The dragon boat festivities
Every year, an estimated 30,000 of the world’s top dragon boat athletes flock to Hong Kong to compete in the summer Dragon Boat Festival races. A lot of the events are focused around the traditional fishing village of Stanley, home to the Stanley International Dragon Boat Championships. The races do also take place across the territories, including in Sai Kung, Sha Tin, Castle Peak Bay, Aberdeen, Tai O, Discovery Bay, Cheung Chau, and Tai Po.
Spectators usually flood the waterfront in these locations, contributing to a merry-making party vibe. If you’d rather not mingle with the hoi polloi, one of the best ways to view the races is from a junk boat. Get a junk party together, charter a boat, and take a front row seat at the dragon boating races on the water!
The competitions are usually followed by the Dragon Boat Carnival, held along the Victoria Harbour promenade, where water-based activities mix with beer-fuelled fun and live music entertainment. For something a bit more traditional, head to the sleepy village of Tai O on Lantau Island, where they will host a God’s Parade, also known as the Dragon Boat Water Parade.
This parade dates back more than a century ago when the area was hit by a plague. In an effort to halt the epidemic, local fishermen borrowed deity statues from surrounding temples and paraded them through the town’s waterways on dragon boats. The plague did die down, but the custom still carries on to this day. Deities are collected a day before from the Yeung Hau, Tin Hau, Kwan Tei, and Hung Shing Temples. A ritual called ‘picking the greens’ is performed before they set off, which involves plucking fresh grass from the nearby hillsides and placing the blades inside the dragon’s mouth. The statues are then towed around Tai O’s iconic stilt houses, followed by races, a send-off ritual, and a large feast to round off the festivities.