Dragon Festival in St. Paul, Minnesota

Dragonboat races aren't just for China and the coastal cities: for 12 years the Dragon Festival in St. Paul, Minnesota has been celebrating the vibrant and growing Asia-Pacific culture here in the Midwest.  This year's event took place July 12-13, right in the thick of Minnesota's festival season. The venue as always is Lake Phalen Regional Park, where a number of dragonboats are permanently stationed for practice through the warm season.

The Twin Cities area is home to a number of businesses and educational institutions with deep links to Asia, and many of them sponsor dragon racing teams, such as Wells Fargo, Boston Scientific, Medtronic, Seagate, Hormel, and Target. There are also community and family groups who participate. My daughter's school, Yinghua Academy, also had a team this year!

Team booths

The racing is really a chance to get friends and family together for a day at the lake 

Many corporate sponsors also set up advertising tents. Political candidates' teams were out in force, as well as local cultural centers and gift & bookshops.

Wells Fargo makes a really strong / cute effort to tune its messaging to specific cultural audiences.  The company has also just recently opened its first office in Beijing & they brought materials used to kick things off there to show folks here in MSP.

In addition to the boat races and vendor / sponsor booths, there were also a number of stages for performances and fun-fair activities for kids.

The festival has consistently advertised and gotten PR from local media - free events are always popular but it is nice to see strong turnout from the general Twin Cities population (also helped by the diverse participation among the racing teams.)

Practice sessions took place during morning hours, and competitive heats in the afternoons.  Competitive matches would be between two teams, two races each, best time overall advancing to the next tier. There would be four boats on the water at any given time so you would get to see a race every five minutes or so; one pair racing while the other pair paddled back to the starting point and rested... 

From the shore it was easy to hear the drumming and chanting of the race teams

And plenty of excitement for each heat!

Food of course is terribly important when celebrating Asian culture! I think back to our first visit in 2006 and being disappointed at the range & quality of offerings -so was thrilled at the diversity available this year!  Food trucks are catching on in MSP & were here, as well as a half-dozen local East and SE Asian restaurants.  Two different places selling bubble tea! 

We need to get some of these guys into the Minnesota State Fair! They all certainly proved they could crank out high-quality tasty dishes for a festival crowd.