Lucky I started last week with refamiliarising myself with the various rain warnings as lo and behold, we were hit with an amber rain warning on Friday followed by a black raining warning (with landslip and thunderstorm warnings thrown in) on the Saturday. Not a bad way to start the Tuen Ng Festival long weekend.
Sunday was one of the glorious HK days that you read about. A low haze day with blue clear skies greeted us for the dragon boat festivities. Dragon boating is an integral part of the Tuen Ng Festival.
I joined my work team when the email went around asking for volunteers. We needed to train once a week for three hours and then nearer to the event, we had double training sessions and then also one on a Sunday. From where I live to where the training was taking place, it takes about 1 ½ hours for me to get there (and about the same home depending on traffic). I was dedicated and only missed one session due to my holidays in Australia.
The key to good dragon boating is timing. Now, I’m not known for being the most co-ordinated person in the history of the world, or even the second most co-ordinated person. This is one of the reasons why I tend to prefer solo sports because that way, I’m only affecting me rather than a group of people. Unbelievably I have turned out to be very good at dragon boating.
I watch the person diagonally opposite me, the person next to me and the person immediately in front of me without watching my paddle. This is apparently the secret of a good dragon boater and I was able to pull this all together. I could barely believe it myself when on my second training session, I was pulling my paddle through the water in time with my colleagues. Mr Shallot can vouch for my thrill at such a simple pleasure.
I’ve loved being out on the water early in the morning with no sound but the paddles dipping in the water in unison. It’s great to be able to tell when a person is going too fast or too slow and to then make adjustments. I found the whole thing very peaceful and therapeutic.
After all this training, it meant that I was able to participate in both the heat and the final on race day. We only had enough people for one and a half teams so those that attended the most training sessions could do both events whereas those that trained less could only do one.
Our first race was at 9.48am. We assembled in the parking lot at Stanley Main Beach in our new corporate gear. We warmed up, collected our boat and were out on the water. We had a slow paddle out to the starting line, lined up our boat and we were off. Of the twelve boats, we came in 7th which secured us a place in the ‘first round of losers final’. That was at 4.50pm.
The time in between, we went to the boat that was hired for the day. They call these ‘junks’ but they are not like the Chinese junks that you would expect. They are quite nice boats. They all surround the race area forming a u-shape around the start. Many companies had them for their staff complete with food and drinks.
Mr Shallot and I broke our usual rule of no alcohol before midday (unless it’s a champagne breakfast) at 10.15am with a beer. It had taken us a while to get there and I had rowed. That was all the excuse that was required. I had decided that I’d have to pace myself given the time of the final.
We were able to leave the junk after lunch and walk around Stanley Markets for a while before our next race. Same as our earlier event, we came in 7th. We are consistent performers though not very good with our starts on race day.
There were a few disappointments for me in the whole experience. Firstly, that the event is actually quite short. It’s about two minutes and then it’s over. For all that practice, at something that I’m good at, I would have preferred the event was much longer. The real tragedy however was that our boat ran out of beer just after lunch!
How is that possible?!!!!
* Thanks to Gordon Parsons for the title to this post. It’s been sung by heaps of other people including Slim Dusty but I’m not sure if they’re all the same version.