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Plus, they look pretty cool.
By
Vanita Salisbury
Like many age-old practices, the Dragon Boat Festival, also known as the Double Fifth Festival, boils down to a choose-your-own-origin-story adventure. The first tale harkens back to a poet, Qu Yuan, an advisor to the government who lived from 339 to 278 BC and drowned himself in a river to protest governmental policies. Citizens paddled furiously in long boats to save him, beating drums to scare away the water dragons, but to no avail. After his death fans continued to sprinkle the water with rice to feed Qu Yuan's spirit, but the grains were gobbled up by water dragons. (According to this article, the “dragons” may have existed, but were actually catfish who gorged themselves on the rice and grew to massive sizes.)
But historians say the long dragon boats were sailing hundreds of years before Qu Yuan. And so the second origin story has to do with the date of the festival: the fifth day of the fifth lunar month (June 10 in 2024, for those of you playing along). Picked to coincide with the solstice period on the lunar calendar, it perhaps worked against them, as the fifth lunar month in Chinese culture was an unlucky month, and the fifth day an unlucky day. During this time, it was said venomous animals like snakes and scorpions appeared, and people would fall ill, so it was an important time to ward off evil spirits.
These traditions then grew into the Dragon Boat Festival, a blending of history, folklore, and mythical beings, sprinkled with bamboo-wrapped sticky rice dumplings called zongzi and helmed by tournaments of fiery racing dragons—okay, long narrow boats shaped like dragons. A public holiday in China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, it’s also celebrated in countries like Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, and Malaysia.
Decorated boats with heads of dragons that span from 40 to as long as 125 feet are both racing and on display, with people throwing rice and zongzi into the river to feed the “dragons.” To keep healthy, participants take herbal baths, hang wormwood and calamus, and toast friends and family with Realgar wine or Xionghuang wine, painting children’s foreheads with the alcoholic slurry.
But you don’t have to travel abroad this June to get in on the cultural experience (though you might want to skip the Realgar, as it’s technically made with arsenic). This summer, you’ll find free dragon boat festivals cruising into town everywhere from Portland to Nevada to Kansas City. Perhaps strategically, they’re also not limited to the fifth day of the fifth month but last through October. Here’s everything you need to know about hitting up a dragon boat festival in the US this year.
Portland, Oregon
June 8–9
September 7–8
Portland boasts not one, but two dragon boat festivals. While the September event is a straightforward two days of racing, June’s festivities take place during the Rose Festival (Portland, if you didn’t know, is the City of Roses), with over 60 international teams taking to the Willamette River near the Hawthorne Bridge. Be sure to stay awhile—the summertime festival includes multiple parades, Fleet Week, and a Starlight Run, where runners participate in costume.
Boston, Massachusetts
June 9
Launched in 1979, Boston’s festival is the oldest in the US, and last year commanded a crowd of 50,000 participants and spectators. The festivities begin with aneye-dotting ceremony, to awaken the dragons. Then races take place on the Charles River, alongside a day of cultural activities including Japanese Taiko drumming, Tai Chi and Kung Fu displays, lion dances, yo-yo demonstrations, live classical Chinese music, and Chinese, Cambodian, and Korean dance performances. Also on the schedule is a Cambodian singing band for a taste of the music traditionally used to invite ancestors and the dead back into the lives of the living.
Kansas City, Missouri
June 15
Held on Brush Creek—home to Sister Cities Bridge, which showcases the flags of Kansas City’s 13 (!) sister cities—there’s still time if you want to form or join a team for this year’s Dragon Boat Festival. Boats enter the water for practice at 8 am and festivities begin at 9:45 am. Or just show up for the boat races, drum rollers, food and craft carts, and cultural performances. See if you can identify any of the flags on the pedestrian bridge, and take a picture with the two six-foot Chinese warrior statues. They were a gift from Xi’an, China, one of those proud sister cities.
Chicago, Illinois
July 27
Part of the Major League Dragon Boat circuit presented by GWN (a dragon boat brand), Chicago’s paddlers take over Busse Lake in the Ned Brown Forest Preserve, a natural area that also includes 13 miles of paved trail and an elk pasture. Here, Canadian teams travel down to battle for supremacy with some of the best competitors in the country, and if you don’t have a team but want to get on the water, GWN offers an Experience Dragon Boat Racing program, where you can train before jumping in with a team. On deck is a cultural village, performances, and a health and wellness village. And this is Chicago, so, yeah, there’s also a beer garden.
Denver, Colorado
July 27–28
The biggest dragon boat festival in the US, along with two Asian food courts and AAPI cultural performances across five stages, the Colorado Dragon Boat Festival also includes the only all-Asian film festival in Colorado (that happened in March). Races on Sloane’s River go down via two divisions: the Hong Kong races and the Taiwan-style flag-catching races, where boats arrive stacked with paddlers, a drummer, and a flag-catcher who leans over the dragon head to snag a flag and stop the clock at the end of the race. There are also several open paddle nights throughout the summer, should you want to try dragon boating, but don’t feel the pull of competition.
Queens, New York
August 3–4
Queens is the most ethnically diverse urban region in the world, so it’s a fitting setting for New York’s Dragon Boat Festival. Held over two days on Meadow Lake in Flushing Meadow Park, the open-air bash hosts 120 boats from all across the US. Performances include lion dances, the Shaolin Temple Warrior Monks demonstrating Kung Fu, the Drum Spirit of China, and traditional music and dance representing everywhere from China to Mexico and Peru. An extensive food court tops off the offerings.
Fort Dodge, Iowa
August 3–4
In an intriguing collaboration, dragon boating in the US has become intimately connected with cancer survivors, a way to, "slay the dragon," challenge bodies and make connections after a life-changing experience, while also raising awareness. The Mayo Clinic has a team, there’s a Gilda’s Club Dragon Boat Festival in New Jersey, and you’ll find BCP (Breast Cancer Paddlers) competing in races all across the country. One where they’re especially intertwined is the Badger Lake Dragon Boat Bash in Iowa, which features the home team of the Fighting Angels Abreastanda breast cancer survivor ceremony with a silent auction benefiting a local cancer center.
Sparks, Nevada
August 17
Another Major League Dragon Boat event presented by GWN (see the full list here), this one happens in Nevada’s Sparks Marina, just a stone’s throw away from Reno. Head into the city, or tack it onto a weekend of water activities: nearby Whitewater Park at Rock Park is a local go-to for kayaking, rafting, and tubing.
Miami, Florida
October 26
Rounding out the season is the Miami Dragon Boat Festival, staged in one of the only places where October is warm enough to be up to the task. Held at Haulover Park, they’ve partnered with Save Our Sisters, South Florida's first-ever breast cancer survivor-led Dragon Boat Racing team, to raise money for cancer research. In addition to the races, there’s a wellness village, cultural entertainment, and performances.
Vanita Salisbury is Thrillist's Senior Travel Writer. She would have fun drumming on the dragon boat. The paddling looks too strenuous.
