Pan, from Kenting in southern Taiwan, was born to a Taiwanese mother and English father. He competes in the World Surf League circuit and has surfed both competitively and recreationally across Asia, including in China, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

He says he enjoys the variety of surfing styles that longboarding offers and appreciates the “flow” of the classic style. “But I also have a high-performance longboard which I can pretty much throw around like a shortboard,” he adds.

For almost 50 years, shortboards have been the wave-riding tool of choice for most surfers, from weekend warriors to world-class pros.

But in recent years there has been a resurgence of longboarding, so much so that at some surfing locations you see more longboards than shortboards – especially on smaller, less powerful waves, for which longboards are ideal.

Some surfers, such as former European champion Sam Bleakley, have compared the differences between riding a shortboard and a longboard to the differences between rock and jazz: shortboarding, he says, has the high energy, thrash and bash of hard rock, while longboarding is all about style and grace.

“I like to explore how talented surfers think like great jazz musicians, using invention, complex rhythm, timing and spontaneity to transform impossible wave scenarios into beautiful but challenging music,” says Bleakley, 40, who has been surfing since he was five. “I love the flow and footwork that can turn longboarding into a graceful and poetic dance act, from take-off to kick-out.”

The size, buoyancy and larger surface area of a longboard make it easier to catch waves, with modern longboards generally being between nine and 12 feet in length. That they are more stable than a shortboard means longboards are popular with beginners, but advanced techniques require all the skill and dedication of shortboard surfing.

Manoeuvres such as walking the board (where the surfer performs a delicate foot-over-foot “walk” up and down the board), “hanging five” and “hanging 10” (riding with five and 10 toes respectively over the nose of the board) are only mastered after years of practice.

The boards used hundreds of years ago in Hawaii, the home of surfing, were of a different order altogether. “Olo” boards, which were used only by royalty, could be up to 24 feet in length and weigh as much as 200 pounds (91 kilograms), while “alaia” boards, used by commoners, would be around 17 feet in length, although still as heavy as an olo board.

The smooth, flowing technique that characterises longboard surfing originated in the 1950s and ’60s as surfboards became lighter and easier to handle, thanks to the introduction of polyurethane and polystyrene foam and hard outer layers of fibreglass. Before this, surfboards had been made from various hardwoods such as balsa and paulownia and weighed 40 pounds or more. That meant even the most experienced surfers did little more than ride in a straight line along the wave, performing few manoeuvres.

It wasn’t just the weight and bulk of these boards that made them so difficult to handle. Until surf pioneer Tom Blake introduced the surfboard fin in 1935, boards were controlled and turned by dragging your foot in the water, and wipeouts were par for the course.

Modern longboards have various fin “set-ups”, usually a single fin or three fins, with the latter allowing skilled surfers to pull off similar “carving” turns on the face of the wave to those performed by shortboarders.

The weight of a modern longboard is now down to around 20 pounds following the recent introduction of lightweight expanded polystyrene and epoxy resin construction techniques, which helps manoeuvrability enormously.

Southeast Asia was relatively slow to catch on to the surfing scene, but surfers like flamboyant Australian pro Peter Drouyn were exploring the coast of southeast China as early as the 1970s and ’80s.

Bleakley, who wrote the first surfing book to be translated into Mandarin Chinese (Surfing Tropical Beats), tells of how Drouyn attempted to persuade the Chinese government to hire him as coach of their future national surf team.

“He failed, but fellow international surfers were called up five years later by the new minister of tourism for Hainan, Zhou Ping, to develop surfing on the island,” Bleakley says. “Their joint efforts paid off and the local surfing scene took off organically between 2001 and 2006, and today surfers from around the world flock to Sun and Moon Bay for the annual women’s and men’s [International Surfing Association] World Longboard Surfing Championships.”

In recent decades surfing has developed throughout Southeast Asia, with vibrant scenes now established in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Hong Kong. Longboarding is very much part of the scene in most of those places.

There are three primary sources of wind and swell that feed surf-hungry Asian surfers: unpredictable and sometimes dangerous west Pacific typhoons between August and November; consistent northeast monsoon swells between November and March; and the southwest monsoon which produces smaller waves between April and October. For surfers who are prepared to travel, there are always waves to be had somewhere.

In Taiwan there are now more longboarders than shortboarders, Pan says, with the sport particularly popular around major towns and cities. “It’s easier to learn, which obviously attracts people and is one of the reasons that it is making a comeback,” he says.

Pan, who is sponsored by clothing brand Quiksilver Taiwan, adds that in Asia in general, longboarding has become particularly popular with female surfers. “This makes the line-up [the part of the ocean where surfers wait for the waves to roll ashore] more interesting and relaxed,” he explains. It also bucks the worldwide trend, since surfing of all types has traditionally been a male-dominated sport.

Pan’s first big contest was during the 2017 season, where he won a “wild card” entry into the Taiwan Open World Longboard Championships which effectively allowed him entry without first having to qualify. He also won a place on the Taiwanese team in the 2018 ISA World Longboard contest on Hainan.

“I’ve found that there is more opportunity in longboarding to progress on the international level, so this year my plan is to enter as many events as possible with the aim of qualifying for the [ISA] World Longboard Championship by working my way up the ranks, not by wild card,” he says.

Beginner surfing hotspots: six perfect locations to catch your first wave

Bleakley, who spends much of the year exploring the world’s lesser-known surf spots and writing about his adventures for various surf publications, finds the “flow and timing” of longboarding to be one of its great attractions.

“I like to ride boards that smooth out edges and angles with interconnected moves, woven together with footwork, so the ride forms an elegant whole rather than a set of isolated, disconnected moves. The beauty of style is not about standard or ability, it’s about aesthetics – crisp, cool styles always look stunning.”