Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival - B1+


Dragon boats' lucky festival - 10th July 2020

The festival of Tuen Ng or Dragon Boat Festival is an important public holiday in South East Asia.

In Hong Kong, Dragon Boat teams come from around the world to race and there are usually thousands of spectators.

This year the events are much smaller due to the Coronavirus. But as restrictions are lifted and the virus seems to be under control in the city, a smaller festival was able to take place.

Local companies and organizations took part and twelve teams joined in the day long festival.

Charlotte and Quentin are from one of the dragon boat teams.

Charlotte: "We need to train keeping the social distancing rules, so we try to really live with that and comply with this, but we are happy to be back, we know that we need to be prudent, so that the races, well we can be back for training and races."

Quentin: "It was amazing, the organisation has done a really good job, they kept all the traditional ceremonies and the atmosphere was really really cool, really nice.

Charlotte: "Yeah you can see everyone's happy to be here."

One of the many superstitions around the origin of the festival is that it was a day for getting rid of illness and bad luck.

Let's hope that's true.