The Living Root club team races in the 45th annual Boston Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival on Sunday. [Photo by Will Wang for chinadaily.com.cn]
Thousands of people enthusiastically participated in dragon boat races on the Charles River this weekend, along with the cultural fair celebrating the Chinese traditional event.
This year's Boston Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival, held Sunday near the John W. Weeks Footbridge on the river, featured 68 teams with about 2,000 paddlers from across Massachusetts, other New England states and New York. They competed in 500-meter races, which started in 1979.
"We want to promote dragon boat racing; we want to use this platform to promote Asian culture … people come here to learn, for exchange or just for fun, too," Gail Wang, board president of the Boston Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival, told China Daily.
Wang said that over the past year, dozens of volunteers for the 45th annual festival have been working diligently to preserve the tradition while also offering a fresh perspective to attendees.
"It's very important for [connections] of people … culture exchanges, and that's what we do," she said.
The festival, also called Duanwu, is a traditional Chinese festival observed on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. It commemorates the life and death of Qu Yuan (340-278 BC), an exiled poet and politician during the Warring States Period (475-221 BC). Upon hearing that his state, Chu, had fallen, he committed suicide by drowning himself in the Miluo River.
The Santander team races in a new boat donated by Hainan Airlines for the 45th annual Boston Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival on Sunday. [Photo by Will Wang for chinadaily.com.cn]
Legend is that the people of Chu rushed to the river to rescue him, but they arrived too late. So they splashed furiously and threw zongzi (traditional rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves) into the river as a sacrifice to his spirit and to keep the fish away from his body.
Zongzi and dragon boat racing have remained traditions for Chinese people until the present day. The historical significance — combined with fun, competitiveness and athleticism — has transformed it into a sport that attracts participants from around the world. It also serves as a gateway for people to learn about Chinese history and culture.
"I love to come to the Dragon Boat Festival. I think it's one of the best things that happens in Cambridge, and we're so delighted to welcome all of the rowers and everyone to Cambridge," said Jason Weeks, director of the Cambridge Art Council. The docks for the dragon boat are located on the Cambridge side of the Charles River.
"It's very, very strong. We have just a robust community of folks here who keep all of the creativity alive." He said it was nice "to have a festival like this where we can all come together for the day and celebrate not just the races and the sporting aspects, but also especially the cultural aspects".
Weeks said the shape, design and decorations of dragon boats are part of Chinese culture and art. "The arts and the culture always create the opportunity for us to come together successfully and in a spirit of celebration," he said.
A paddler exults after finishing a race on Sunday. [Photo by Liu Gang for chinadaily.com.cn]
"No matter what the politics of the day or the difficulties or challenges we might face as a country or an area, I think the arts always bring us together and create social cohesion," he said. "And the festival is one of the biggest and best ways to bring all of the different communities of Cambridge together to celebrate the Chinese culture and history."
Roger Jones also enjoys dragon boat racing and the spirit behind it. He is the author of The Final Victory, the first and only novel to center on the thrills and challenges of dragon boat paddling and the daunting challenges for a team of 12 men and eight women, all cancer survivors over the age of 50.
"In 2005, I was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, and a couple of years later, I started paddling with a dragon boat club in Charleston, South Carolina," Jones said. "In 2010, we decided that we wanted to put an all-cancer team together to see if we could compete at the national championship level."
He said he really didn't think they had much of a chance to win, but they won the national championship.
"It was a great honor, and we earned the right to represent our division in Hong Kong the next year," he said, but the team wasn't able to go because some people were ill, and several passed away the next year.
"The book is a novel based on this team and what we did, what we accomplished, and just the inspiration that it brought to a lot of people, and the hope that it brought to people not quitting, giving up and moving forward and achieving something they didn't think they could ever achieve," he said.
A dragon dance is performed at a cultural fair during the festival on Sunday. [Photo by Liu Gang for chinadaily.com.cn]
"The thing with dragon boating is the support of a group. You're on the water, and (when) you are with other people who love you and support you, you just seem to do better," he said.
Jones said that he has been involved with the Dragon Boat community and has learned more about Chinese culture.
"It's a wonderful, beautiful culture. I think the beauty of it is 20 people working in unison — that's the teamwork."
