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ADVENTURES IN ASIA WITH LADYB, LAOLAO AND GONGGONG
Story #24: 19 photos and videos of Dragon Boat Festival races and much more. A beloved, 2,500-year-old tradition celebrated everywhere in Sinoland!
Taizhong (Taichung), Taiwan, China.
This is going out tomorrow at the post office!
Dear Grandaughter Mila,
I started going to dragon boat festivals back in the nineteen-nineties, when Grandmother Maflor, your mother and Aunt Chara I were living in Beijing. Over the seventeen years now that I have lived and worked in China, I have gone to a number of them. They’re always a lot of fun. The atmosphere is very friendly. It is not really about competition, although there can be races where people who train, they’ll have races for the big, burly guys who are really serious about being the fastest during that year’s festival.
For everyone else, it’s really a family and community affair. Kids come out. Moms race. Dads race. They’re rooting for their family members, parents, grandparents and all the other boats they don’t know.
This is not about high level sport. It’s about camaraderie, good sportsmanship and honoring a tradition that goes back over 2,000 years. Teams are comprised of large families, employees from businesses, hospitals, government offices, high schoolers, middle schoolers, teachers, club members, restaurant owners, shopkeepers, etc. For the Dragon Boat Festival this year in Taizhong (Taichung), which I just went to on May 31 (it lasted three days total), it was organized by Taiwan Province’s Ministry of Education, not even the Ministry of Sports. Thus, it is definitely considered to be pedagogical, teaching history, good sportsmanship, enjoying sports for the sake of sports, rooting for family, friends, all the other racers, eating together, taking pictures and having fun.
Everybody is a winner. They all get applauded, they all get cheered during and after the race, whether the spectators know the racers or not. Of course, they all get souvenir medals. Maybe all the same, or first, second, and third place, since they do keep the times of each race’s boats, usually 3-4 at a time.
Another big tradition with Dragon Boat Festival is eating. As you can see its history below, Zongzi, sticky rice dumplings (samosas really) are very much a part of the tradition. I actually had a chance to make Zongzi with our dear restaurant-owning, Lin Family friends, here in Puli. I’ll do another report on that.
Dragon Boat Festival is on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar, so it’s never quite the same (http://radiosinoland.com/2016/03/03/chinese-lunar-and-agricultural-calendars-explained-a-china-rising-radio-sinoland-cultural-special-edition/). It’s usually during the last two weeks of May and the first two weeks of June. Therefore, pretty much everywhere, the weather is very good. It’s a national holiday, so schools, banks and businesses close for the festivities. Another nice thought about Dragon Boat Festival is knowing this is being done in tens of thousands of cities, towns and villages all over Sinoland, with millions and millions of everyday citizens who participate and have a good time together.
As you can see in the photographs and videos below, it’s about having fun together as a community. You will also notice in the videos that the teams are not all men. It’s obviously a sport that involves strong arms, shoulders, and backs, which favors men. So, depending on the location, there is a minimum number of women who need to be a part of each team. Some of them are all women, from gyms and social clubs. Typically, it’s four or five women in each boat.
From head to tail, the dragon boats are 10 to 12 meters long. They’re about a meter and a half wide with two rows of rowers left and right, and empty, they weigh about 300kg. The course can range from 250m to yes – up to 20km long! Taizhong’s was about 400m. As you can see in the beginning video, they’re hard to get started, because there’s a lot of people in them and they are heavy. In addition to the rowers, there is a rudderman in back, a drummer to keep cadence and a catcher at the dragon’s head to grab the finish-line flag.
In closing, Dragon Boat Festival is a Chinese celebration and social gathering that goes back almost two thousand five hundred years. It’s hard to imagine that it was being celebrated during the life of Jesus Christ! Take a few minutes to read its short history below; it makes the experience much more meaningful.
Enjoy Dragon Boat Festival 2025 vicariously through my day in Taizhong. It’s colorful, a lot of fun, very relaxing and of course all of the street food makes it a feast too! Below, there’s much more after the visuals — including your birthday gift!
