In Foshan, the Ming-dynasty tradition of dragon boat racing continues to draw daring local competitors and big crowds
It’s often said that in China’s affluent Guangdong province, billionaires are barely distinguishable from the most humble migrant workers. Local landlords, who often live in riches simply by collecting rent on their myriad apartments or buildings, can be seen happily lazing around in worn-out T-shirts and flip-flops, and have even been known to take up side jobs as vegetable stall vendors or street cleaners. No matter how unassuming they appear, however, it only takes the arrival of Duanwu Festival to filter the true landlords from regular folk.
In the lead-up to Dragon Boat Festival, as Duanwu Festival is known in English and which falls on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month on the Chinese lunar calendar, boat racers across Guangdong can be found practicing in their “dragon boats” in lakes or rivers for hours at night. This includes a sizable cohort of avid landlord hobbyists, who have not gone unnoticed thanks to their fervor for the sport. The hashtag “How much do Guangdong landlords value boat racing?” has attracted over 9 million views and thousands of comments on the microblogging platform Weibo. One commenter quips about how “the sinking of just one ship could influence the province’s GDP.”
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