My interest in river bodysurfing began with the film Come Hell or High Water, which featured a striking scene of a lone bodysurfer riding a wave, not in the ocean, but in a river in Montana. In another recent video, surfing legend Gerry Lopez demonstrated his ability to bodysurf a river wave near his home in Bend, Oregon.
After a bit of research, I discovered that river bodysurfing is not a new diversion, but an ancient pastime stretching back over 1,000 years, with some of the earliest accounts coming from China and Hawaii.
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China: Children of the Tide
The first written descriptions of bodysurfing appear in dynastic China, where the Qiantang River near Hangzhou produces one of the world’s largest tidal bores. Extreme incoming tides, which occur annually in late September, funnel into the mouth of the Qiantang river, creating a surging wave called the Silver Dragon.
During the Song dynasty (960–1279), crowds gathered each year in late autumn to watch this natural spectacle. In 1250 CE, a government official named Zhou Mi described a festival in which hundreds of tattooed Chinese watermen from the Wu region swam out to the river wave to perform nong chao, or “tide play.”
In Shifting Currents: A World History of Swimming, historian Karen Carr highlights Zhou Mi’s account as the earliest written evidence of river bodysurfing. Additionally, Nik Zanella’s Children of the Tide further details the ancient tradition of nong chao er performed by the watermen of Wu, who entertained large crowds with their bodysurfing skills.
Hawaii: He’e Pu’e Wai (River Surfing)
Half a world away, Hawaiians were also riding river waves dating back centuries. Throughout the Hawaiian archipelago, continuous rains in the volcanic mountains often caused flash floods, sending torrents of water rushing seaward. At river mouths, these outflows collided with ocean surf, forming powerful stationary waves that traditional Hawaiians would swim and bodysurf.
In 1822, British missionary William Ellis described Hawaiians “playing at the mouth of a large river,” delighting in chaotic conditions that would have been deadly for non-Hawaiians:
They frequently play at the mouth of a large river, where the strong current running into the sea, and the rolling waves towards shore, produce a degree of agitation between the water of the river and the sea, that would be fatal to a European, however expert he might be; yet in this they delight: and when the king or queen, or any high chiefs, are playing, none of the common people are allowed to approach these places, lest they should spoil their sport.
During an 1875 cultural tour around O’ahu for Queen Emma, Hawaiian chief John A. Cummins staged a dramatic display of He’e Pu’e Wai, or “river surfing”, by breaching a sand bar river dam that had built up next to the ocean. Cummins later published an article in The Mid-Pacific Magazine about the river bodysurfing display put on by the locals:
This bar or dam had accumulated for some years and much water was backed up. I had seen this opened on a former occasion, and the sports of the natives in swimming the raging waters, and determined to give Her Majesty and party a view of this ancient sport. To this end I had a gang of men cut and carry away much of the embankment so that but little would be required to bring down the flood.
Cummins continued:
An opening of 20 feet or more having been made in the dam the water rushed out as the rate of 30 knots or more. The bore or surge caused was very high, and only two men and two women dared to play on this water-surf, called Pue-wai. One strong man of fine form went across and back holding up the tip end of his malo. This was the grand sport of the day and was the subject of comment by all who witnessed it.
The Hawaiian tradition of river bodysurfing endured into the modern era. In the book Hawaiian Surfing: Traditions from the Past by John Clark, Mark Dombroski recalls bodysurfing Waimea River in the 1970s, alongside fellow lifeguard Eddie Aikau:
I started riding the stationary waves at Waimea in the early 1970s. Bodyboards weren’t around then, they hadn’t been invented, so I just bodysurfed. In fact, Eddie Aikau was already a guard at Waimea when I started guarding there in 1974, and he and I both bodysurfed the waves when the river ran.
Riding the Current
It seems river bodysurfing is not just a recent curiosity but an ancient practice. From the tattooed “children of the tide” riding the Qiantang bore in dynastic China, to Hawaiians riding temporary river mouth waves at breaks like Waimea on O’ahu.
These cultural traditions reveal surfing’s broader roots: not just in oceans, but in rivers, where skill and joy converged in some of the earliest forms of wave-riding.
For more information about the history of bodysurfing, click here.
