Cheung Sha sits on the southern edge of Lantau Island, the largest island in Hong Kong. The beach is in a part of Lantau that feels deliberately unhurried — a stretch of coast that the city's density has not yet absorbed. Upper Cheung Sha Beach is a gazetted beach, meaning it is officially recognized and managed by Hong Kong's Leisure and Cultural Services Department. The water quality has been rated good to fair by the Environmental Protection Department over the past two decades. It is the kind of place where the distance between visitor and ocean is measured in steps, not in the effort required to escape the city — though that effort, a ferry ride and a bus journey or taxi from Mui Wo or Discovery Bay, keeps the crowds manageable on most days.

Upper Cheung Sha is not a resort beach. It has changing rooms, showers, toilets, and a light refreshment kiosk — the modest infrastructure of a well-maintained public facility. There are barbecue pits, which draw Hong Kong families on weekends and public holidays, the smell of charcoal mixing with salt air. From the beach, the views extend to Cha Kwo Chau and the Soko Islands to the south, a scatter of smaller landmasses that mark the edge of Hong Kong's territorial waters. The South China Sea opens beyond them. On clear days the light is different here than in the city — flatter, broader, without the reflective canyons of glass towers to concentrate it.

Lantau's coastal waters are not simply scenic. In November 2018, police officers found a finless porpoise at the beach with its tail trapped in a fishing net. The Ocean Park Conservation Foundation transported the animal to Ocean Park for autopsy. The incident was a reminder that the waters around Lantau — close to the airport, one of the world's busiest — are also habitat. The Indo-Pacific finless porpoise, which lives in coastal and river waters across South and East Asia, is a regular presence in Hong Kong's western waters near Lantau, where the Pearl River Delta's freshwater meets the South China Sea. Their survival there, amid shipping lanes and land reclamation, is fragile and ongoing.

From central Hong Kong, Lantau's southern coast requires intention. The New Lantao Bus routes serve Cheung Sha from the Mui Wo ferry pier, where regular services run from Central. The journey from pier to beach is a matter of minutes by bus, passing through a landscape of small villages, hillsides, and the occasional monastery. Hikers use Cheung Sha as a point along the Lantau Trail, which traverses the island. The beach's relative remoteness — relative by Hong Kong standards, which is to say it is not adjacent to an MTR station — means it retains something that is genuinely scarce in this city: space. On a weekday morning, with the ferry traffic light and the barbecue pits cold, Upper Cheung Sha beach is as close to empty as any public beach in Hong Kong gets.