Dragon Boat Festival -2026
Jeff Brown keeps his granddaughter up to date with the Dragon Boat Festival.
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!
This is last year’s Festival: https://sovereignista.com/2025/05/28/my-favorite-chinese-festival-dragon-boats-or-duanwu/
There is all kinds of shapes and sizes of boats.
For the video clips, and a raft of more information, see Jeff’s newsletter here_