Were Chinese monks the original surfer dudes? How this Italian coach discovered the sport’s Chinese roots at a Kunming temple

Over on Hainan Island, Italian Nik Zanella is hanging 10 and coaching China’s next generation of Olympic surfing hopefuls – and it all started with a monk riding a mythical fish

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Italian surf coach and author Nik Zanella riding a wave at Xintan Bay in his home base of Hainan Island, China. Photo: courtesy Nik Zanella

Mark Graham

Published: 7:45am, 24 Aug 2024Updated: 11:11am, 26 Aug 2024

Nik Zanella had long suspected that surfing had been around in China for a thousand years or more. During extensive academic research, numerous references had cropped up in ancient poems and literature, suggesting that wave-riding may have featured as early as the Tang and Song dynasties.

But the Italian had failed to unearth any significant visual evidence until, by chance, he came across a mural at Qiongzhu temple in landlocked Kunming, Yunnan province, back in 2006. Right before Zanella’s disbelieving eyes was a scene depicting a rather jolly figure, draped in garish ceremonial robes, riding a mythical fish, arms splayed out for balance and stability – a monk poised in a kind of classic Hawaiian surfer-dude stance.

As a lifelong practitioner of the sport, Zanella realised the monk’s broad grin suggested a state of sporting nirvana, and seemed to validate the theory that surfing, however unlikely, had roots in the Middle Kingdom. The intrigued visitor went in search of the Qiongzhu temple abbot, who was initially more concerned about greeting busloads of potentially revenue-generating tourists, but reluctantly agreed to take a closer look.

“The abbot didn’t know what I was talking about,” recalls Zanella. “He didn’t get why I was talking about surfing, but he was mesmerised by a Westerner asking weird questions. I physically had to drag him in front of the mural and ask him, ‘What is that guy doing?’ Then he realised it was surfing, as he had seen it on television, and said in China it was not called surfing, it was called nong chao er, which translates as ‘children of the tide.’”

In the book Children of the Tide, author Nik Zanella, suggests that people were surfing in China more than 1,000 years ago. Photo: courtesy Nik Zanella

That later became the title of the board-riding scholar’s story, which also looks into the long history of surfing in China, with detours documenting Mao Zedong’s love of swimming in rivers and oceans. Zanella’s Children of the Tide, which took five years to research and write, received praise from historians and surf aficionados alike, putting a spotlight on the otherwise scantly researched topic of surfing in China. According to Zanella, the monk-surfing bas relief in Kunming, created in 1880, was likely inspired by the artist observing wave riders along a river bore in Hangzhou, in Zhejiang province, a consistent, and challenging swell, revered by serious surfers.