When I was in Urumqi, I was hanging out with a guy from Shenzhen. I asked if he liked snowboarding, he said yes, but he doesn't have a snowboard.
We get to the mountain, and there's some hints, on the ride over I'm talking about falling on ice, and he says he has fallen a couple times. Maybe it's translation or he just meant bad falls. He says he doesn't know how to put his boots on, so I figure maybe he's only ever used boa laces. We take the gondola to the top of the black diamond, we get our boards on. Guy says "How do I stand up".
Not only had he never snowboarded before, he had never touched snow before.
So I helped him ride to the bottom and got him practicing on the bunny slope.