Chinese New Year & Dragon Boat Racing

The Dragon-Boat Racing festival is a yearly event that eventuates in honour of Chinese New Year, and I was lucky enough to be a part of it the other day.

Chinese New Year is a celebration where people of Chinese heritage from all over the world come together to celebrate a day that symbolises the arrival of luck, happiness, and prosperity. This year, 2012, is the year of the dragon. It is traditional for families to de-clutter their houses to get rid of the “old demons” from the previous year in order to start afresh in the next.

I started off the day by catching the ferry from Meadowbank to Darling Harbour, and while I was there, to my surprise; I discovered that Chinese New Year Celebrations were on. I noticed that there were boats with interesting drawings of dragons on them and as I come closer, I realised that they were boats made for racing.

Dragon Boat-Racing is a traditional Chinese New Year activity. The boats that we saw were competing in the Chinese New Year championships. The Chinese New Year competition has the highest levels of participation of any dragon boat racing contest in the country.

While I was there, a man named walked past and called out to me: “Hi Maria”, then when I suddenly turned around to see who it was; it turned out to be one of the disability personal trainers that I know, called Alexander Roach.

“How are you?” He said. “I’m competing in the race with Lisa Gombinsky, you can find her if you want.”

I watched a bit of a race then I spotted a man that was wearing traditional Chinese attire who goes by the name of “Mr Lucky” and he handed me a red envelope with a chocolate coin in it that symbolises the traditional Chinese practice of giving presents on Chinese New Year.

The highlight of the day was, when “Mr Lucky” handed me the symbolic red envelope with the chocolate coin in it as a gift.