Camäléon

Le journal en ligne des élèves du Lycée Franco-Allemand de Sarrebruck

Word of the Week: #Dragon-boat-festival

Dragon Boat Racers
Photo: Paul VanDerWerf / flickr.com (CC BY 2.0)

On the 22nd of June 2023, the dragon boat festival starts. Like any other Chinese festival, the dates aren’t always the same. It’s different every year. For example, the dragon boat festival last year was on the 3rd of June. In 2021, it was on the 14th of June in 2021.

You may ask: what special things do we do this day? We mainly eat 粽子 (pronounced « zongzi »). We can put anything in a ZongZi like meat, sesame(« Sesam » in German or « Sésame » in French)… anything you like! What else do we do? We race on a dragon-shaped boat with 18 people rowing. A drummer is at the dragon’s head keeping the rhythm and someone at the back navigating the boat. The boat is about 14 and a half meters long and weighs about 400 kilograms.

The races are most commonly 500 meters. For 2km races, they have to do 2 loops on a 500-meter course. A good team finishes a 500m race in less than 2 minutes. A 2km race lasts 10-15 minutes.

There are also 5 awards: a fundraiser cup, the fastest boat, best dressed drummer, best decorated tent, and suprisingly, the slowest boat! At the fundraiser cup we « race » for donating to the poor. The one that donates the most wins. I don’t need to explain the rest, right?

Arto Tchalikian

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