Dragon boat racing brings fun, adrenaline to Boston(2)

Dragon boat racing is now also a popular recreational sport.

"I'm really enjoying it. It's my first festival. It's my first dragon boat race, and it's been an incredible experience," John Micale, a member of the Boston 1 Team, said.

"Part of the reason I'm enjoying it is because of the diversity, cultural diversity of participating. The more we can bring people together from different backgrounds, different countries, the better place this world will be."

Hilary Nicholson, 34, of Team Tango, representing Tango Therapeutics, said this is the first year that her team is participating in the race.

"We've never done it before, so it's been a really fun experience, just learning how to do it, learning all the differences," she said.

"I think I was intimidated doing this as a first-timer, and everyone has just been so incredibly welcoming, incredibly supportive. Even if you've never done it and you are brand new, come give it a try."

Peter Murphy, 26, another Team Tango member, said a big challenge is trying to get everyone in sync.

"It's been really fun to see that kind of progression," he said. "I've been sort of like an observer. … It's been really cool to learn about."

Along the Charles River where Harvard University is located, students also expressed their interest in dragon boat racing at their "home river".

"Well, we're super tired. We finished our third race, but really happy to be here," Kassandra Diaz, a 26-year-old Japanese literature graduate student, of the Harvard dragon team, said. The competition started at 7 am and concluded at 5 pm, with heavy rain in the morning.

"The weather cleared up! Most of us are locals, so to be able to get on the Charles where we've been doing our practices and actually compete with a lot of our fellow teams has been really amazing," she said.

"There are 20 paddlers in a boat, as opposed to your regular three to six people in a canoe, so you really have to communicate with each other a lot of times without words. Your body and being able to feel the boat move together as a team and can make all the difference in a race. So that's a really appealing part of it for us."

'Bringing people together'

Aric Lu, a 28-year-old bioengineering PhD student, said many people looked forward to the race.

"It's one of the few times where the entire dragon boat community in Boston comes together," he said. "It's always great to paddle, meet new people and have a lot of fun."

He said dragon boating in particular is "one of those things that brings a lot of people together and kind of bridges some of those gaps that sometimes occur".

"And it's also just another opportunity for a lot of people from a lot of different cultures to come together and work together and, you know, participate in something like this," Lu said.

At the festival, Chinese students and dragon boat alumni teams proudly represent their colleges, while also promoting Chinese traditions and culture.

"We are very proud to represent our school and our region," Zhang Lida, from the Sun Yat-Sen University team, said. She said dragon boat racing is especially popular and more intense in South China.

"We are so proud of this event, and we invited all of our friends and tell them where the event came from. We told them the history of the tradition," Wang Yongtao of the Sun Yat-Sen team said.

Cao Yajun, 24, of the Peking University Alumni Association, said the races and cultural events at the festival are good ways of promoting this traditional Chinese culture.

"It's really exciting, really unites all the people and all the members of the alumni of our university," he said. "I feel a strong, emotional feeling from the team."

The PKU alumni team, Dreamega, finished first in its division.

Shirley Shen, from the Tsinghua Alumni Association team, said she has participated in the event for seven years, and said people are passionate about joining the team with school pride and sporting spirit.

The Tsinghua team finished third.

"I'm so very proud. I'm proud to express our culture and our tradition, especially to our younger generation as well," she said.

"It's a precious opportunity for us to join a team, while we work together as adults but we can compete like a child."