The Song Navy and

the Invention of
Dragon Boat Racing

Andrew Chittick e c k e r d c o l l e g e

Scholarly research on the Dragon Boat Festival (called Duanwu 端

午 in Mandarin Chinese) and its signature event, the dragon boat races, has
been moribund for quite a few decades. Claimed by Wen Yiduo 文一多 in
the 1920s to be a primitive ritual for dragon totems with an ancient history
dating back before the Warring States period, the races subsequently became
conceptualized as an almost a-historical, essentialized performance with a
variety of religious purposes and “signifiers” ranging from rainmaking and
recalling the spirits of the drowned to grisly human sacrifices.1 In popular
literature, the only “history” recounted about the races is the story that they
had their origins in an effort to rescue the poet Qu Yuan 屈原(ca. 340–278
BCE) from drowning, a notion widely understood by scholars to be a myth,
though a very influential one. Laurence Schneider, writing on the politics of
Qu Yuan lore in the late 1970s, was compelled to rely on decades-old scholar-
ship to make sense of the races’ significance, and could not help but be led
somewhat astray by what he found.2 Very little has changed in the thirty years
since.
1. Wen Yiduo, “Duanwu kao 端午考,” in Wen Yiduo quanji 文一多全集 (Shanghai: Kai­
ming shudian, 1948) vol. 1, 221–38; Wolfram Eberhard, Chinese Festivals (New York: Schuman,
1952) and Local Cultures of South & East China (Leiden: Brill, 1968); Wen Chongyi 文崇一,
“Jiu ge zhong de shuishen yu huanan de longzhou sai shen 九歌中的水神與華南的龍舟賽
神,”Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, no. 11 (1961); Goran Aijmer, The
Dragon Boat Festival on the Hupeh-Hunan Plain, Central China: A Study in the Ceremonial-
ism of the Transplantation of Rice (Stockholm: Ethnographical Museum of Sweden, 1964).
Essentially all subsequent writing on the festival in both English and Chinese follows the lead
of these scholars in interpreting the Duanwu festival and the races.
2. Laurence Schneider, A Madman of Ch’u: The Chinese Myth of Loyalty and Dissent
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), esp. Chapter 4, 125–57. See also review by David
Johnson, The Journal of Asian Studies 41.2 (1982): 344–46.

Journal of Song-Yuan Studies 41 (2011)

2 andrew chittick

This is a shame, since scholars have long been aware that our understanding
of Chinese festivals is in need of updating. Donald Holzman offered a tren-
chant analysis of the “misguided” and “flimsy” comparative-anthropological
approach to the Cold Food festival back in 1986.3 Since then, scholars of
Chinese religion have made phenomenal strides in almost every area of re-
search, and there has been much better historically-grounded work on other
festivals.4 However, while some light has been shed on aspects of Duanwu,
scholars of Chinese religion have paid relatively less attention to the boat races
themselves, perhaps because they seem to be only partially a religious activity,
less analytically familiar than more obviously sacred temple and exorcistic
rituals, artistic traditions, and daily religious practices.5
As I have argued in other venues and recount briefly here, it in fact makes
sense not to confine the races to the more traditionally-understood roles of
religious practice. They are just as well understood as a type of competitive
sport, originally rooted in military training, which eventually developed a
broad range of social and cultural functions, including but not limited to
religious ones.6 The now-familiar connections between the races and dragon
boat imagery, the legend of Qu Yuan, and the rest of the complex symbolism
of the ancient state of Chu, which have served as the raw material for sym-
bolic structuralist analysis, were not essential elements of the earliest races;
they were later, contingent developments, rooted in very particular historical
contexts and time periods. Thus, not only can they not be used to explain the
origins of the races, they also do not by any means exhaust the range of the
races’ “symbolic significance.”
This essay’s first objective is to illuminate a quite different set of roles and
signifiers which the races have held for their participants and onlookers. It
begins by mapping out the history of boat racing as a part of the wider culture
of naval warfare in the Yangzi valley, then shows how imperial regimes drew

3. Donald Holzman, “The Cold Food Festival in Early Medieval China,” Harvard Journal
of Asiatic Studies 46.1 (June 1986): 52, 63–74.
4. Bodde, Festivals in Classical China (Princeton, 1975); Steven Tieser, The Ghost Festival
in Medieval China (Princeton Unversity Press, 1996); Xia Rixin 夏日新, Changjiang liuyu de
suishi jieling 长江流域的随时节令 (Wuhan: Hubei jioayu chubanshe, 2004).
5. A notable recent exception is the excellent, ground-breaking work done by Shih-chieh
Lo, The Order of Things: Popular Politics and Religion in Modern Wenzhou, 1840–1940 (PhD
Dissetation, Brown University, 2010).
6. “Competitive Spectacle during China’s Northern and Southern Dynasties: With Particular
Emphasis on “Dragon” Boat Racing,” Asia Major 3rd series vol. 23 pt. 1 (2010), 65–86.
the song navy and the invention of dragon boat racing 3

upon these traditions, first for imperial entertainment, then more pragmati-
cally as a way of reaching down into local society to recruit military forces. By
far the most important historical transition came in the Song period, when
direct patronage and encouragement by the Song imperial military turned
boat racing from a locally-staged mock battle into a form of training and re-
cruitment for the imperial navy. As a result, local boat-racing traditions had
a substantial “upward” influence that culminated in the late northern and
southern Song imperial practice of naval training and review.
The second objective of this essay is to suggest the process by which some
of the elements of the expressly archaized and ritualized late imperial tradi-
tion now known as dragon boat racing came together.7 The performative
practices of the Song imperial naval tradition had a significant “downward”
influence on local boat-racing, adding a range of classical signifiers, images,
and literary tropes largely drawn from the Chu Verses (Chuci 楚辭) and their
incarnation in metropolitan literary culture. Most importantly, the concept of
the dragon boat, which had not previously figured significantly in local boat
races, became a central element of the tradition and subsequently took on a
life of its own.

