Welcome to Beijing’s first ever Annual Nordic Dragon Boat Tournament

The event, which happened a week before the famous Chinese Dragon Boat Festival, saw teams from both China and Nordic countries such as Norway, Finland, Denmark and Sweden compete for the trophy on Houhai lake in Beijing.

Dragon boat racing is long-established in China and many scholars believe that it’s been around for over 2000 years, originating on what is now the Yangtze river. Dragon boat racing is now popular all over the world, and is synonymous with the Dragon Boat Festival, otherwise known as Duanwu Festival which this year falls on June 18th.

In Saturday’s event, Nordic and Chinese teams got together to enjoy the traditions and learn about dragon boat racing. General Manager of the DCCC North China and organiser of this event, Mads Vesterager Nielsen, said that although some teams had been training intensively for two months, the winners, The Sino-Danish Centre (SDC1), hadn’t been training for long at all.

The event is a great opportunity for people from different parts of the world to come together to enjoy such a traditional sport. As Mads said, “We’ve had very diverse boats this year. We’ve seen a diversity in gender but also in our Chinese and Nordic friends who have been here today participating in the race.”

He added, “there are already people saying they will start training now, so they can win the trophy next year. I think it has the potential to become a great collective Nordic tradition in China."