Mountains behind, waves ahead

At 5 am, the first orange-red glow spread across the sea off Bali, Indonesia, as 12-year-old Xu Yuehan walked toward the waves with a surfboard under her arm.

Xu comes from Anning, Yunnan province, an inland city surrounded by mountains and nearly 1,000 kilometers from the sea. In Bali, however, where she was attending a surfing training camp, her days revolved around the water.

She got up before dawn to catch the early waves and surfed until about 9 am. After breakfast, she returned to the water for another session. She spent the afternoon on physical conditioning and ended the day with stretching, massage and recovery.

The schedule kept her in the water or the gym for most of the day, but she did not find it exhausting.

"Standing on a wave makes me feel free," she said. "I can try whatever moves I want."

Her grueling training regimen is already paying off.

Xu recently finished fourth in the Open Women division at the Legian Boardriders-LSI Club Series 2026 in Bali. The division had no age limit, and some of her competitors were adults more than a decade older than her. Many had also grown up in coastal areas with easy access to the sea.

Still, Xu said she felt neither nervous nor intimidated.

She has been surfing for just over a year but has already won several trophies. In August 2025, she claimed her first national title, winning the girls' under-12 shortboard event at the Guangdong stop of the National Surfing U Series.

Her rapid progress began with a chance encounter during a family holiday in Wanning, Hainan province, over Spring Festival in 2024.

Xu, then 9, noticed a leaflet in the hotel lobby advertising a surfing lesson and persuaded her father to sign her up. She managed to stand up on the board on her third wave.

The sensation of being lifted and carried forward by the water captivated her immediately.

After the family returned to Anning, surfing might easily have remained a holiday memory. But Xu could not let it go.

That summer, she told her family she wanted to return to Hainan and earn a surfing certificate. Her parents suggested other vacation plans, but she turned them down.

"When I see big waves, I don't feel afraid," Xu said. "I feel incredibly excited. I want to learn to surf properly and go further in the sport."

Her mother later recalled seeing the light in her daughter's eyes and realizing that surfing was not a passing interest.

To continue training from her home in Anning, Xu had to fly repeatedly to the coast while keeping up with school. At the end of 2024, she decided to transfer to a school in Lingshui Li autonomous county, Hainan.

Her goal was simple: to be closer to the sea. "After transferring, I could study and train at the same time," she said.