Dragon Boat Festival

Yesterday was a public holiday in Hong Kong. Yesterday was 5 May (as per the Chinese calendar), the Dragon Boat Festival.

According to legend (the simplified version), there was a great scholar and an honest official named Qu Yuan. He was a good official who did what he could for the people. This of course was not pleasing to the corrupt officials who back-stepped him in front of the Emperor. Soon, he dropped out of the Emperor’s favour and the Emperor no longer listened to his advice. Once he realised that he could no longer helped the people of his country, he committed suicide by jumping into the river. The people were very upset. To prevent the fishes from feeding on Qu Yuan’s body, the people made dumplings from glutinous rice wrapped in lotus leaves and threw them into the river so that the fishes would eat these dumplings instead. There was no mention of the dragon boat. I don’t know when the dragon boat came about. But the rationale is the same, i.e. scare the fishes away, so they won't eat Qu Yuan’s body.

Anyway, legend aside, Hong Kong is home to the largest dragon race in the world. This year, a record 208 teams with 4,000 people competed in the Stanley International Dragon Boat Championship.

When we first came to Hong Kong, we were young and energetic. We took part in many corporate activities, including the annual dragon boat race! I remembered going with Geoff to many dragon boat race practices. Although sitting under the hot sun at temperature well above 30C is not anyone’s idea of fun but watching them practice was. As this race is open to all, as long as you can get enough people together and get you hands on a dragon boat……you are on! No need to point to the obvious – these paddlers are amateurs! During one practice, there were only THE dragon boat and a junk in the bay area. I remembered thinking to myself, it’d be funny if the dragon boat ran into the junk. Not a likely scenario as the bay is not small and the junk is STATIONARY! But…..you guessed it…..the dragon boat with more than 10 accountants went straight into the junk!

Fun as it may be, we are too old for that. We escaped the cheering crowds and colourful boats by joining some friends on a junk trip to a quiet bay for some R&R. And we made sure there were no amateur dragon boats with accountants near by!