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Free 'n' challenging, but fast becoming popular

By Ren Xiaojin | China Daily | Updated: 2019-10-03 12:32
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A photo taken on September 22, 2014, shows a tourist diving on Australia's Great Barrier Reef. [Photo/VCG]

Even as scuba diving gains momentum in China, another type of diving - free diving - is vying for the spotlight.

According to a report from Hotels.com last year, regular sightseeing has gradually lost its appeal to the country's millennials. More and more members of the younger generation only travel to pursue different lifestyles or look for thrilling adventures.

Free diving, or diving into deep water without an air tank, is growing in popularity among the country's stouthearted young.

Zhao Lei, known as Enzo in China's free diving circles, the country's first free diving coach certified by the International Association for the Development of Apnea (or the AIDA, one of the most recognized free diving associations), said he considers the period starting from his first free dive in 2012 as his second life.

"It felt like opening another gate of my life, I was an office worker in a Fortune 500 company doing the same data analyst work every day," he said. "I felt powerless. But now even I have to travel around the world to teach diving, it's tiring but I'm happy. It was like starting a brand-new life."

He started One Free Dive Club in 2013, China's first free diving club. Now the club has branches in over 10 major cities in China and other locations in Southeast Asia.

"In 2013, I was the only coach. In 2016, we only had four coaches and now we have 32, a quarter of them have a master's degree," he said. "So far, about 8,000 students have graduated from our club."

As the first certified coach, he has witnessed the development of marine sports in China. "In 2013, I was the only AIDA-certified coach, and China only had about a few hundred free divers," Enzo said. "Now, there are about 300 coaches, with the number of divers skyrocketing - I estimate there are about 100,000 divers out there."

The club is also experiencing a fast expansion, he said, as the number of members grew 32 percent from 2017 to 2018, climbing to 47 percent in 2019.

Since the activity involves diving into deep waters after taking just one deep breath, it is considered an extreme sport with considerable risk. Despite its fastgrowing popularity, travel agencies like Ctrip tend not to encourage travel packages with such options, said Zhang Yi, director of themed travel department of Ctrip.

However, risk couldn't stop the country's adventurous young from trying free diving. Han Yaqi, a 28-year-old baker, is a certified scuba diver from Wuhan, Hubei province. She said she planned to learn free diving soon. "To try and discover new things and experience them is the ultimate goal of my life."

Enzo believes diving into deep water after a deep breath, and then returning to the surface after a while, is the charm of free diving. "One breath is enough to set us free," he said.

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