With the upcoming Chinese traditional “dragon boat” festival, a race of dragon boats took place successfully yesterday in Cambridge on the Cam river alongside Jesus Green and the lower part of Midsummer Common, which was organised by Cambridge Chinese Association, Cambridge Chinese Community Centre, CSSA and other Chinese organisations. The activity showed to the local communities the ancient Chinese culture and customs: racing dragon boat and eating Zongzi on the Duan Wu festival day.
On 5th Jun Sunday, a very shinning day, about 2000 Chinese, local residents, students and tourists enjoyed the activity. 12 teams including Cambridge Chinese Community Centre, Huawei Company and CSSA competed the dragon boats racing on Cam River and finally CSSA won the championship.
Cambridge City Mayor Mr.Jeremy Benstead and former mayor Claudette attended the celebration and both experienced personally the dragon boat racing as rower and drum beater respectively.
Benstead said: “Chinese Community is one of the oldest and biggest community in Cambridge area. Chinese communities contributed a lot to economic development of Cambridge city, and brought different culture to Cambridge at same time. I wish people can learn more about great and diversified Chinese Culture through these activities.
Besides the race, the festival organised variety of culture shows. Cambridge Chinese Community Centre performed traditional Chinese dance and Tai Chi Fan which were applauded and favoured by the audience. In addition, Chinese traditional foods such as Zong Zi were supplied as well.
The success of activity relied on many help from volunteers, as said by PhD Sun Wei, the chairman of Cambridge Chinese Community Centre: “Sincerely thank all the outstanding performance by our members and services of all volunteers from Community Centre, it was you all who made the splendour of the activity.”