LO MEIN LEFTS: A Chinese Surf Adventure

An exemplar of aesthetics and symmetry - a Chinese temple on Sijao Island.

A few days later, after a trip to the ferry office to sort out the confusing and contradictory ferry schedules, we were on our way to another island in the East Sea, one of the largest of China’s offshore islands. This island group has one of the most important Buddhist temples in Asia, and was occupied by the British during the first of the Opium Wars with China in the 1830’s. The rich and civilized island was ultimately exchanged for the barren rock of Hong Kong in a treaty agreement, to the dismay of London.

More important to us than the island’s history were the many beaches open to the east and the north, and the deeper waters offshore, ensuring some juice to the incoming swell. We found rooms at one of many seasonal hotels near the main beach, once again at a bargain rate thanks to our Chinese speakers, and once again: completely empty. Apparently Chinese go to the beach in summer, and once summer is over; they don’t go to the beach!

We went out the next morning to have a good look around, and while the northern portion of the island proved to be unsurfably flat, the southern beaches were picking up swell. Perfect sandbars were exposed in the morning low tide, and by the time we got to the most exposed southern beach in the late afternoon, the light was perfect and there were lefts and rights peeling from the middle of the beach to both sides. The boys were on it, and much peak-splitting occurred with every wave being ridden to its maximum potential.

The best waves on the island proved to be one beach further up, angled directly to the east, and the scene of a bizarre afternoon ritual. Fully dressed Chinese wedding couples, the ladies in white gowns and the men in white tuxedos, were brought to the beach every afternoon to pose for photos as part of their wedding package. As “Wedding Beach” had the best waves on the island, we became part of the wedding packages; couples posing with surfers and the photographers moving couples around on the sand to get a particularly sick off the top or gouging cutback in the background.

The second or third time we went to “Wedding Beach” for the afternoon high tide, a wizened old lady with a face like a prune popped up out of nowhere and demanded money to use the beach. The wedding groups had not arrived yet, and looking around, it was clear the parking area and indeed much of the beach was littered with rubbish of all types. A refusal on our part to pay the requested fee escalated to a furious argument in Chinese, as we maintained “If you ask for money; clean the damn beach”. Considering there are commercial groups coming here, and now recreational users; “if the beach is important to your village; clean it up. Starting now”. The vicious old shrew was unimpressed with our reasoning, and slunk off muttering vile threats and curses, and did not return. The waves were good, and the wedding groups arrived as per their usual schedule.

While we were scouting the offshore islands for waves, Antony Colas from France, a world expert on tidal bores, had been in Hangzhou south of Shanghai to scout the famous tidal bore on the Quiantang River, known in Chinese by the eloquent name of the “Silver Dragon”. After following the bore by taxi along the banks of the river for several cycles with two longboarders; Antony said it was rideable, and due to get bigger and bigger as the full moon approached and widened the swing between high and low tide.

We reconfirmed our reservations with the only hotel in the area, and left the islands for Hangzhou, first by ferry, then driving through one of the most heavily industrialized regions any of us had ever seen. A thick haze hung in the air, as literally thousands of small and large factories dotted the stone-flat countryside, making a random assortment of products from foam pillows to glass beads to alkaline batteries. Industrial development on a massive scale is taking place all over the coastal region of China, and powering the export-led drive to expand their economy and raise living standards to first-world levels.