My Dragon Boat Race experience

Backgrounds–what is the dragon boat race

Dragon boat race is a kind of traditional race in China. In a dragon boat race, team and team compete with each other and each team requires 22 paddlers and a drummer. Dragon boat is a boat looks like a dragon, I guess it is very famous among the Chinese people because dragon is the spirit of brave, victory and other positive characteristics (Totally different compared with Western culture, Western people usually think dragon is evil). There are so many evidences to show the Chinese people love dragon boat. There is a traditional festival called Dragon Boat Festival in China, students have even a three-day-holiday at that time. In addition, the Chinese people always call themselves the descendants of the dragon.

Why I could get the opportunity to take part in the dragon boat race

Since dragon boat is a part of Chinese traditional culture, Nanjing (my city) Education Sector held an race to encourage teenagers to experience dragon boat. There were five teams in our Nanjing senior high school group. I took part in this race, mainly because I wanted to experience the dragon boat race. As I have mentioned before, a dragon boat team needs 22 paddlers and a drummer. In other words, I couldn’t do that unless I took part in this race.

What we did to prepare for the race

We did extra curriculum about using paddles in our spare time. All such curriculum were organized by our school. It held nearly 14 lessons and each student had to attend at least 10 of them. (One lesson was nearly one hour.) During the lesson, we learned how to use proper ways to hold paddles at first. Then we did the exercise about the most important part: coordination. We needed to use the paddles with the same frequency so that our force could be maximum. This process was really tough since individuals had their own styles (because they had different body sizes) to use paddles. Whenever I hold the paddle, I paid my quality attention to others so I could adjust their way of using paddles. The process was exhausting, I always felt overwhelmed after training. Anyway, I enjoyed this process of teamwork.

The situation of race and our final scores

Obviously, we paid more attention during the race. All of us were hard-working enough to use the paddles and the sprays spattered in all directions. The noise of sprays was even louder than the sound from the drummer. I felt that we would have different frequency of using paddles because we couldn’t hear the directives from the drummer during the race. That may make us lose this game so I said “one, two, one, two” to make our coordination better.

Finally, we won the first prize. The Nanjing Education Sector gave us certificate and medals which made us feel pride.

My feelings

I thought this experience was meaningful, not only we got the first prize, but also the process of coordination and teamwork. As classmates, we had common experience of practicing together, which helped me to make friends. We developed the skills of cooperation by practicing together for a long time, which boosted our further cooperation of doing the project at school in the future.

In addition, I kept fit by taking part in this race. As a kind of water sports, it brought benefits to me. Tell you the truth, I was slightly overweight. And my body was much stronger after the training. Dragon boat culture is also a kind of traditional culture, I was glad to promote it to the public.

By the way, the teacher said it was clever enough for me to say numbers”1” and “2” as directives during the race. I was surprised that he said I had the gift to be a leader. Actually, this event would be a starter for me to be a leader in the future.