On the afternoon of June 10th, there was shouting: “ECNU! ECNU! ECNU!” That’s because the ECNU international student’s dragon boat team couldn’t hide their excitement after winning the championship. They jumped into the river and received cheers from both local fans and other spectators. The team of both female and male participants even jumped into the water three times to celebrate their victory after crossing the finish line.
Under the scorching 35-degree Celsius heat alongside Shanghai Bund, the 13th Shanghai University Dragon Boat Race for International Students and the 1st Yangtze River Delta Invitational Dragon Boat Race for Foreign Students kicked off with fanfare at Fengxian Campus of East China University of Science and Technology (ECUST).
This year’s Dragon Boat Festival was even hotter than the weather! More than 800 international students from 32 universities in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai and Anhui, including Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, University of Science and Technology of China and Zhejiang University, gathered here to participate in the dragon boat race and experience Chinese culture.
The international sporting event was full of Chinese flavor and international charm: different nationalities, but the same dragon boat; and different languages, but the same drum beat.
After a fierce round of preliminaries, ECNU’s team came out on top during the finals, paddling across the finish line in the challenging 200-meter course with a remarkable time of under 55 seconds—all this despite headwinds from the water. Shanghai Maritime University and Tongji University secured the second place with a narrow gap of less than 1 second; Fudan University, Donghua University, Nanjing Forestry University, University of Science and Technology of China and Zhejiang University won the Third Prize.
Since 2008, the Shanghai University Dragon Boat Race for International Students has been hosted by East China University of Science and Technology, combining dragon-boat racing, sportsmanship, and the promotion of traditional Chinese culture and festival stories.
Through years of practice, the dragon boat race on Tonghai Lake has become an important event and a classic activity to represent the cultural life of international students in Shanghai’s universities. With the arrival of the Dragon Boat Festival, many international students studying and living in Shanghai eagerly anticipate at this event, immersing themselves in traditional Chinese culture through activities such as eating zongzi (sticky rice dumplings) and paddling dragon boats. The event simultaneously achieves the goal of fostering friendships among different nations.
Source：Shanghai Observer
Copy editor: Melody Zhang, Mayfield Joshua Monroe
Editor: Yvaine Lyu
