“It is so simple that it doesn’t try to do more than beautifully achieve access. It both makes nature accessible and uses all native plants in collaboration with engineers. The narrative is compelling about what is achieved. This is another monumental undertaking. The clarity of the idea and the variety make it a beautiful project. It is a project of hope. It can be done within a limited budget.”

—2010 Professional Awards Jury

The beach is located along the Bohai Sea shoreline of Qinhuangdao city, a touristic coastal city in North China's Hebei province, 6.4 kilometers in length and an area of 60 hectares. The whole site was in an environmentally and ecologically damaged condition. The coastal sand dunes were heavily eroded, the coastal vegetation was decaying and the beach was deserted and littered. Prior unwise development had destroyed the coastal wetland and left it full of debris.

The intention of this project is to rehabilitate the damaged natural environment, restore and unveil to tourists and local residents the beauty of the site while transforming a former degraded beach into an ecologically healthy and aesthetically attractive landscape.

The whole site can be divided into three zones:

Zone 1: Erosion Protection

This is basically a windy shoreline about five kilometers long, covered with coastal sand dunes and diverse plant communities which have adapted themselves to various site conditions including wetland communities of cattail (Typha angustifolia), sand dunes grass communities, Amorpha shrub (Amorpha fruiticosa), Chinese tamarisk (Tamarix chinensis) groves, forests of black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia), and willow (Salix matsudana).

For a long time, this shore line had been deserted, heavily eroded and littered, and almost inaccessible to tourists and local residents. The design solution has carefully arranged a boardwalk that winds along the shoreline, linking different patches of plant communities. This boardwalk not only allows visitors to experience the different plant communities on the way, but also acts as a soil conservation installation that protects the shoreline from the erosion caused by the ocean wind and weave.

Eco-friendly bases are designed using fiberglass that allows the boardwalk to "float" above the sand dunes and wetland. The fiberglass bases are specially prefabricated containers that can be filled with sand or be empty depending on the soil conditions. This innovative and now patented (by the landscape architect) technique not only makes the process of boardwalk installation much easier in a natural environment than the conventional construction approach, which could be a harder task, but also makes minimum impact to the environment.

Resting pavilions, shading structures and environmental interpretation systems are designed along the boardwalk that are carefully sited for the scenery, allowing visitors to visualize the ecological meaning of the site and highlighting their panoramic beauty. These pavilions become attractive focal points for tourists and the local residents who come in groups to enjoy the landscape and recreate.