Submitted by urci on
~~In the golden autumn, there are thousands of people happily gathered on Wascana Lake in Regina, the largest city park in North America. On August 31st and September 1st, the 27th Annual Dragon Boat Festival was held again as promised and tens of thousands of people participated in this two-day event.
During the opening ceremony, the new organized CI Dragon Dance Team showcased its first performance. The spectators warmly welcomed the Chinese Dragon as it tumbles up and down to open the Dragon Boat Festival. This worshiping ceremony attracted more people to watch and learned more of the Chinese heritage through the festival.
The Dragon Boat Race is the vital part of the festival, and there were 25 local dragon boat teams registered in the competition. This year is the sixth consecutive year that the CI-Dragon team participated in the city event as well. For the past two months, the CI team members did several professional indoor training and outdoor training to improve their strength as well as various team building activities. The team did their best and was excited to be part of the race by chanting "CI Dragon, CI Go" and paddled to the beating of the drum. Through the dragon boat race training and activity, the team built a strong friendship and showed efficient teamwork.
In addition, the Confucius Institute at the University of Regina offered a series of enrichment cultural activities during the festival, such as Chinese culture riddles, Zongzi wrapping, dough figuring, fan painting, lantern making and many more. A broad of information including Chinese Kung Fu, Chinese ethnic groups and Chinese folk customs were presented to incite more of the local communities’ interest and demand. Nonetheless, the most popular amongst the activities was the Field Dragon Boat Race. The race gave the spectators the opportunity to participate in and experience the Dragon Boat sport themselves, and paddle on ground. More so, the diverse cultural activities showed a strong dragon boat festival atmosphere to Regina citizens.
Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, Honorable Ralph Goodale; Honorary Festival Chair, His Worship mayor Michael Fougere; MLA for Regina Walsh Acres, Mr.Warren Steinley; Associate Vice-President (International) & Chief International Officer of the University of Regina, Ms. Livia Castellanos；President of Regina Dagon Boat Festival, Mr. Barry Eisenzimmer and other representatives of the local community were also in attendance.