Question: what do Communist Party officials do on their summer holidays? Why, hold another meeting, of course. Even at the beach China's rulers cannot resist the habitual urge to hold secret convocations, pass resolutions and draw up documents.
For nearly 50 years, Beidaihe - a seaside resort 300 kilometres east of Beijing - has played host to the most important political meeting of the year. Decisions taken there are often made public only the following year and its picturesque scenery has been the backdrop for the darkest intrigues, details of which emerge years later.
Here in 1958 Mao Zedong declared China's peasantry would be divided into Utopian communes and here in 1971 his army chief, Lin Biao, plotted to assassinate him. Later, Deng Xiaoping came to swim in the sea, while his chief ministers Zhao Ziyang and Premier Li Peng quarrelled over reforms before the latter ousted the former in the summer of 1989.
So, for a couple of months each year, Beidaihe becomes Zhongnanhai-by-the- Sea.
The whole entourage - wives, children, grandchildren, nannies, cooks, drivers and palace guard units decamp and settle down in a collection of villas hidden among the pine trees.
With the rulers go all their ministers, secretaries, assistants, advisers and experts, together with their families and bodyguards.
Here the rituals of a seaside holiday are observed, simultaneously with the rites and etiquette of bureaucratic life in Beijing. Squads of People's Armed Police march briskly past the sandy beaches where pasty-coloured cadres in swimming trunks amble in flip-flops and carry inflated inner tubes.