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Surfers from home and abroad are drawn to Sanya, Hainan province, as this tropical paradise is developing its tourism to a new height. |
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Surfers from home and abroad are drawn to Sanya, Hainan province, as this tropical paradise is developing its tourism to a new height. |
Two endorphin-starved years stuck like a brick in one of Beijing's myriad red walls were recently washed away in my first surf in the Middle Kingdom, off Sanya on the southernmost island of Hainan.
Cutting back into the foam on my first waist-high swell, generated by a storm system in the South China Sea in August, Mother Nature coiled up from my feet and around my torso like some magic spell to break my soul-destroying 24-month adrenaline drought.
While the waves that day hardly stack up to those I've surfed at home in Australia, a man's not looking for champagne when he crawls out of a desert.
No, the freedom I felt trimming again across 1.5m swells wrapping around Luhuitou (deer turns back), famous as one of China's most remote outposts, more than adequately wet my whistle.
The day was made all the more pleasurable by what this lifelong surfer considers to be China's best and most promising business, Surfing Hainan, the only surf shop in the southern resort city of Sanya.
After hiring a board from the lone employee manning the fort that day, I was spirited to the above right-hand point break (a wave that breaks onto a rocky point) in the shop's surf mobile, a minivan decorated in homage to Hainan's water buffaloes.
With a storm dumping buckets of rain on the coastline and my visiting sister happily ensconced in our luxury hotel, I stroked out for the break about 400m from shore.
There I encountered Surfing Hainan owner Brendan Sheridan, a charismatic Californian gifting the world's most populous nation the sport-cum-lifestyle of surfing.
"You're lucky because we've never surfed this before and it doesn't get this good very often," he gargled above howling wind, pelting rain and the excitement of a 4-wave 1.4m set bearing down on us.
As Sheridan and I enjoyed our favorite water therapy, my jet-lagged sister indulged in hers in a bathtub at Sanya's newly opened Mandarin Oriental resort, from where she could also watch the South China Sea let off some summer steam.
What she saw and what we rode, however, paled compared to the almighty pulse generated by Typhoon Ketsana, which claimed almost 400 souls in the Philippines before wreaking havoc on Hainan in late September.
It had so much oomph in it a 50m-long steel jetty was washed from its pylons by massive swells - perhaps 6 m - at the normally bathtub-flat Dadonghai.
"I paddled out there and realized this was not a good idea," Sheridan said after braving the sea with genuine derring-do the same day. "I need to do some breathing exercises or something because that was just hairy out there."
Each year several storm cells and hurricane systems coalesce with a number of favorable point and reef break set ups on Hainan, not to mention a dearth of surfers, to make it well worth thinking about for China-based surfers, especially those holed up in offices in Hong Kong and Shanghai who need to get some water in the gills.
"It's good down here in winter," Nate Mettler, a ripper from Hawaii, assured with raised eyebrows after ripping up a few tiny waves off Dadonghai Beach in earlier September.
"I was skeptical at first but I was down here last winter and it was actually good and consistent. You've got to come back in winter - it's why I moved here."
The exquisite irony of surfing uncrowded waves in the world's most populous nation is not lost on anyone who surfs Hainan's south-east.
Californian Charlie Hooter, who was on RnR (rest and recreation) when an Afghanistan-based contract coincided with Typhoon Ketsana, panted, "It's heavy out there."
"Man, I never expected it to be this big when I looked up the place on the Net."
The influx of Hooter and his like presents a Catch 22 for Sheridan, who's often divided between business interests and an idyllic corner of an increasingly surf-crazy world.
"It's always going to be a balance," admitted the hospitable bachelor, alluding to the benefits of a slow trade: empty waves.
One of Sheridan's employees, the aptly name Da Hai (big sea), is arguably China's best surfer. Despite moving to Sanya from China's frigid northeast and taking up surfing only five years ago, the 37-year-old almost upstaged his boss and much more experienced surfers when he almost made it past 4-m set waves the day Sheridan found himself out of his depth.
"Almost!" said Da Hai, who was unable to disguise his relief at being back on shore. "It's really big out there."
Originally from Harbin, Heilongjiang province, Da Hai is the perfect example of someone sold fin key and barrel on the surfing lifestyle.
"I can never go back because I am hooked on surfing," he said one afternoon while trying in vain to keep his naughty black Labrador pup, Dan Dan, from terrorizing Dadonghai Beach. "If I have sons, they will surf too - definitely!"