Sean Collins of Surfine.Com in Huntington Beach recently took a surf adventure to China.





China wants to explore ways to become more involved in surfing, to develop local surf resorts, as well as host international competitions. So the Chinese hired Collins to research where their best spots are and to determine what kind of surfing quality could be offered. The crew included his 21-year-old son, AJ Collins, and Aaron and Taylor Pai of Huntington Surf ‘n Sport. They checked out more than 50 spots in 10 days.

The Chinese were stoked and will offer their first event this November, the ASP Women’s longboarding World Championships event on Hainan Island.

The following is the recount of the trip from Collins’ notes:

If you want to surf in China, better forget about your Cheetos’ addiction.

All of our food was fresh seafood, rice and vegetables – along with pig’s feet, monkey something-or-other and other assorted unidentified edibles that we didn’t try.

I lost eight pounds in 10 days, probably because there was no junk food, and especially no Cheetos, along the coast.

In the country, the Chinese people are fit – they walk everywhere.

When we drove into the larger cities with tourist attractions, most of the people added another 10-20 pounds.

But driving is also something you don’t want to do in China. They love to lean on the horn at every opportunity. Best to hire a local surf guide or a driver – with a loud horn.

Pedestrians are clueless; we were amazed that we didn’t see at least 10 people killed as they blindly walked across a highway with a bunch of cars barreling toward them.

Drivers argued about the best way to get where we wanted to go. After a while, I just pulled up Google Maps on my iPad or iPhone with a marker on where we were, and where we needed to go and tried to take a nap until they got us there.

Not easy with potential human road kill around every turn.

In this one area they wanted us to look in northeast China, our guide was the local police chief, and our boards were strapped on top of his SUV right next to the red and blue emergency lights on top.

He would drive 50 MPH down these skinny one lane streets in small towns with people, kids and dogs all popping out from little alleys or doorways inches away from the street.

Our translator girls were fun and were definitely interested in the boys. They wanted to try a few shots of Tequila one night, and the results were pretty funny, watching them try to walk and speak English at the same time. They came down to breakfast the next morning wearing those big dark sunglasses.

We were like circus freaks there — especially the young, blonde, blue-eyed AJ. Taylor and Aaron also got second looks. Everywhere we went, there were giggling girls and people doing double and triple takes as we drove by with surfboards on top of the car.

Our handlers liked to fill our schedule with eating, meetings with local officials, eating, driving, more meetings, more eating, more driving.

We explained that on surf trips, we usually eat light throughout the day and something more filling at dinner. We also like to surf more than 20 minutes at a time. After a while we began hiding out in our rooms or sneaking down the beach for a little quiet surf time.

One day, we snuck away from our handlers to surf at this one good little left past our hotel and within the hour there were 30-plus people with binoculars and cameras watching us.

When we tried to go back to our hotel, we were literally chased down the beach by people (mostly girls with boyfriends in tow) to get a picture with us. Well, not with me, but with the younger, better looking skinny guys.

The water quality was extremely clean on Hainan Island. I was worried that it would not, with industrial waste coming out of all the rivers and estuaries. But they keep the water clean because of the robust seafood industry with all kinds of aquaculture farms (shrimp, fish, seaweed, etc.) in the estuaries and all along the coast.

The Chinese are green. Practically all the street lights had solar panels and many had little wind generators on top. In windier areas there were literally thousands of these huge energy windmills along the coast and in the valleys.

I figured if we wondered into a restricted area that people would politely tell us not to go there. But once, when I walked on an unfenced helipad on a coastal bluff with my camera and telephoto lens to get a better angle to see a surf spot, I was literally chased out by an army guard with a huge gun. Oops.

Another time, I couldn’t figure out why they wouldn’t let us drive into this one spot as there were good roads to a nice beach. I found out later that it was a nuclear submarine base. Double oops.

When I was asked by the Chinese what we needed for our research during this trip, I asked them to provide us with a private airplane to fly up and down the coast to photograph potential surf spots.

A foreigner in a plane shooting the coastline of mainland China, would be shot down, they said – absolutely for sure.

Part two, next Saturday.

Contact the writer: corkysurf@aol.com