Nothing is quite as colourful, noisy and downright Chinese as a dragon boat race. Roaring spectators, pounding drums, churning white water and exploding firecrackers make enough noise to deafen the gods. Chinese often use the word renao to describe dragon boat races. Renao literally means “hot and noisy” and has a very positive meaning (translate as lively/bustling). Over the past two decades dragon boat fever has spread far and wide so that now everyone from English grocers to Midwestern soccer moms can be found donning coloured headbands and chopping madly at the water.

Legend has it that the custom of dragon boat racing began over 2300 years ago with the drowning suicide of poet Qu Yuan. When fishermen failed to save him, they beat the water with their paddles and threw rice dumplings into the river to keep the fish from eating his body. However, the history of dragon boat racing as we know it today is surprisingly short. The International Dragon Boat Federation was only established in 1991. Even in the birthplace of modern dragon boating, Hong Kong, the local Dragon Boat Association only dates back to 1976. Perhaps dragon boat racing is not so ancient after all. Maybe the myth of the drowning poet is simply a fig leaf covering a very recent fiction. Social scientists enjoy nothing more than sneaking up on such sacred cows and tipping them over. As it happens, Chinese dragon boat racing traditions are not as recent or as one-dimensional as they might appear at first glance.

For one thing dragon boat racing traditions vary greatly from region to region. In the fishing villages in and around Hong Kong, for instance, the dragon boat festival is bound up with the worship of Tin Hau, the sea goddess. Fishermen place her statue on the dragon boat to pay their respects and pray for good catches and calm seas throughout the coming year. In Xianyou County, Fujian Province, locals race boats two months earlier, on the 30th of March, to commemorate the deaths of Song Dynasty loyalists who refused to surrender to the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty. Xianyou oarsmen keep time by singing the verse:

Strike the drum!
Strike the drum!
Sing of spring!
Sing of spring!
Mourn loyal souls!
Though spring light fades
It will return!
The loyal soul roams
One thousand years!

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