New in China: indoor surfing, combo of skateboarding, snowboarding, surfing and wakeboarding
- Beijing indoor surfing, or flowboarding, centre opened last year by a board sports fan whose firm makes surf simulators is trendy place to beat the summer heat
- Between beers, and with lights flashing and music pulsing, surfers using bodyboards – for beginners – or standing on flowboards ride a 3-metre artificial wave
On a Saturday night in May, disco lights flash on and pop music spreads through an indoor surfing centre in Beijing’s Chaoyang District. This is the Wavorhouse Urban Surf Club, where, in between drinking beer and chatting, young people of many nationalities ride a 210-square-metre (2,260 sq ft) surf simulator wave that is three metres high.
Indoor stand-up surfing, or flowboarding, is fast gaining popularity in China’s landlocked capital city, where riding the waves to the sound of musical hits has become a trendy way to beat the summer heat and smog.
Thirty-nine-year-old Guo Yunchuan is the manufacturer of the club’s surf simulator and founder of the club, which opened last year. He set up Beijing Flywave Surf Simulator Development Company to produce the water-gushing machines in 2016. The company has since sold about 20 of them, more than half in China, where they are being used at water games parks and hotels, including the MGM Grand Hotel in Sanya on Hainan Island.
His club in Beijing is the only stand-alone indoor surf centre in China, Guo says, though he expects there will be more.
Guo lived in Los Angeles from 2011 to 2015, and got the idea for the club on a visit to San Diego, where he saw a surf centre with two surf simulators. “I was very impressed,” he says. Guo decided there and then that he wanted to introduce flowboarding to China.