The biggest dragon boat race in North America is returning to Vancouver for its 36th year of high-octane sports. The latest chapter comes with the festival’s largest-ever cohort of racers, and an expanded on-land program, to entertain the estimated 125,000 visitors while showcasing its community roots.

Dominic Lai, Dragon Boat BC’s senior development, marketing, and operations director, emphasizes that the two-day event exists across a multitude of different categories all at once, reflecting the festival’s long history as a cross-genre experience.

“It’s not just a sport, or just a culture: it’s in that liminal space between the two that we exist,” he explains. “It’s fun being able to explore in a space where other people aren’t looking and say, ‘There’s this value here.’ And we can activate that and bring it to the community in a way that’s tied to our roots—tied to our traditions—but also not so beholden to what happened hundreds or thousands of years ago.”

The Dragon Boat Festival (龍舟節) traditionally takes place on the fifth day of the fifth month of the classical Chinese calendar. As is true of many long-running festivals, there is no single universally-agreed upon origin story.

Poet and minister Qu Yuan (who died in 278 BCE) is commemorated in much of China, as is statesman Wu Zixu (died 484 BCE) in south-eastern Jiangsu province, and shaman’s daughter Cao E in parts of Zhejiang. Qu and Cao drowned, while Wu had his remains thrown into a river. Boats, so the stories go, were used to search for their bodies, and this eventually morphed into the annual tradition of racing 22-member, paddle-powered watercraft.

Although Vancouver’s own festival is obviously much newer—beginning with exhibition races at Expo 86 to showcase local Chinese culture—some parts of the old traditions still hold. Namely, that the races are not purely a sporting event.

“In ancient China, you would have had people from a whole bunch of different villages come together—because obviously you have to come together to race, and you need a lot of people to race—and whoever hosted it got to show off what their community was like,” Lai explains. The Concord Pacific Dragon Boat Festival, therefore, is a way to show off all that Vancouver is. “I’d like to think that we’ve grown alongside the community,” he continues, “to have a more mature and nuanced understanding of what Vancouver can be.”

To that end, the festival has expanded its scope. As the sun sets on June 22, for example, Vancouver will have its first-ever public drone show as part of the festivities. (“It’s been a great learning experience, trying to build something in the city,” Lai says diplomatically.) And an artisan market and licensed patio will provide plenty of ways to enjoy the first official weekend of summer.

Ahead of Canada Pride coming to Vancouver later this summer, a Pride pavilion will join the long-time Chinese and Indigenous pavilions, encouraging visitors to celebrate diverse perspectives. Queer Asian collective Ricecake is also running a drag and dim sum event on the Sunday morning to revel in the intersections of tradition and today.

“There are a lot of queer paddlers in our community,” Lai offers, “and we want to create a space where they feel safe being in sport.”

In case the exciting races—which run every 10 minutes from 8am to 6:30pm—don’t hold your attention, there’s also a music stage with all-local acts. Spy recent Straight subjects Post Modern Connection and Vox Rea on Saturday, before Hey Ocean! reunite for a special set; or catch Juno-nominated duo Manila Grey closing out the festival on Sunday night.

And on the water, more teams than ever will be battling it out. Lai, who has both paddled and coached, is enthusiastic about the festival’s scope: more than 6,000 racers are competing, which is a record for the event. And the largest two-kilometre races in the world will take place, with more than 400 competitors in 18 teams simultaneously paddling for victory.

“When I was a paddler, and when I was coaching, the festival became a place for people to come together and build their own story on the water,” Lai reflects, “and have it be the culmination of however many years of teamwork.”

But it’s not just the competitors’ story that he cares about now—it’s everyone’s. 

The Concord Pacific Dragon Boat Festival runs on June 22 and 23 at Creekside Park.