Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival

The ancient festival of Tuen Ng, the Dragon Boat Festival, is one of South East Asia's key public holidays.

Hong Kong usually sees an international fleet of Dragon Boat teams gather to compete, with spectators watching in their thousands.

Unfortunately, the risk of coronavirus means this year's event is much more modest. However, with public health measures and restrictions in the territory easing, organisers were able to host a smaller event featuring 12 teams made up of and supported by local companies and organizations.

Among them were Charlotte and Quentin, who competed in one of the dragon boat teams in the day long festival.

Charlotte: "We need to train keeping the social distancing rules, so we try to really live with that and comply with this, but we are happy to be back, we know that we need to be prudent, so that the races, well we can be back for training and races."

Quentin: "It was amazing, the organisation has done a really good job, they kept all the traditional ceremonies and the atmosphere was really really cool, really nice.

Charlotte: "Yeah you can see everyone's happy to be here."

With its origins lost in time, one of many superstitions held about Tuen Ng Jit is that it was a day for banishing illness and bad luck.

We can only hope that's true.

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