Surfer/Writer/Director
The Birth of Chinese Surfing

“Thruster Diplomacy.” Matt George on The Great Wall, circa 1986. Photo: Warren Bolster via the Surfing Heritage and Cultural Center


The Inertia

It certainly is one of the, let’s say, more curious footnotes in the long history of competitive surfing. Or perhaps curious isn’t the right word. Let’s try extraordinary. As when, back in 1985, the editorial team at SURFER magazine, led by Paul Holmes and assistant editor Matt Warshaw, found themselves navigating a labyrinth of international negotiations in an effort to coordinate with representatives of the People’s Republic of China in dispatching a team of surfers to participate in the Communist country’s newly initiated National Sports Policy. And trust me, when it came to global surf travel, this was hardly what The Endless Summer had in mind.

For the Chinese government, this sort of cultural exchange was serious business. In the detailed academic treatise “Sports and Physical Education in China” (2002), authors Robin Jones and Jim Riordan lay out how, beginning in the 1980s, that country’s sports development began a marked transformation. Citing that in years past the State Council On Sport, traditionally controlled by the State Material and Human Resources department, concentrated on prioritized goals, with sporting diplomacy being one of the foremost (remember the 1970s “ping-pong diplomacy?” What, you’ve never seen Forrest Gump?)

However, along with the 1980s sweeping economic reforms had emerged a new national sports policy, “…revised from ‘Friendship First, Competitive Second,’ advocated by Mao Tse-Tung, to an all-out quest for global recognition…used to demonstrate superiority over capitalistic systems.” The primary target, Jones and Riordan explain, was “to produce a winning formula in Olympic and international competition, using the tried-and-true model of early selection and training, special sports schools and sport science.”

You got to hand it to them — the Chinese were way, way ahead of the game when it came to this sort of disciplined mindset. So much so, that when dealing with the decidedly bohemian powers-that-be at SURFER, a perception gap was inevitable. In fact, after months of effort, the project had inexplicably been shelved, and was only revived with the help of a San Francisco-based non-profit organization that specialized in Chinese-American delegation coordination, that apparently convinced the Chinese State Council on Sport that surfers would be ideal representatives to their end of achieving potential Olympic glory. 

The earnestness of this particular premise notwithstanding, the entire caper was doomed from the start. Let’s just put aside that in 1985, Olympic surfing events didn’t exist — nor would they ever, if the International Olympic Committee’s opposition to adding any more subjectively judged sports to the Games was to be believed. Instead, let’s consider the team of surfers chosen to represent the U.S.A. on this Quixotic mission. Leading the delegation was renowned, yet wildly-independent surf journalist Matt George. He’d be joined by the wonderful Rell Sunn, representing Hawaii not as a competitor, but more in her role as a cultural ambassador, Californian Willy Morris, who had a fine competitive record but, having virtually invented the term, was better-known as a pioneering “freesurfer,” and Jon Damm, an affable flight attendant and photogenic Pipeline specialist.

“To demonstrate the viability of Olympic surfing in Communist China?” asks George today, looking back on the whole experience. “You couldn’t have picked a worse group of surfers. All four of us, in our own ways, were freedom riders.” 

There was also another hitch, when it came to effectively organizing and packaging this groundbreaking diplomatic effort: someone had already beaten them to it. That someone was 35- year-old Peter Drouyn, Australia’s supremely talented, demonstratively eccentric former surf champion who, unbeknownst to the SURFER team, had, while pursuing a university degree in modern Asian studies, approached the Chinese government with the idea of training young Chinese surfers for what he believed would be inevitable Olympic surfing competition. (Drouyn was worth listening to, having previously introduced man-on-man competition to the fledgling world championship tour at the 1977 Stubbies Pro.) 

“Isn’t that wild?” remembers Matt Warshaw. “At some point in the SURFER planning process, and pretty late in the game, we found out that Drouyn was already there. Kind of messed up the whole point, which was for the SURFER trip to be the first to visit China.” 

Yet also not known at this point was that after only a couple months spent working primarily with young Chinese gymnasts, Drouyn’s Olympic prep program had been summarily terminated, and that by the time the SURFER team was scheduled to arrive in Beijing, he had already left the country, with no explanation given.  

To avoid even a hint of any sort of improprieties, the SURFER mission was apparently a much more formal affair, with a rigidly adhered-to itinerary and ever-present government ‘handlers’ overseeing a number of official visits, sumptuous five-star banquets and pre-approved sight-seeing tours in and around Beijing, including to the famous Great Wall of China, located proximally in the Huairou District. Here, George and Morris, carrying their surfboards, climbed up its steps and, ditching their handlers, trekked away from the hordes of tourists and gewgaw hawkers (“God only knows where the world’s supply of those stuffed frogs playing guitars come from.” George wrote in his subsequent SURFER feature, “Beyond the Great Wall”), where they enjoyed a once-in-a-lifetime photo-op with accompanying lensman Warren Bolster. 

After several days being shepherded around the capital, the visiting surfers were loaded onto a tour bus, and with a trailing military transport truck loaded with their surfboards made the almost 3000 kilometer overland trip to a picturesque spot on the country’s southern coast called Spring Bay, on Hainan Island. Here they were stoked to encounter modest but imminently-rideable windswell…and something totally unexpected. 

“We’d just come in from our first surf of the day, when from up on the path leading onto the sand came a file of marching children,” wrote George. “To our amazement, five were dragging crudely-shaped surfboards. We were left speechless as they walked right over and lined up in front of us, completely calm and silent. Standing before us was the legacy of Peter Drouyn’s visit a few months earlier — a cadre of children who were introduced to surfing on this very spot; nine little keepers of the faith, obediently awaiting instruction and guidance.”

Three pleasant days of surf instruction were spent with this rag-tag group of young Chinese surf pioneers, who, both naturally athletic and extremely disciplined, picked up the basics of the sport with startling alacrity. Then, at day’s end, and following a dinner of what Willy Morris would later dub “chainsaw duck,” the Americans would adjourn to a tearoom with their hosts — two handlers, a translator and a pair of Beijing newspaper reporters — and talk long into the night about surfing.

“They seemed most fascinated by the freedom of expression it allowed,” wrote George. “They viewed it with the same respect as a martial art, and would make nightly reports to the All-China Sports Federation, noting the progress of this remarkable ‘sporting exchange.’”

But as to the relevance of this entire enterprise, George was ultimately left with serious misgivings.

“What to say back in Beijing?” he concluded. “What to report to the sporting authorities about the gold medal potential of Chinese surfers in an Olympic sport that has yet to exist? How were they to explain that this emotional sport, as they now told us, appeared ‘Less about winning, and more about living?’ I could only shake their hands and say thank you for everything and wish them good luck.”  

Upon its conclusion, the 1986 SURFER mission to China left its participants with plenty of fond memories, but convinced that their visit most probably did nothing more than to convince the country’s sporting authorities to cross surfing off their list of potential Olympic aspirations. 

Thirty-eight years later, Siqi Yang, a 15-year-old former springboard diver from Liangshan Yi, in Sichuan Province, became the first Chinese surfer to compete in an Olympic surfing event, fearlessly hucking herself over the ledge at Teahupo’o, in Tahiti, where she eventually reached the third round of women’s competition. 

Guess Drouyn got it right after all. 

 

 
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