The 32nd annual Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival, celebrating the Year of the Dragon, is set to take place on Aug. 3 and 4 at Meadow Lake in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.
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 fun and lively boat races, the festival will also feature an assortment of Asian cuisine and multicultural performances.
Festivities for Saturday, Aug. 3, will include an assortment of musical performances, including the Chinese Music Ensemble of New York, Hong Kong vocalist Echo Chan, violinist Daisy Jopling, Japanese Taiko drumming group Manhattan Taiko and the duo of Wei Sun and Ping Cao playing the Chinese zither instrument known as the Guzheng and the two-stringed bow instrument known as the Erhu respectively.
Saturday’s entertainment is not just limited to music. The festival will kick off with the Wan Chi Ming Hung Gar Institute dragon and lion dance team leading out the racing teams and invited dignitaries to the main stage through their dancing performance. The New York Shaolin Kung Fu Center will also be entertaining attendees through kung fu demonstrations. Storyteller Jonathan Kruk will be on hand to provide children and families with a variety of dragon tales, as well as story theater, where he will discuss how the dragon boat racing tradition started.
On Sunday, the Chinese Music Ensemble of New York, Manhattan Taiko, the New York Shaolin Kung Fu Center and Jonathan Kruk will again be entertaining attendees. Additionally, the Queensboro Dance Festival will be bringing along multiple dancing groups to perform at the Dragon Boat Festival, including McManus Irish Dance, Dynasty Breaking NYC and sarAika movement collective. The Latin jazz band Cuboricua, as well as Hong Kong vocalist Dawn Han, will also be performing that day. The New York Chinese Cultural Center’s resident touring dance company, Dance China NY, will also be performing Sunday, transporting their audience to a world of colorful myths, historical drama and timeless beauty, all while weaving a vibrant vision of China’s ancient indigenous folk cultures.
Kids attending the Dragon Boat Festival will have the opportunity to participate in ten different arts and crafts demonstrations. These demonstrations include creating a Beijing opera face mask, Chinese paper cutting art, bead figure, Chinese calligraphy, red envelopes folding into a fish and Chinese lantern, fairy crane (peace bird) paper folding and dragon boat, animal dough figure, hand-making bead bracelets, hand fan painting and do it yourself accessories.
Among the food trucks that will be on hand at this year’s festival are a Kapamilya Filipino food truck, Kongbap Korean food truck and Habanero Pibil Taco food truck. There will also be a Hong Kong Street Food Corner, which will offer rice dumplings, spicy fish balls, steamed rice rolls, satay beef instant noodles, fish meat shumai, imitation shark fin soup, fried stuffed trio, fried shrimp wonton, buttered mini pineapple bun, mini eggs puff, baked eggs tart and pudding cake. Tea, including Hong Kong style milk tea, ice red bean, vita lemon tea and vita peach tea will also be available there. Bayside Lemonade will also be on hand to provide attendees with drinks.
The festival’s boat racing roots can be traced back to 278 B.C., when Qu Yuan, an idealistic Chinese poet and performer, drowned himself “to protest against his emperor’s policies.” The Dragon Boat Races are inspired by the efforts by locals who raced in their boats to attempt to rescue Yuan and save his body from being eaten by “water dragons.”
In the Dragon Boat Races, colorful teak boats weighing one ton are used. These boats are custom-made in Hong Kong and feature the head of a dragon at the front and its tail in the back. As many as 20 people operate each boat during the race.
The Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival races will begin at 9 a.m. both days and continue into 5 p.m. Races include the New York City regular open, youth invitationals, charity races, non-profit organization races, corporate challenges and much more.
