By Jarek
So this story is an oldie but a goodie. It deserved its own post in June 2019 when it happened, but what with T being born and all, I never got around to it. Our recent return to Guangzhou has had me thinking nostalgically about it, and I decided it was time to chronicle this for good.
First, the context:
There is a holiday in China called Dragon Boat Festival. Particularly in South China, it is celebrated (how else?) with Dragon Boat Races. Large teams load into long dragon boats (essentially shallow canoes decorated like dragons) and race all-out for glory to the beat of a drum. Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Taiwan are well-known for their races. It’s exciting and impressive to watch, and even more fun to do… or so I thought.
Second, the preparation:
The U.S. consulate in Guangzhou has a proud tradition of entering a team into one of the city’s annual races. All team members volunteer, and chip in a fee to cover the coach’s time. New to the city, I decided it seemed like a fun way to get to know folks from the consulate and participate in local culture. I signed up and soon found myself stepping gingerly into a boat moored in a canal in some local wetlands.
Our coach, a friendly and cheerful dragon boat expert, patiently taught us the ropes. We learned to plant our feet firmly on the bench bottom in front of us, hold the paddles with elbows up, lean forward with the back straight to plunge the paddle in the water, then pull up from the waist to drive the boat forward with the strength of your core. Simple, right?
Like so many things in life, it looked easy and straightforward as our coach demonstrated. It looked easy as a local team paddled by, cigarettes dangling from their mouths and paunchy beer bellies proudly slicked with sweat. Then you try it… and you wonder if the technique is designed not to make the boat go faster, but to inhibit you from rowing effectively as God intended. It’s not very comfortable, to say the least. And of course, this is all happening in a Guangzhou spring, so it was always either sweltering hot and humid, or raining, or both. The wetland is set aside to preserve it to some degree from development, but it’s still smack in the middle of an urban area of over 15 million people, so some environmental degradation is to be expected. Smells were plentiful and varied (the technique is even harder while holding your breath!), and team members placed bets on the number of dead fish we’d see per practice.
Each time we’d make the trek down there, driving through some remarkably underdeveloped neighborhoods (when you think of the district where we live, just twenty minutes away…). We’d kick off our shoes and hop in the boat. Our coach would shout instructions in a mix of Mandarin and Cantonese. Teammates would hurriedly whisper translations to each other, and off we’d go, our drummer keeping the beat and our team captain manning the tiller. It was a blast. Dirty, hot, and hard, but good people. I don’t know if our coach ever stopped smiling.
Finally, the race:
When it came time for the race, those of us without any prior dragon boat experience (namely yours truly), blissfully ignored many warning signs about our chances of success, preferring to bask in delusions of grandeur. Sure, we’d never had a single practice with every team member present, but those who had missed were in good shape and had done it before, right? Sure, many of our practices had been canceled due to weather, but at our last practice we seemed to be going so fast. So what if we had never practiced on a river with currents before? Trifles. We had raised money and bought fancy lightweight paddles. What an advantage! Looking around, I was sure we would at least beat the team of elderly Australians that had flown in. We weren’t going to win, of course, but we could set a consulate best, no problem.
My first step into the boat popped those aspirations like a bubble on a blade of grass. This was a new boat, not the one we had practiced in, and though it sported a fancy dragon head and tail, it sat lower in the water. Much lower. To make matters worse, our team captains had put together the seating chart very sensibly, except without taking one important factor into account: weight. The boat leaned heavily to the port side. The Pearl River, not very pearly (I’m not rich and into jewelry but I’ve never seen a brown pearl), teemed with currents beyond my pitiful understanding. A stiff breeze blowing upriver kept the water nice and choppy. My transition from “Let’s do this!” to “Oh crap, we’re going to sink any second” was unanticipated, complete, and took about fifteen seconds.
Ready or not, we pushed off from the dock as blowhorns and drums called us to the middle of the river. We pulled up to the starting line, where we earned our first badge of glory by causing havoc as our boat, crewed by those unused to river currents, was turned sideways, colliding with another boat (the poor Australians, as it turned out). While their boat calmly pulled away, in excellent control and synchronization, our boat reveled in chaos, with the front of the boat yelling “row left!” and the back of the boat yelling “row right!” I, in the middle, eventually just pulled my paddle out of the water and waited for the issue to resolve. We only delayed the race by maybe five or ten minutes, no big deal, right?
Finally, lined up, pointing the right way, and holding our position, I realized no one had ever told us the starting signal. Would it be a flag? A pistol? A blowhorn? I still don’t know what it was, but suddenly boats were moving and we decided we should be moving too.
As you might imagine, the key to successful rowing, more than strength, more than technique, more than anything–is for the whole team to paddle together. If even one person has their paddle in the water while everyone else’s is out, it creates extra drag and slows the boat. Hence the drummer, whose steady beat welds the team together.
At least, in theory. With the wind in my ears, much shouting from teammates, and many other boats all with their drums, our drummer could have been beating a pile of dirty laundry for all I knew. I thus had to rely entirely on sight, watching the person in front of me for the stroke. With all my teammates in the same boat (ha ha…), this produced a “wave” or “centipede crawl” effect… and crawl we did. Though initially fast out of the barrel, as we lost whatever scraps of team unity we had the rowing descended into anarchy and our boat settled comfortably into last place.
In all fairness, though, my focus on paddling to win was quickly overtaken by my instinct for survival. My skin-deep absorption of proper Dragon Boat technique didn’t stand a chance against “Don’t capsize the boat, don’t capsize the boat…” Somehow we endured and limped across the finish line, but my fear proved well-founded–as we tried to turn to head back to the dock, I felt the boat start to go and saw one of my teammates half in the water already. “This is it!” I thought, but miraculously we righted things and hurried back to shore. Well, “hurried” is a strong word, but you know what I meant.
And that was it. I don’t know if I’ve ever been so happy to get back to shore, and I’ve gone down with the ship twice before (other stories for other days). All the practices, all the fundraising, to end ignominiously fighting just to stay afloat while crowds watched us flounder chaotically. I’m sure there’s a political metaphor in there somewhere…
Worth it? With a year’s worth of hindsight, absolutely 🙂