'Tide players' with red flags of yore embodied risk, faced rich rewards

In his keynote speech at the B20 Summit, President Xi Jinping quoted two lines from Song Dynasty poet Pan Lang: "Tide players stand at the crest of waves, holding red flags that are not even wet."

It was a reference to a sport that predated surfing as we know it by hundreds of years.

In the second half of the Song Dynasty (960-1279), during which Hangzhou was the nation's capital, surfing was a big event, drawing huge crowds and even the presence of the emperor.