FIT CITY

For Dragon Boat Festival teams, getting in synch proves to be monster challenge

By Pamela LeBlanc
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, April 13, 2008

I'm surging down Lady Bird Lake in a 40-foot canoe with a carved dragon's head on the front, dipping a wooden paddle into the water to the beat of a drum the size of an overgrown foot stool.

People on shore are staring. I'm not sure if they're intimidated by our loud chanting, impressed by our massive wooden boat or mesmerized by our not-quite-synchronized stroking, which probably makes us look like a giant, water-borne caterpillar scuttling down the river.

I've joined a team from the Austin Great Wall of China School for paddling practice. They're honing their skills in preparation for the Austin Dragon Boat Festival and Races on April 26, when 14 teams from some of Austin's biggest employers will duke it out on the lake.

This team wants to win, and today we are practicing our race starts, which involves a lot of grunting and sweating.

"Whoever wins the start usually wins the race," head trainer Sheena Chang says from her seat at the front of the boat, where she faces 20 paddlers

and the steersman guiding us down the lake. "Try to keep up with me. Listen for the drum."

We are trying, but it's hard to match the beat of the drum with our paddle strokes. And synchronization is key.

Chang calls out a series of commands, and we snap to order. "Sit up!" she hollers, and everyone rises four inches in their wooden bench seats. At "paddles up," we hold our rough-hewn wooden paddles high, and on "attention please" we lean forward, ready to dig in. Then the count begins, and we plunge our paddles in the water and spurt forward.

We sprint down the lake for four minutes, scattering a flock of ducks and raising the eyebrows of some rowers getting in their morning workout. Maybe we're not serious enough. I can't seem to focus — it's just too distracting out here, with runners galloping past on shore, swans giving us the eye and turtles diving for cover.

I think Chang has noticed me. "When you're getting tired, your eyes are wandering," she hollers at the whole crew. "You're looking out, you're staring at your paddle, and you're not in synch with the people in front of you."

Oops.

Dragon boat racing originated in China some 2,000 years ago. It commemorates the death of Qu Yuan, a Chinese poet who once served as a minister to the emperor. He loved the common man and fought corruption, but eventually was forced into exile. Distraught when his people were defeated, he threw himself in a river and drowned. Fishermen rushed out in long boats, beating drums to scare away the fish and throwing rice balls into the water so they wouldn't eat the poet's body.

Thus, dragon boat races.

Now we're cruising under the Congress Avenue Bridge. I peek up to see if I can spot any bats, but no. Chang's still calling out our paddle stroke, and her voice echoes against the cement structure. We pause for a break, dropping our paddles onto our laps. A single sculler glides past.

The boat we're paddling today is kept in a warehouse near the Town Lake Rowing Center. Two others are kept at the Asian American Cultural Center. All three will be used at this year's festival, which will feature two rounds of five heats each, followed by semifinals and finals.

Pairs of paddlers are arranged in the boat according to weight and strength, with the strongest paddlers in the front and back. Each side of the boat must be balanced, and each team must have at least eight women. The leading pair of paddlers sets the pace for the boat.

"I don't think any other sport requires so many people to be in synch," says Chang, who raced three years with a team from the Chinese Student Association at the University of Texas before taking over as head trainer. Now she spends hours every weekend working with all the teams competing at the festival. Among them are crews from Dell, Freescale, Samsung, 3M, the Lower Colorado River Authority and the Travis County Sheriff's Office.

Many of the paddlers have never set foot in a dragon boat before. They pay about $25 to join a team and train for two or three months. Some groups invent secret chants or paddle counts designed to make them go faster during the 500-meter race.

Festival organizers created the event 10 years ago to promote the sharing of culture between the East and the West. Besides dragon boat races, the festival includes music and dance, martial arts demonstrations, a children's area and Asian food. Activities gear up at 10 a.m. April 26, with a march of teams participating in the races and a ceremony in which participants "wake up" the dragons by painting a dot in the eyes of the boats' carved wooden heads. Racing goes from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

Tina Wei, one of the event coordinators, says she hopes the festival one day grows into a national event that draws teams from across the country. Last year about 1,300 spectators attended. The color and spirit of dragon boats are hard to resist.

"Most of the people in our school are from China, so it's our tradition," says Xianghua Xiao, vice principal of the Austin Great Wall Chinese School.

His school has put together a team of teachers, board members and parents each of the past five years. This year's crew includes Cheryl Bonfils-Rasmussen, who adopted her 5-year-old daughter, MeiLi, from China and signed up for dragon boat racing to learn more about the Chinese culture.

Today, that lesson includes one more paddling sprint. Chang eggs us on, urging us to join her in calling out the count. We dig in once more, clawing our way furiously down the river, shouting out "one, two, one, two" until she hits her stopwatch. Whew!

Then it's back to the dock, where the team hoists the boat back on shore and hauls it to the warehouse.

The dragon might not need the rest, but the crew is ready to relax a bit.