For the second year in a row, the organisers of the Hong Kong International Dragon Boat Races are having trouble finding sponsorship. With just over two weeks to go before the races at the Tsim Sha Tsui East waterfront, they need another $2 million, or half of what it costs to host the event.
That is a great pity. Since its launch in 1976, when the sole foreign team was a group of fishermen from Nagasaki, the event has grown in stature.
Last year, 20 teams from overseas joined 100 local ones. This year, a similar number of foreign teams, including ones from Egypt and the former Soviet bloc, are slated to take part.
Dragon boat racing dates back more than 2,000 years, to the Warring States period. In the kingdom of Chu, the scholar-statesman Qu Yuan was banished by the emperor after being wrongly accused of treason. In despair, he threw himself into the Milo River in Hunan province on the fifth day of the fifth month in the lunar calendar.
The local people, who held Qu in high regard, immediately jumped into their boats and rushed in vain to save him. Legend has it that during their search, they also hit the water with their oars to prevent the fish from eating Qu's body. Thus was born the tradition of dragon boat racing.
Across China, the annual races present a colourful spectacle, with paddlers rowing in unison to beating drums and gongs on boats decked with flags.
For much of the 1980s and 1990s, the Hong Kong Tourism Association promoted dragon boat racing as a festival game with rich Chinese cultural characteristics, and the Hong Kong International Dragon Boat Races became a major item on the tourist calendar.