Politics cast clouds over dragon boat competition

RIVAL RACES: In a break with tradition, Taipei City and Taipei County have decided to hold their races on the same day, to the contests' detriment, the racers assert

Chu Yuan (屈原), the poet-bureaucrat who drowned himself in protest more than 2,000 years ago and whom dragon boat races traditionally commemorate, might be forgotten this weekend as politics threaten to cast a shadow over two of Northern Taiwan's biggest dragon boat competitions.

For the first time in many years, both Taipei City's Taipei International Dragon Boat Race Championship and the Taipei County Assembly Speaker's Cup are being held over the same weekend.

On top of this, the Assembly Cup has also gone international for the first time, to become the Formosa International Dragon Assembly Speaker's Cup.

The result is a situation where it is not clear if the principle competition is between the boats themselves or the organizers of the rival events.

Disgruntled as many team managers, coaches and participants may be about what they see as an unwanted rivalry over participants, status and news coverage, the races' organizers vehemently deny any such thing.

"I've never meant to compete with Taipei City," said Fung Chien-tang (馮建堂), head of the Chinese Taipei Dragonboat Association and one of the organizers of the Taipei County race, which is held on the Pitan River (碧潭) in Hsintien.

"It's Taipei City that's being more aggressive by raising the amount of money they spend on the races and by raising their prize money too. But I don't think any of that's necessary. I've never needed anything more than NT$20,000 to put on a race and I've never said I have to have 100 teams," he said.

But several people in Northern Taiwan's dragon boat circles claim that it was Taipei County -- tired of taking a backseat to the city race by holding their competition a week earlier every year -- that decided to up the ante by scheduling the Assembly Cup over the same weekend and by adding an international division to its roster.

One team told the Taipei Times that it had wanted to double-enter the two competitions and try going back and forth between the races over the weekend. But the team's manager said that while the team wasn't explicitly told not to double enter, it came under significant pressure from Taipei County not to do so.

"The message was: `If you're going to practice here [on the Pitan River] and if we're going to let you use our boats, we really, really don't want you to go to Taipei City too," the manager, who preferred to remain anonymous, said.

Fung said, however, that Taipei County welcomed double entrants and that it wouldn't try to keep teams from going wherever they wanted to race.

Taipei City organizers echoed Fung's comments and said the real reason the races were scheduled for the same weekend was that everyone just wanted to have their competitions on the actual weekend of the Dragon Boat Festival.

"The most important thing to us is to organize a good event," said Yang Ya-ting (楊雅婷), one of the organizers of the Taipei City race. "We want to have the race on the Dragon Boat Festival. It's more meaningful that way."

"As far as competing with other people, it's a non-issue."

Style vs substance

Whatever the reasons behind the two organizing groups' breaking from their practice of holding their competitions on different weekends, dragon boat-racing aficionados say the end result is that the most competitive domestic teams will be at the county race while the city race will be more style than substance.

"A lot of people believe that the Taipei City event is increasingly becoming more of a showy race to get publicity and attention, what with [Taipei City] Mayor Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) exhibition team and everything," said the team manager whose team claims it was discouraged from double-entering.

Yen Ching-feng (顏敬夆), captain of the Hsintien City Administrative Team and one of the people in charge of working the Pitan docks during the five weeks the river is open for practice, said the best teams have chosen the county race.

"There's more competition here -- it's more fun. Plus, Taipei City has a bunch of rules that people from around here just can't put up with. For one thing, they throw all the Taipei County teams together and then only one can emerge to advance. They have to do that because a Taipei City team wouldn't otherwise make it into the finals if they split us all up [into different divisions]."

Though Taipei City, with 101 teams and close to 3,000 participants, boasts far more teams than the county's 54, Fung was quick to point out that many of those teams come from the city government, which requires that every city government department enter a dragon boat team in the races.

But Yang said it wasn't fair to call the Taipei City race less competitive.

"We don't organize the race just to get on the nightly news," she said. "If some teams want to go somewhere else, we can't stop them. But you can't say that the teams at Taipei City are weaker. That's too tough a judgement call to make."

Who to watch

Despite the politics, the races will go on.

The top team to watch at Taipei County and last year's overall winner is the Taipei Physical Education College's kayaking team.The team's coach, Liu Te-chih (劉德智), says the team is even better than last year.

Hot on their heels will be the Hsintien City Administrative Team and the Taipei County Firemen's team.

In the women's division, the teams to watch are the team sponsored by Independent Legislator Lo Ming-tsai (羅明才), made up of female students from National Taiwan Normal University, the Hsintien Aboriginal Women's team and the National Taiwan Normal University's Center for Chinese Language and Culture studies team, made up of foreign students studying Chinese.

As of press time last night, Taipei County was only able to confirm which international teams were competing in its race but wasn't sure which of those teams were bringing men's, women's or co-ed teams, or their English names. The leaders in the International Division should be a team from San Diego and also the Kansai team from Japan.

At Taipei City, among the best domestic teams should be the city's fire department and the much-feared Mingte High School wrestler's team. The Fu Ren University Flying Dragons team could also vie for a top spot in the men's division, but as of press time last night reports that Fu Ren was going to the county races instead could not be verified.

The women's field in Taipei City is much more open, with a large number of teams having a shot at coming out on top.

In the International Division, Thailand is back looking to defend its title from last year, but can expect fierce competition from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) team, while the Phoenix Sister Cities Connection team is back this year looking to improve on their third place last year.

In the women's division the race should come down to a tight race between UMIST and Phoenix.

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Copyright (c) 2002 by Ingrid Jensen