Belly Slater breaks half-a-century of surfing myth-making!
For a very long time, and until recently, surfing existed in a halo of mystique. The perception was, if you could surf, you lived close to the Gods.
Many, still, cling to this myth.
Well, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which took control of mainland China after defeating Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang in 1949—forcing it to flee to Taiwan and form the Republic of China—has sent shivers down the spines of surfing core lords with proof that… anyone… can surf.
And, wait for it, surfing is…easy.
China Surf Park is an indoor surfing facility in Beijing, an urban surf simulation that uses a standing wave for year-round sessions in eighty two degree water, and not to be confused with Surfland on Hainan Island which has a PerfectSwell tank.
In the clip below, we see a corpulent Chinese boy in tracksuit, fat in the Asian sense and not in the American impossible-to-believe-someone-could-shovel-that-much-shit-down-their-greedy-throats manner, although someone in the comments had given him the epithet Belly Slater for his fat tummy and stubby legs, dancing through the gate of the pool and tearing hell out of the little stationary wave including a chop hop, a move that has eluded most surfers over 40 their entire lives.
Proof that learning to surf, and shred, is all about drills and repetition and that you don’t have to have a steely gaze and big lips and broad shoulders and hair that renders yellow at its ends. The Tim Winton Breath myth, y’might say.
And the wave pool and the arrival of tank jockeys proves that getting good at surfing ain’t no diff to becoming the best speed skater at your rollerskating rink or the king of Dance Dance Revolution in the arcades.
The coldest truth ever, yes?