Paddlers feel the heat as Hong Kong celebrates Dragon Boat Festival

Dragon boat teams across the city embraced very hot weather warnings on Saturday to race their way to the finishing lines, cheered on by hundreds of thousands more who equally endured the summer heat to celebrate the annual Tuen Ng Festival.  

Hundreds of paddlers slogged it out on the waters as spectators stood and sweated shoulder to shoulder, plundering the beaches and waterways.

Some 200,000 people were estimated to have descended on Stanley, an all-time record according to the event’s organisers, while tens of thousands more visited competitions scattered around the city, including in Sha Tin, Sai Kung and Discovery Bay.

On Stanley Main Beach, a tailwind aided teams and the coastal breeze did its best to keep festival-goers cool.

But temperatures had topped 34 degrees Celsius by mid-morning, edging closer to some of the warmest weather so far this year.

“The weather is a big difference this year, from cool [last year] to extremely hot,” Alson Wong Kam-chuen, chairman of the Stanley Residents Association, said.

“This year, especially, the event day is a little bit late – we usually host it in early June – and we are catching the very hot summer weather.”