are a lot easier to accommodate. So the excuse for not wanting to accommodate me was ‘My computer is too slow’ which is a strange excuse for those who are not fully aware of the Chinese registration system for foreingers. 
May then took me back to CaiYuan and delivered me to the Chinese Foreigner Hotel which, thankfully, was happy to take me. The room was about £25 and was rather tatty with a view of a ocean of flat roofs and electric wires rather than the beach and open sea which the B&Bs offered. The sleep quality was good though and in any case, I had no choice!
I checked in and by this time, had wasted so much time in waiting rooms and looking for hotels that the light was fading. I walked back to May’s restaurant and persauded her to lend me her e.bike to explore the island.
It was nice to be on the road under my own steam at last, driving around the coast, past beaches, through fishing villages and up hills, through forests on quiet roads. Several of the inlets had fishing fleets moored – all small blue boats flying the Chinese flag. It made for a lovely scene.
It took me a couple of hours to get around the northern peninsular, stopping to admire the sunset at every turn of the road. It was nice to see the authorities had invested in renewable energy in the form of wind and solar to provide power to street lights. The roads were in excellent order and the occassional fishing villages nestled in quiet bays appeared and disappeared as the early evening fog blew in from the sea. It gave the whole island a magical feel. 
I motored silently through beaches lined with fish restaurants and cheerful groups of Chinese diners looking out at the bobbing blue fishing boats resting for the night, Chinese flags fluttering proudly.
By the time I got back to XiaoJiHu to return the e.bike, it was dark and I was cold. I was thankful I had decided to bring a warm jacket which I wrapped tightly around me as I ordered the only thing on the menu which didn’t involve seafood – vegetable fried rice and aubergine.
The restaurant owner and her daughters told me that the weather forecast for the following day made it doubtful that ferries would run. High winds and fog are a constant problem and so I decided, that, as I couldn’t afford the time to stay on the island for more than one night, to get myself along to the dock as early as possible the following morning.
Therefore my trip to Shng Si Island was shorter than I had planned because of the weather but I will be back and next time I’ll book the ferry and bus beforehand to save hanging around and hope for better weather for the crossing.
Next time, I will also allow myself enough time to get to Guoqi island to see the abandoned fishing village I have seen so many photos of.
Sheng Si is a great placae for a weekend escape, not so far from Shanghai, certainly Shanghai’s closest beach. But book before you go to avoid wasting time.