Photo by Sonja Grgar
The Rio Tinto Alcan Dragon Boat Festival, a staple among Vancouver’s summer events, will celebrate its 25th anniversary this year with numerous cultural displays, as well as its signature dragon boat races. And when local dragon boat team Gung Haggis Fat Choy takes to the water in this year’s events, they will be a paddling emblem for the festival’s mandate to celebrate Vancouver’s cultural diversity.
Nomen est omen:Name is destiny
The team’s name is a deliberate cultural fusion. Todd Wong, a veteran dragon boat paddler who founded the team in 1997 and serves as head coach, originally chose the name Celebration but changed it to the current handle in 2002.
The Gung Fat Choy portion of the name comes from a Chinese New Year greeting roughly translated from Cantonese as “best wishes and congratulations, have a prosperous and good year.” Haggis is a Scottish delicacy of minced sheep organs cooked in a casing of the animal’s intestines, made famous by Scottish poet Robert Burns’ poem “Address to a Haggis.”
Wong chose a team name that references Chinese and Scottish cultures because he believes that both have been instrumental in the history of Vancouver and B.C. As a fifth-generation Chinese-Canadian living in Vancouver, Wong believes Scottish culture is a part of his identity too because it helped shape the province he lives in.
Though he is respectful of dragon boating’s Chinese origins, Wong wanted his team to adapt those traditions to Vancouver’s multicultural setting and have dragon boating recognized as a Canadian – rather than solely Chinese – sport.
“You can’t stereotype people. This isn’t just a stereotypical Chinese event that has been [transported] into Canada. We can Canadianize it, because we are Canadian,” he says.
Not surprisingly, given its name and Wong’s approach, Gung Haggis Fat Choy has a mix of cultures and ages among its paddlers: the team’s 23 current members range in age from 23 to 73 and come from Chinese, Malaysian, Filipino and various European and other backgrounds.
Spirituality with a modern twist
The team has even incorporated the spiritual aspects of traditional Chinese dragon boat paddling on their own terms. They sometimes practice tai chi in the Sun Yat-Sen Chinese Garden to experience more balance and harmony, which not only benefits their racing, but also helps the paddlers’ general well-being.
Debbie Poon, team’s assistant coach, says that the finger drill is their signature motivational and spiritual exercise. In this drill, the tallest and most muscular person on the team lays down on the floor. The rest of the team circles them and then lifts them up together, with each member placing only one finger underneath the person’s body. Poon calls the experience magical and says that it inspires the whole team to believe that they can achieve beyond what they thought was possible.
In traditional dragon boat racing, the role of the drummer carries a spiritual dimension. However, in Gung Haggis Fat Choy the drummer or caller, as the team prefers, is more focused on maintaining team cohesion. In fact, the team rarely uses drums in competitions, preferring to follow a caller’s unique voice rather than drums that may get lost among those of other teams.
Paddling from the heart
All for one, and one for all – Gung Haggis Fat Choy team is sheer camaraderie on water. Photo by Todd Wong
Despite having a mix of paddlers who seek to compete at a high level and others for whom the goal is just to have fun, Gung Haggis Fat Choy remains primarily a recreational team that is first and foremost about being active and meeting new people.
Keng Graal, the team’s longest serving female paddler, raves about the team’s community spirit.
“This is a team with a heart. We are not competitive in the sense that we get to the upper divisions, but we have so much camaraderie,” she says.
It isn’t uncommon during practice to have paddlers teach one another phrases in their native languages. The team also regularly goes out together to sample various ethnic cuisines after their bi-weekly practices.
“We call ourselves an eating club with a paddling addiction,” jokes Graal.
The team races every year in a number of events across B.C., but they always aim to be at their peak for the Rio Tinto Alcan Dragon Boat Festival. They plan to bring the team’s dragon puppet on the boat to commemorate the festival’s 25th anniversary. It will serve as a nod to dragon boating’s Chinese roots for a team whose focus on cross-cultural camaraderie provides a uniquely Canadian take on the ancient sporting tradition.
For more information on the Gung Haggis Fat Choy dragon boat team, including how to join, visit http://www.gunghaggis.com/category/gung-haggis-dragon-boat-team-information
Check out Vancouver’s 25th Rio Tinto Alcan Dragon Boat Festival at http://www.dragonboatbc.ca