Dragon boat racing is now also a popular sport for individuals to practice wellness.
"I'm really enjoying it. It's my first festival. It's my first dragon boat race, and it's been an incredible experience," said John Micale, a member of the Boston 1 Team.
"It's really challenging, but it's also really exciting," he said. "It's also a lot about teamwork. So the team working together is one of the most important things. Timing is really important.
"Part of the reason I'm enjoying it is because of the diversity, cultural diversity of participating," he said. "The more we can bring people together from different backgrounds, different countries, the better place this world will be."
Some of the many people who took part in the dragon boat races on the Charles River this weekend. [Photo by Liu Gang for chinadaily.com.cn]
"I think I was intimidated doing this as a first-timer, and everyone has just been so incredibly welcoming, incredibly supportive, even if you've never done it and you are brand new, come give it a try.
"Everybody brings something different, and even just on our team, everybody has a different perspective in a different background on it, and we race stronger as a team," she said. "We're the stronger company for it, and I think it's a really wonderful way to celebrate it," she said.
"It's been really fun to see that kind of progression," said Peter Murphy, 26, a Team Tango member. "A big challenge is trying to get everyone in sync."
"I've been sort of like an observer. … It's been really cool to learn about," he said. Murphy said that he liked the sound of the drum at the start of the race.
As an educational hub, Boston attracts students and scholars from around the world. Students and university alumni from higher education institutions in the US and China also participate in dragon boat racing.
Along the Charles River where Harvard University is located, contestants also expressed their interest in dragon boat racing at their "home river".
"Well, we're super tired. We finished our third race, but really happy to be here," said Kassandra Diaz, a 26-year-old Japanese literature graduate student, of the Harvard dragon team. The competition started at 7 am and concluded at 5 pm, with heavy rain in the morning.
"The weather cleared up!" she said. "Most of us are locals, so to be able to get on the Charles where we've been doing our practices and actually compete with a lot of our fellow teams has been really amazing."
"There are 20 paddlers in a boat, as opposed to your regular three to six people in a canoe, so you really have to communicate with each other a lot of times without words," Diaz said. "Your body and being able to feel the boat move together as a team and can make all the difference in a race. So that's a really appealing part of it for us."
Aric Lu, a 28-year-old bioengineering PhD student, said many people looked forward to the race.
"It's one of the few times where the entire dragon boat community in Boston comes together. We get to see paddlers that have been a part of our team in the past, you know, other people that are looking to just move to Boston and learning about dragon boat for the first time," he said. "It's always great to paddle, meet new people and have a lot of fun."
He said that "dragon boating in particular is one of those things that brings a lot of people together and kind of bridges some of those gaps that sometimes occur".
"And it's also just another opportunity for a lot of people from a lot of different cultures to come together and work together and, you know, participate in something like this."
Chinese students and dragon boat alumni teams proudly represent their colleges overseas while also promoting Chinese traditions and culture where they now reside.
"We are very proud to represent our school and our region," said Zhang Lida, of the Sun Yat-Sen University team. She said that dragon boat racing is especially popular and more intense in South China.
The team members designed a special T-shirt for the race, which also serves as a 100-year birthday gift to their beloved university.
"We are so proud of this event, and we invited all of our friends and tell them where the event came from. We told them the history of the tradition," said Wang Yongtao of the Sun Yat-Sen team.
"It's really exciting, really unites all the people and all the members of the alumni of our university," said Cao Yajun, 24, of the Peking University (PKU) Alumni Association. "I feel a strong, emotional feeling from the team.
"It's a great way to promote this really fascinating, traditional Chinese culture through the races and through all the amazing cultural events in the festival," he said.
The PKU alumni team, Dreamega, finished first in its division.
"Each year we have an exciting race, and we have some new team members," said Shirley Shen, of the Tsinghua Alumni Association team. Shen, who said she has participated in the event for seven years, said that people are passionate about joining the team with school pride and sporting spirit.
The Tsinghua team finished third in its division.
"I'm so very proud. I'm proud to express our culture and our tradition, especially our younger generation as well," she said. "It's a precious opportunity for us to join a team while we work together as adults but we can compete like a child."
