Enter the Dragon Boat
By Inland Boater Staff
The first dragon boat festivals took place along the banks of the Yangtze River more than 2,000 years ago, around the same time the Greeks were holding their athletic competitions at Olympia.
While the dragon boat festivals haven’t attained the same level of popularity that the Olympics have over the centuries, the trend is definitely on the rise and chances are you can find one in a city near you.
“It’s a great and fun sport and it’s got 2,000 years of history,” says Peter Kai-Jung Lew, race director for the Boston Dragon Boat Festival. “Dragon boating first appeared in Boston in 1979, but it wasn’t until 1980 that we had our own festival.”
Boston holds the title for hosting the nation’s oldest Dragon Boat Festival. It has been going on for 28 years and this year, 31 dragon boat teams competed, with between 30,000 and 40,000 spectators coming from all over New England to enjoy Asian-themed food, arts and crafts, and music.
Boston is one of several cities that host dragon boat festivals across the country, transforming old traditions into modern-day sporting and cultural events. Corporate America has even taken an interest in the ancient Chinese contests.
Dragon boat racing as a sport emerged approximately 2,500 years ago. The dragon boat festival, or Danwu Jie, made its first appearance around 278 B.C. The festival commemorates the death of Chinese poet and statesman Qu Yuan, a well-respected member of Chinese society who lived in the ancient state of Chu.
After falling out of the king’s favor and witnessing the conquest of his homeland by a powerful neighbor, the deeply saddened Qu Yuan drowned himself in the Mi-Lo River. The people of Chu, in a futile effort to save their beloved leader, boarded dragon boats and rushed to rescue him. In his memory, every year on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month (usually early June), the dragon boat festival occurs and the attempted rescue is re-enacted in the form of the dragon boat races.
It’s The New Softball
“The Dragon Boat Festival is very popular in Taiwan and in China,” says Charlotte Shen, chairperson of the 2008 Washington D.C. Dragon Boat Festival. “It’s one of the three major festivals in Chinese culture.”
According to Shen, a Taiwan native who came to the states in 1977, the D.C. Dragon Boat Festival began in the area’s Chinese community. The Chinese Women’s League’s Washington, D. C., chapter began presenting their concept at the more than 15 Chinese language schools in the Washington area and even hosted fund raising events to produce the area’s first festival.
Now the festival draws support from companies including Booze Allen Hamilton, Ernst & Young and IBM, and it is one of the country’s largest annual festivals, Shen said.
The majority of dragon boat festivals in the country have corporate sponsors. And in many ways, dragon boat racing has become the new softball in the corporate world.
“There are a lot of corporate teams,” says Wendy Witsoe, founder of Dynamic Events & Management, in Knoxville, Tenn. “In our Knoxville festival, I would say that 80 percent of teams are made up of corporations and companies that do it for team building.”
Witsoe’s company started six years ago and has since been able to devote itself exclusively to the production of Dragon Boat Festivals, due to the rising popularity of the events.
Last April, Witsoe’s company partnered with T.C. Thompson’s children’s hospital in Chattanooga, Tenn. There, the dragon boat races raised more than $113,000 for charity.
Experience Not Necessary
How did a Chinese annual festival make its way to America? It was an effort by the Chinese government to increase tourism. In order to share Chinese culture, the People’s Republic of China produced dragon boat festivals at various locales around the world.
“The Chinese Government has been pretty good about creating relationships with their sister cities all over the world,” says Arin Chang, founder of Burnwater, a dragon boat accessories retail company. “They would have a festival in Vancouver, which started about 20 years ago. At the world expo, the Hong Kong government would donate dragon boats to Vancouver. After the festival, they would just leave them there and people would start racing them for fun.”
China did the same thing in Portland and Toronto, as well as in New York and other cities on the east coast.
From there, the sport grew. An estimated 100,000 people have taken part in dragon boat races this year, according to the International Dragon Boat Federation (IDBF). At least 3,000 teams are expected to compete in more than 100 U.S. cities, and more than 60 countries hold membership in the IDBF.
“What’s really neat about dragon boat racing is that you don’t need a lot of equipment or experience,” Chang says. “So someone, especially a corporate team with only one or two or three practices can compete with other corporate teams. You get around 20 people in a boat, so it’s really a team sport.”
The traditional dragon boat is a long and narrow wooden vessel powered by anywhere from 18 to 20 paddlers depending on the race, plus a drummer to keep rhythm and a “steerer,” to keep the boat on course.
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Dragon boats originally were about 40 feet long and their heavy teak composition rendered a weight in excess of 1,700 pounds. Since then, the general design has remained the same, but rather than 40 feet of pure hardwood, the boats are composed of fiberglass.
“Since the sport has grown so much, dragon boats are produced to an international standard set by the IDBF,” says Lew. “The old traditional boats maneuver almost as well as the new ones and they’re just as fast. They just have more weight.”
Joining a team can be as simple as the click of a mouse. Most teams or organizations have registration available right on the Web. As a social team sport that is built on the concept of working, eating and drinking together, the sport attracts a variety of people, says Witsoe.
“So many different types of people are involved,” Witsoe says. “It goes from the youth in our tri-cities races to even the elderly. The oldest person we have had was 81 years old. And it’s equally split between men and women, from the athletically gifted, down to the people who just come to raise money for charity and have fun.”