Videos and photos
Image #1: Here is the race course in the morning, before activities began. You can see the dragon boats tied up along the docks.
Image #2: riverside was very pleasant. It was clean, there were plenty of big shade trees, a nice breeze coming in off the sea, deluxe portapotties and food stands nearby. I opted to be at the finish line.
Video #3: Aaaaaaaand, they’re off! Very slowly at first. It takes a while for them to build up a head of steam.
Video #4: this clip is fun, because the winning boat’s flag catcher is humping and pumping to make the grab, as they go across the finish line.Everyboat gets love from the crowd, fast or slow. You hear a lot the phrase, Jiayou (加油), which literally means, add gasoline. In English, it means, go, go, go!
Video #5: This race had a clear winner, but for 2nd, 3rd and 4th place, it was down to the wire.
Video #6: since the boats grab and drop the flags as they go across the finish line, there were two enormous jet skis to pick them and put them back. I suspect their size comes in handy when they go out into the South China Sea.
Image #7: these two girls are cheering for every boat in every race, as are all the other spectators, including me. It’s all about camraderie, sportsmanship and having a good time together.
Video #8: after each race, the boats return to the starting docks. All along the way, they get cheered by all the spectators. Most of them unfurl their organizations’ flags. The first one says, 精诚小太阳（jincheng xiao taiyang), which is a technology company making keyboards, based in Guangdong, Mainland China, so they must have a factory here.
Video #9: notice how both boats suddenly briefly raise their oars upright together. This is because they are crossing in front of the race organizing team, which is above the yellow banner on the opposite side, as a sign of respect and thanks for all their hard work. The yellow banner says, 司节台 (sijietai), which means Festival Command Platform. You can hear the organizers talking to racers and crying out Jiayou! It’s a really friendly atmosphere.
Image #10: this little girl is all dressed up in an ancient Chinese style dress, what we would call cosplay. Different people, male and female like to go out in Han, Tang, Song and Ming Dynasty clothes to strut their stuff.
Image #11: this is the banner at the entrance on my side of the river. Look carefully and what looks like a wave behind the boat silhouette is actually a dragon’s back!
Mila, for your third birthday, you will surely be the only young lady in Oklahoma with a 2015, made-in-China collector’s Hello Kitty tea/hot chocolate service! To understand it better, Line is an Asian version of WhatsApp, out of Japan. If you live in Taiwan Province, you have to have Line App to communicate with friends and businesses, and to find your way around, just as we depend on WeChat in Mainland China and WhatsApp in the West.
Image #12: 2015 model. It’s a collector!
Image #13: Hello Kitty Friends…
Image #14: here is your birthday card and a small, handmade silk purse to hide something inside.
Image #15: LadyB says Happy Big Three Birthday!
Origin and History of Dragon Boat Festival
Among traditional Chinese, the fifth day of the fifth lunar month can bring bad omens, diseases and disasters. Poisonous animals and insects can come out of hiding, such as snakes, scorpions and centipedes. People put calamus and mugwort above door frames to stop evil spirits from coming inside. They also take herb baths to prevent skin diseases. Nobody wants to be born on 5/5, as these children can bring misfortune to the family. Thus, dragons are closely associated with 5/5, on which today’s Dragon Boat Festival falls. This is because dragons chase away evil spirits.
There are several stories and legends about the origins of Dragon Boat Festival. The one I first learned back in the 1990s is considered the most authentic. It commemorates Patriotic Poet Qu Yuan (340 – 278 BC).
In the late Warring States Period, Qu Yuan was a revered poet and politician who loved his country and was very patriotic. Unfortunately, his Chu State was defeated by the Qin, the latter which eventually unified all of China for the first time. Humiliated for his country, Qu Yuan refused to surrender. Instead, he committed suicide by drowning in Miluo River on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. Hearing the terrible news, citizens rowed boats for days, hoping to recover his body. To prevent his corpse from being gnawed on by fish and crabs, they threw Zongzi (sticky rice dumplings – thus a huge tradition to eat during the festival), to make sure they would not be hungry. They also poured realgar wine into the river, which contains traces of arsenic, to ward off evil spirits.
