On June 19, the sound of drums thundered on the Wujiang River in Shaoguan, while the Lishi Pawnshop Square in Zhenjiang District was bustling with crowds. The Dragon Boat Festival folk cultural activities kicked off simultaneously in Lishi Town, Zhenjiang District, and Shuikou Village, Chongyang Town, Wujiang District.
As a municipal-level intangible cultural heritage, Lishi’s dragon boat racing custom revives the thousand-year-old ancient ritual of dragon boat kin visits. New boats crafted with age-old techniques made their debut on the river, seven dragon boats vied in the race, and the intangible cultural heritage market was bustling with activity, drawing crowds from across the city to join the grand Dragon Boat Festival folk celebration.
The biggest highlight this year was the first voyage of a traditionally crafted wooden dragon boat, which took one year to prepare and two months to craft entirely by hand in Shayuan Village. This traditional dragon boat was crewed by 33 people including a drummer and a helmsman and faithfully preserved traditional boat-building techniques that form part of the local intangible cultural heritage.
"Every step, from sanding to carving, relies on traditional craftsmanship. When the new dragon boat was launched this year, the entire village turned out to witness it," said Mo Donglin, the inheritor of the municipal-level intangible cultural heritage custom of dragon boat racing in Lishi. During the "caiqing" ritual, a traditional dragon boat blessing ceremony, team members gathered dew-covered mugwort and calamus, then tied them to the gunwales, praying for favorable weather and a bountiful harvest.
Seven dragon boat teams staged a racing performance on the river and carried out the dragon boat kin-visiting ritual. The teams from Shayuan, Xiayuan, Shawei, and other villages appeared in turn. After the Lishi dragon boat made three ceremonial laps on the river to pray for blessings, it headed toward the opposite bank, where the Shuikou dragon boats lined up to welcome it. The host and visiting dragon boats then sailed side by side, singing local dragon boat songs, and exchanging rice wine, pork hocks, and commemorative friendship banners. As Mr. Hou, a villager from Shuikou, put it, "As long as the Wujiang River does not run dry, the kinship will last for ten thousand years." He explained that in earlier times, villages along the riverbanks helped each other during busy farming seasons and kept vigil during floods, and that is how the custom of dragon boat visits to relatives has been passed down through generations.
The lively Dragon Boat Festival market along the riverbank was brimming with Hakka delicacies such as lye rice dumplings, mugwort rice cakes, and Nanxiong sour bamboo-shoot duck. Long queues formed for intangible cultural heritage craft experiences, where visitors tried bamboo weaving, paper-cutting, and Hakka women's embroidery, as well as popular family-friendly games such as ring-toss and pitch-pot.
At noon, a dragon-boat banquet featuring long tables arranged in the shape of two dragons was laid out in Lishi Town. In the evening, Shuikou Village hosted another feast, serving dishes such as braised pork knuckless and steamed fresh river fish from the Wujiang River. Performances, including face-changing, lion dances, and Maogong lion dances, took to the stage one after another to enliven the festivities. Ms. Hu, a visitor, stopped by the intangible cultural heritage display zone with her child and said, "You can not only watch the traditionally built dragon boat race, but also try your hand at the old crafts yourself. The festive atmosphere for the Dragon Boat Festival is truly wonderful."
Text | Zhang Xuanzhen (intern)
Photo | Nanfang Plus
