Dragonboat Races

"The more unfair competition, the better."
-Milton Friedman

While Friedman has a point when it comes to serious competitions, the dragonboat races we competed in were no serious competition. Our 'trainer,' Mr. Liang, however, was of a different opinion.

Training for the dragonboat races started three weeks before the competition, but because of everyone's schedules we were only going to practice on Fridays. The first Friday, it was raining really hard and we weren't able to go out to the lake. Practice wasn't canceled though. I'm convinced Mr. Liang would die before seeing a practice cancelled, so instead we planned out our boat. For this competition, there was a certain setup that you had to have, which included 19 people: twelve boys, six girls and 1 drummer, with two people to each row for a total of 9 rows. This meant that ideally, you had to have 6 right handed boys, 3 right handed girls, 6 left handed boys, and 3 left handed girls, as boys and girls had to be grouped together.

As we were planning out who would sit where in our boat, we soon realized there were two too many boys. Mr. Liang said that the last 4 spots would be determined by who performed best in the next practice. The meeting (somehow) lasted for about an hour, but this was the only thing that was even remotely important that Mr. Liang mentioned, so I'll fast forward to the first real practice.

At our first real practice, we load up into a bus and drive for an hour to get to a second ECUST campus (apparently this is where local undergraduates generally study). We load up into the boat, but again there are two extra boys. They are told that we will row for about 30 minutes, then switch out so they have a chance (it's also important to note that Mr. Liang is away on a business trip, so unable to make this practice). I was lucky and made it into the boat the first round. The rowing itself isn't too difficult, since the race is across a very short distance, but what is important is being able to listen to the drummer and time your strokes correctly.

Dragonboat racing is a team sport. It's important to have strong individuals in the boat to really get you moving, but it's even more important that everyone knows how to work together and time their strokes at exactly the same time, as this gives you much more power. Our boat, especially those in the first four rows, struggled with this idea. These first four rows had some of the strongest individuals, and were Mr. Liang's first choice to go in the boat, but after we reached a cruising speed on the boat, they would begin to ignore our drummer and continually speed up to the point where the rest of us were unable to match their pace. We weren't able to fix this in the first practice, but thought we would instead save it for the second.

Unfortunately, we left without switching out rowers, so the two who didn't get to participate wasted five hours of their day doing absolutely nothing. We loaded back up into the bus and drove back, which took two hours.

The second real practice was the day before the competition. I was unable to attend because my group had a case study due on Saturday, the day of the competition, in our financial analysis class (we were originally told by the TA that it was due on Sunday. She was mistaken).

The morning of the race, I woke up at 5:30 am to get ready to leave at 6:00, but the day before they changed the departure time to 6:45. So, I waited around for 45 minutes, then when the time came we loaded onto the bus and were given breakfast. When we arrived at the campus (around 7:45), we unloaded from the bus and stood around for a good hour, doing absolutely nothing, before meandering towards the lake. When we got there, Mr. Liang tells me I need to wait before I can practice because I wasn't there the day before. This was not a good sign. So I stand on the dock watching the others practice, snapping a few pictures for people, and don't do much else. At some point, Mr. Liang walks up to me and says, "don't sleep. We need you train." This is a direct quote. He then walks away with no explanation. The best part about this was that I was standing up at the time and did not look the least bit tired, while four others who were told they could not participate were sitting down with their eyes half closed.

Much like the first practice I attended, they only rowed for about an hour and there was no second practice. By now it was about 10:00 am and the competition didn't start until 2:00 pm. Mr. Liang decided that 10:00 am was the perfect time for lunch and loaded us all up into the bus. This process took about 15 minutes every time we did it because they had to take attendance and we usually had to wait on at least one person who was in the restroom or somewhere else. We then drove for about 20 seconds to get to the campus dining hall. So, we ate our lunch (since there was nothing else to do), then sat on the ground for about 3 hours waiting for the competition to start.

When the competition did start, Mr. Liang told me I couldn't row because I didn't participate in the practice earlier, but he assured me I would have the chance to row when we made finals. The boats lined up and I stood on the dock watching. Across the lake, a small crowd of people watched from a set of bleachers. There were a total of 20 teams, but there was only room for 4 boats to race at once. The schools with the eight top times would advance to finals. Our school was in the first group. We made second in our group, but the team that got first in our group was an athletic school, so we were feeling pretty good. In the end, however, we placed somewhere in the range of 13/20.

What could have been a pretty cool event turned into an 11 hour day of waiting. We got home at about 5:00 pm and in all that time I didn't get to do anything.

But you know, it's always best to look on the bright side, so here is a listed of free things I obtained during the day: Two large pieces of bread (somewhat similar to coffee cake), a cheese sandwich sandwich, milk, a full lunch including a traditional Chinese food item (usually eaten during the dragonboat festival), an orange soda, a Red Bull, and four bottles of water.