Image #16: Qu Yuan, honored all over China 2,400 years later.
Another story that predates Qu Yuan is State Advisor Wu Zixu (559 – 484 BC). It is popular in the region of Shanghai. Wu Zixu was a loyal statesman to his government. After his father and brother were killed by the King of Chu, he went to Wu Kingdom and from there, helped his King crusade against Chu King. It worked. The Chu were defeated. At the same time, a new Wu emperor came to the throne after his father’s death. Others in the court, jealous of Wu Zixu’s celebrity in defeating the Chu, began a campaign of slander and lies against him, accusing Wu of treason. The new emperor believed it, so Wu Zixu was forced to commit suicide with a sword. His body was thrown into the city river on 5/5. To honor his loyalty and spirit, the people made 5/5 a day of celebration for Wu Zixu, by getting in dragons boats.
Image #17: Wu Zixu, being venerated in a museum after 2,500 years.
The legends keep on coming: Cao E, a girl at age of 14 in Eastern Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD), lived in a poor family with her father in a fishing village. After a heavy thunderstorm on 5/5, Cao E’s father decided to take advantage of the weather conditions by going fishing on Shunjiang River. After the storm, the waters were dangerous, but he insisted. Taking off in the early morning, Cao E waited at home nervously. At sunset, he hadn’t returned, so Cao E went to the river bank to search for her father, without any luck. Neighbors told her to give up, but she kept crying and shouting along the river. Eventually, she saw her father rolling in the waves. She swam into the river to save her father. A few days later the village folk found Cao E, with her father on her back, both dead in the river. People built a temple to honor her filial piety (which still exists), and on 5/5, she is honored with dragon boat races.
Image #18: Cao E in a 1694 book with an anthology of great heroes and heroines.
One of the latest Dragon Boat Festival origins is Qiu Jin (1875 – 1907), a revolutionary of her times. She was a renowned poet, artist and skilled in literature, music and horse riding. She was a martyr on 5/5. Since early Quan Yu and Qiu Jin were great poets, Dragon Boat Festival is also called Poet’s Day.
Image #19: a photograph of latter-day martyr and great poet, Qiu Jin. She closes the Dragon Boat Festival circle of virtue with her ancient poet comrade, Qu Yuan.
Another fun Dragon Boat Festival tradition is to balance an egg at high noon on 5/5. if you do, it will bring good luck until next year’s races! Here is a short video and article to show how it’s done,
https://pages.daysunited.com/experiences/dragon-boat-balance-an-egg
Love from Taiwan,
LadyB, Laolao and Gonggong
Reference: https://www.travelchinaguide.com/essential/holidays/dragon-boat/
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Jeff J. Brown is a geopolitical analyst, journalist, lecturer and the author of The China Trilogy. It consists of 44 Days Backpacking in China – The Middle Kingdom in the 21st Century, with the United States, Europe and the Fate of the World in Its Looking Glass (2013); Punto Press released China Rising – Capitalist Roads, Socialist Destinations (2016); and BIG Red Book on China (2020). As well, he published a textbook, Doctor WriteRead’s Treasure Trove to Great English (2015). Jeff is a Senior Editor & China Correspondent for The Greanville Post, where he keeps a column, Dispatch from Beijing and is a Global Opinion Leader at 21st Century. He also writes a column for The Saker, called the Moscow-Beijing Express. Jeff writes, interviews and podcasts on his own program, China Rising Radio Sinoland, which is also available on YouTube, Stitcher Radio, iTunes, Ivoox and RUvid. Guests have included Ramsey Clark, James Bradley, Moti Nissani, Godfree Roberts, Hiroyuki Hamada, The Saker and many others. [/su_spoiler]
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