Yalong Bay's crescent of South China Sea coastline, often called China's Hawaii for its year-round tropical heat and turquoise water, gave the St. Regis Sanya Yalong Bay Resort an unusually generous canvas when it opened in 2012. The architecture draws on a Pan-Asian resort vernacular — sweeping curved rooflines in deep terracotta tile, ochre-washed stone facades, and columns picked out in cadmium yellow — arranged symmetrically around a vast central pool that mirrors the building's paired wings in still water. The massing avoids the monolithic quality that burdens many large Chinese resort developments, instead stepping down in low horizontal layers toward the sea. Inside, the interiors navigate a middle path between Southern Chinese decorative tradition and the kind of dark-wood colonial tropical register that Wimberly Interiors has long deployed across the Asia-Pacific. Guest rooms are finished in cream-hued marble flooring with richly carved mahogany-toned case furniture, lattice-detailed credenzas, and oversized ceiling fans that evoke a more unhurried era of travel. Botanical-patterned runners and quilted leather headboards add warmth without tipping into excess. The all-day dining restaurant channels an early twentieth-century Shanghai club atmosphere — checkerboard marble floors, amber pendant lanterns, white-painted display cabinetry — with floor-to-ceiling glazing that draws the infinity pool and coconut palms directly into the room. The mosaic dragon set into the pool floor gives the whole composition its one frankly declarative gesture.

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