French expat in China finds happiness in spite of the rules
Romain Berard, Beijing, China
Why purchase a boat in an arid, land-locked and river-less city?
Check a map of Beijing, you won’t say that a river runs through it…in fact, there are a few downtown, dark and smelly waterways like the Liang Ma river, but the “liquid” within its banks is not something you look forward to paddle on, much less capsize into. There are public parks with lakes but boating is either forbidden or has to be done with rented duck-shaped pedalboats. The sea is not really close-by, and the two main lakes of Huairou and Miyun in the North are totally forbidden to any nautical activity, including swimming.
But once upon a time in August 2007, I went for a very early Sunday trip with a Canadian friend that wanted to show me the place where he intended to set up a bull semen farm. His land was about 200 km away, in the vicinity of the Eastern Qing Tombs. On the way there, we passed along two lakes (Jinhai Lake and lovely Huangxiu Lake) that seemed open to boating and there were two more lakes close to the farm, including the magnificent Shanguan Lake that boasted clean waters (at least you could see some things under the surface), beautiful mountains, the Great Wall, a small marina and little bungalows you could rent for a week-end. I realized I just found a great spot for boating. But just what boat could I get?
Why a sailing kayak?
So I wanted a boat, but something small enough to be shipped from abroad (China is not a huge market for recreational sailors yet), stored at home and carried around with my small car. I then remembered watching, in Crete back in 1989, an elderly couple paddling a wonderful double-kayak made of wood and canvas. This thing was supposed to pack into tiny bags. Would these boats still exist 20 years later? Google probably would have a few things to teach me.
After several days of frantic search on the Internet, I realized that folding kayaks still existed, I understood that a double version was definitely not packed in small bags but rather in big backpacks, and I narrowed my choice to three brands: Longhaul, Nautiraid and Klepper because they were made of wood + canvas which I prefer over aluminum + Nylon . In the end, I chose the Klepper model (a beautiful red Aerius 2) because it was the only one that had a real sailing rig with leeboards (at that time I did not find the Polish Wayland brand which also makes nice wooden kayaks with sailing rigs, for much cheaper than Klepper)
I got in touch with a French (my German being worse than my Chinese) Klepper retailer and the timing was good, only two weeks before a Klepper massive price hike, and the shipment was targeted to arrive just before the October 1st one week vacation (the Chinese National day is not set in July, curiously).
Chinese specifics
As I said, the target was “delivered before October 1st “. Including customs clearance. Well… in the last days of September, the Beijing customs did not know too much what to do with this artifact. They first requested pictures of the assembled kayak which I printed out from the internet. On the pictures, happy kids were seen playing with their parents on artifacts made of canvas stretched on weird wooden frames. Hmm…Strange… Probably dangerous… Potentially even illegal... Maybe this crazy foreigner will really put this folding thing in the water, stuffed with innocent kids…then of course he’ll drown. A whole family killed, for sure, a disaster waiting to happen. Can we take that risk? No. Clearance stayed. And again. And some more….
Finally the local freight forwarder realized that we were getting nowhere and used a friend’s Trading Company to import the shipment. The Klepper was cleared as “advertising material” and delivered to my house on September 30th. Perfect!
Lesson 1: The customs officers are your friends. For your safety, they might block your kayak importation, even if you declared it correctly, even if it was legal to import it, even if you agreed to pay the duties and taxes.
September 30th 2007 is a date to remember as we frantically opened the cartons and built the Klepper for the first time in my Beijing garden.
First Trials
October 1st morning. Where could we go to try it? The lakes I saw in August were a bit far from home for a first trial.
There was probably some kind of lake closer to where I live, only the ones I know are illegal for anything else than watching the water.
Here again, Google had to know something, Google Earth to be specific. After a few minutes searching, I found two lakes within 30 km of where I live. Strange that I never heard of them before. The great thing with Google Earth is you can measure things. The first lake was 2 km long, narrow, between 2 mountains while the second nearby was maybe 1.5 km in diameter, perfectly round. Let’s go there.
First lake. Behind the dam, only a small pond remains, not even 200 meters long. Time to check the second lake. We arrive there. Behind the dam? Nothing. Just a big corn field where water used to be.
Lesson 2: Google Earth is just as much about history as about geography. Things you see on it might be a bit outdated.
On the way back, we saw signs showing the brand new Olympic Canoeing facility. We tried our luck but it was totally forbidden to the public. Well, time to go home with a dry kayak.
Another day of that same week, we drove to Huangxiu Lake and for the first time assembled and paddled the Klepper that worked like a dream.
Lake choices, week-ends, constructing, sailing, etc
Up to now, all the lakes that we tried within the Beijing Administrative Area were always forbidden for boating. I skip all the interesting dialogues we had on various lake shores, preferably after the Klepper was just fully assembled, with people wearing only armbands as uniform and repeating ad nauseam that even if the big sign did not specifically forbid boating, it was to be construed as a definitely illegal thing to do.
Lesson 3: Do not bother checking statistics, in the mind of a Beijing lake guard, kayaking in summer while wearing a PFD appears to be the most reckless activity you could imagine, far more dangerous than driving or 
demonstrating.
That left us the use of lakes within the Tianjin Administrative area or within Hebei province, it’s just that driving 3 hours to go to a lake, 3 hours of fun (if you count 30 mn assembly as being as fun as paddling) and 3 hours to drive back is a bit tiring, especially for the kids. That made us think more in terms of week-ends than in afternoon trips out, and for that, the bungalows on Lake Shanguan are hard to beat.
Especially that for some unknown reason, some friends were eager to participate and we grew to a little flotilla. During the winter 2007-2008, I built a small skin on frame for my kids (a Seaflea, thanks to the free plans and guidance found on http://www.yostwerks.com website) while my neighbor ordered an Advanced Frame Convertible inflatable kayak from the USA.
As the Seaflea proved quite easy to build and paddle, we set our goals higher and built a huge 6m long double SOF kayak (Sea Tour double) for my 
Canadian friend whose farm near the lakes started it all. After then after that, we built yet one more single kayak (a Sea Tour 15) both of these were made thanks to Yostwerks.
Regarding sailing, I’m still the only one with a real sail rig. It adds another 20 mn to the assembly time so it’s not something I do each time I go out with the Klepper. It’s really fun to sail a kayak, as it is quite narrow and you can’t lean out too much to compensate, it heels before advancing at all. We set last summer a speed record of 10.3 km/h under sail (we take a GPS on board with us) which is quite OK. We also capsized for the first time the same day (luckily, the GPS was in a water-proof bag) but unfortunately no pictures were taken of this event as everybody was laughing so hard at us.
Right now (it’s winter again, the lakes are frozen) I’m busy making a self-designed pair of outriggers using SOF construction technique. If I succeed, I’ll see if the more upright posture of the boat compensates the added drag.
I let you benefit from my hard-found kayakable lakes near Beijing, Huangxiu Lake (40° 9'37.47"N, 117°25'14.27"E) is closer from downtown Beijing, but Shanguan Lake (40°13'52.07"N, 117°43'51.63"E) is my favorite, if you did not figure that out yet at this point of your reading. Why? Well, if the bungalows and mountains are not enough to decide you, maybe it will be the pleasure to tell on Monday morning to the guys in the office: “by the way, I went paddling the Great Wall yesterday…”
