By Abbie Wu

June 21, 2007

On Saturday, June 9, members of the North Carolina Chapter of NAAAP joined a crowd of thousands at the Ramsey Creek Park to help celebrate the second annual Charlotte Dragon Boat Festival.

What the online articles about dragon boat couldn’t prepare me for was actually participating in the festival. As the day progressed, I managed to wake up and was given an impromptu lesson in how to paddle. I thought having canoed before I was all set but the explanation left me realizing what a difference there was between the two sports. Later on, Lieon Kit, striking me as some sort of paddling god come down from the lofty heights of Vancouver, managed to share enough information to save our team, riddled with complete amateurs, from being uncoordinated enough to tip ourselves over or paddling in circles. I watched the first couple of heats with apprehension. Some of the teams seemed to skim across the water with perfect coordination; others looked like bugs that were missing a couple of legs hobbling along. I didn’t want to be the person that put our team into the later category.

The first heat was exciting and a real learning experience. We came in third place (out of five boats) in our first heat. This seemed to awaken the competitive spirit in our team. We watched the other boats to see what strategy we could glean from the way their teams worked. We reorganized the paddlers to account for an injured shoulder, unbalanced weight, and varied experience and skill levels. I found myself sitting in the very front of the boat this time and was told I was responsible for helping to set the pace of the boat. No pressure though, right? I prayed my dance experience would help me synchronize with my bench partner’s paddling. We also received a lecture on how we needed to use our whole bodies, not just our paddles, to help move the boat forward. Apparently the part of paddling where you throw your weight forward to put the oar in the water is also supposed to help propel the boat forward. A couple of us in the back of the group joked that it might be easier to just raise a sail at the beginning of the race. Was there anything in the rules about sails?

Whether it was the practice, the reorganization, or just a better understanding of dragon boat physics, we did much better during our second heat. At the beginning of the race, I hoped that we would be able to pull off getting second place as we were competing against a team that practiced regularly and had even brought their own gear (life vests, high tech paddles, and bench pads). To my surprise, as we drew near the finish line of the race it actually appeared that we were in the lead. The improvement in how well we worked together as a team was really enough to get excited about, but thinking there was a chance we had first place really had us cheering. Back on shore we celebrated when we realized that not only had we taken first place but we had also improved our course time by over four seconds.

Between the second round of races and our last we had enough time to walk around and enjoy the festival. While dragon boat racing might be Chinese, other Asian cultures (including India, Indoesia, Japan, Korea, Laos, Myanmar, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam) were also represented at this cultural celebration. Events included: music and dance performances, martial arts demonstrations, the Miss Asian Festival Pageant, cultural displays and lots and lots of delicious food. I got a chance to meet individual members of NAAAP (I was delighted to find that there were people from the RTP area there with similar interests) and refuel and rest for the final race.

We had hoped to slip into one of the top two tiers of racing but were still pleased to see that we went into finals at the top of the consolation tier.

Despite the heat, the early rising, and being very sore afterwards, I have to say that I had a really good time. This event was a wonderful chance for me to meet new people and try new things. I was very grateful to both NAAAP and the festival coordinators for providing many people with a chance to connect with the Asian culture in new and different ways. I would go so far as to say that everyone on the team seemed to have a pretty good time. There was even some discussion of trying to figure out how to practice more during the year so that we could do an even better job next year. The team that won first place in the grand finals, the Wachovia Dragon Wave, was only three seconds ahead of our best time. With a little practice, I think we might just improve enough to actually give them a run for their money…