When I was at the 6th Annual Asian Heritage Street Celebration in San Francisco, I learned that Dragon Boat races take place in San Francisco Bay. I stopped at the Dragon Boat booth and was told there would be more than a hundred boats competing in the Dragon Boat Festival from Treasure Island in San Francisco on September 25-16, 2010. This year (2104), this SF festival will be held September 20 & 21.
In China, The Dragon Boat Festival is held on the fifth day of the fifth moon. The Legends Behind the Dragon Boat Festival says that the festival celebrates and honors Ch’u Yuan, (343-278 BC), who drowned himself in the Mi Lo River during the fourth century BC during the Chou Dynasty to protest government corruption. There is some controversy over the real reason but this is the most popular one.
It is said that people rushed onto the river in boats to find Ch’u Yuan’s body but failed. Today, the festival is a day where boat races are held throughout the Chinese-speaking world wherever significant numbers of Chinese live.
Morgan Stanley Dragon Boat HK Final Race 2013
Today, Dragon Boat Festivals are no longer exclusive to China: for instance, they are held all over the world: San Francisco, Boston, Oakland, Colorado’s Sloan Lake, Washington D.C., several festivals in the U.K., Victoria B.C. in Canada, Schwerin in Germany, South Africa, etc.
_______________
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
Subscribe to “iLook China”!
Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page, or click on the “Following” tab in the WordPress toolbar at the top of the screen.
iLook China 
I’m pretty sure we have one in Boston on the Charles River, I’m just not sure of the date. Also maybe one along the Blackstone in July.