The Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival draws large crowds to Corona Park in Flushing Meadows every year.
Archival photograph by Dean Moses
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The 32nd annual Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival, celebrating the Year of the Dragon, will take place on August 3 and 4 at Meadow Lake in Corona Park in Flushing Meadows.
The Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival is the largest multicultural festival in New York State and one of the largest dragon boat festivals in the United States. In addition to the fun and lively boat races, the festival will also feature an assortment of Asian cuisine and multicultural performances.
The festivities on Saturday, August 3 will feature an assortment of musical performances, including the Chinese Music Ensemble of New York, Hong Kong singer Echo Chan, violinist Daisy Jopling, Japanese Taiko percussion group Manhattan Taiko, and the duo of Wei Sun and Ping Cao playing the Chinese zither known as the Guzheng and the two-stringed bowed instrument known as the Erhu, respectively.
Saturday’s entertainment won’t be limited to music. The festival will kick off with the Wan Chi Ming Hung Gar Institute’s Dragon and Lion Dance Team leading the racing teams and visiting dignitaries onto the main stage for their dance performance. The Shaolin Kung Fu Center of New York will also entertain attendees with kung fu demonstrations. Storyteller Jonathan Kruk will be on hand to tell children and families a variety of dragon stories, as well as a play, where he will explain how the tradition of dragon boat racing began.
On Sunday, the Chinese Music Ensemble of New York, Manhattan Taiko, the New York Shaolin Kung Fu Center, and Jonathan Kruk will once again entertain audiences. Additionally, the Queensboro Dance Festival will invite several dance groups to perform at the Dragon Boat Festival, including McManus Irish Dance, Dynasty Breaking NYC, and movement collective sarAika. Latin jazz group Cuboricua, as well as Hong Kong singer Dawn Han, will also perform that day. The New York Chinese Cultural Center’s resident touring dance company, Dance China NY, will also perform on Sunday, transporting audiences to a world of colorful myth, historical drama, and timeless beauty, while weaving a vibrant vision of China’s ancient indigenous folk cultures.
Children attending the Dragon Boat Festival will have the opportunity to participate in ten different arts and crafts demonstrations. These demonstrations include creating a Peking Opera face mask, Chinese paper-cutting, bead figurine making, Chinese calligraphy, folding red envelopes into the shapes of fish and Chinese lanterns, paper folding of a fairy crane (bird of peace) and a dragon boat, making animal clay figurines, making handmade bead bracelets, painting hand fans and DIY accessories.
Food trucks at this year’s festival include a Filipino Kapamilya food truck, a Korean Kongbap food truck, and a Habanero Pibil Taco food truck. There will also be a Hong Kong Street Food Corner, which will feature rice balls, spicy fish balls, steamed rice rolls, beef satay instant noodles, fish meat shumai, shark fin soup, fried stuffed trio, fried shrimp dumplings, buttered mini pineapple buns, mini egg soufflés, baked egg tarts, and pudding cakes. Tea, including Hong Kong milk tea, iced red bean, Vita lemon tea, and Vita peach tea, will also be on hand to provide beverages for attendees. Bayside Lemonade will also be on hand to provide beverages for attendees.
The origins of the festival date back to 278 BC, when Qu Yuan, an idealistic Chinese poet and artist, drowned himself “in protest against his emperor’s policies.” Dragon boat racing is inspired by the efforts of local people who raced in their boats to try to save Yuan and prevent his body from being devoured by “water dragons.”
Dragon boat races use colourful one-tonne teak boats. These boats are custom-made in Hong Kong and feature a dragon head at the front and a tail at the back. Up to 20 people pilot each boat during the race.
The Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival races will start at 9am on both days and continue until 5pm. Races include the regular New York Open, youth invitational races, charity races, non-profit organization races, corporate challenges and more.