Medieval naval warfare and

the development of boat racing traditions
Boat racing began as a practice in southern military garrisons no later than
the Northern & Southern Period (420–589 CE), a time of rapid development
of naval warfare capability and tactics. During the thousand-plus years from
the fall of the Han dynasty (220 CE) to the Mongol conquest of the southern
Song (1279 CE), the Huainan frontier (between the Huai and the Yangzi rivers)
became one of East Asia’s most important political boundaries, serving as a
frontier between rival states equally or more often than the much more heavily
studied northern frontier with the Mongolian steppes. The Huainan region
became a political frontier primarily because it was also a military frontier:
north of it, military campaigns relied primarily on horses for transport and
fast-striking power, while south of it the same role was often assumed by boats.

7. Eric Hobsbawm “Introduction: Inventing Traditions,” Hobsbawn & Ranger (eds), The
Invention of Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1–14; see also the additional insights
of Stephen Vlastos, “Tradition Past/Present: Culture and Modern Japanese History,” Vlastos (ed),
Mirror of Modernity: Invented Traditions of Modern Japan (UC Press, 1998), 1–16.
4 andrew chittick

Southern regimes could not make sustainable territorial gains north of the
Huainan frontier without developing cavalry, which required major changes
in their force composition and tactics. Northern armies faced similar hurdles
in their attempts to move south, success at which required the development
of a much stronger naval capability than they ordinarily had.8 This challenge
led to many centuries of political division.
Southern independence was also facilitated by the demographic and
economic development of the Yangzi valley and regions further south. This
process, clearly underway in the Han dynasty but continuing largely unabated
for the next thousand years, made the southern regions more able to sustain
independent regimes, and also more worth fighting for. Control of the rivers
was essential, not only to military success, but also to influencing and taxing
the profitable commercial economy. This again made the development of
riverine naval power a critical element of every successful southern regime,
not just to defend against threats from the north, but also, perhaps more
importantly, to struggle for military and economic dominance against rival
claimants within the region. In particular, the Yangzi river and its major
tributaries were the dominant axis of trade and transport through several of
the largest and most rapidly developing regions of the south, and thus were
frequent theaters of combat between rivals who controlled different stretches
of the river system, especially the delta (modern Jiangsu and Anhui) and the
central region (modern Hubei, Hunan, and Jiangxi), with the upper reaches
(modern Sichuan) often playing a pivotal supporting role.
Studies of Chinese naval warfare have tended to emphasize only the larg-
est campaigns, all of which were efforts by northern regimes to conquer the
south. In the period between the fall of the Han and the Mongol conquests,
this was done successfully five times: the Western Jin conquest of Wu (280);
the Sui conquest of Chen (589); the Tang conquest of the short-lived Liang
regime of Xiao Xian (621); the Song conquest of the southern kingdoms
(963–74); and the Mongol conquest of southern Song (1200s). Cao Cao’s
fabled but unsuccessful Red Cliffs campaign in 208 CE has received equal or
more attention than the successful attempts. All of these campaigns involved
the development of a massive armada of large ships somewhere upstream on
the Yangzi river (typically in Sichuan and the upper Han river at Xiangyang

8. I must acknowledge my debt to an anonymous reader of the original draft of this paper
for helping me to make the language of this paragraph more accurately and clearly phrased.
the song navy and the invention of dragon boat racing 5

襄陽), which then swept downriver towards the capital in the delta region
(most often at Nanjing). Because these campaigns each had a decisive impact
on the fortunes of the great Chinese empires, they have been the most closely
studied.9
By comparison, the seemingly less consequential and more mundane
wars between rival warlords of southern regimes have received little atten-
tion. Though these battles also used large ships, the more common sort of
skirmishing relied primarily on the tactical deployment of squadrons of fast
longboats. These squadrons were used in a manner paralleling that of light
cavalry in the north: for reconnaissance and patrol, to interdict enemy sup-
ply lines by cutting off strategic points, to fight enemy squadrons of similar
craft, and, when set against armadas of large, slow-moving troop ships, to
run harassing and incendiary attacks. The central unit of this warfare was a
long, slender boat of shallow draft, probably around twenty meters in length
(but with considerable variation) and with about thirty rowers arrayed in two
parallel lines down each side. Boats of this type were most often called ge 舸
(for direct fighting and special operations) or ting 艇 (primarily a patrol craft,
less well-armed).10
Small-boat warfare of this type was already important in the Three Kingdoms
period, but it is particularly well-documented in the histories of the early
medieval southern dynasties, when the many coups and civil wars for the
Jiankang (modern Nanjing) throne relied on these sorts of naval squadrons for
reconnaissance and quick striking power. The “disposition of forces” memori-
als for the two military campaigns that founded the southern Qi and Liang
dynasties (in 478 and 501 CE, respectively) show that these large campaigns
relied not only on tens of thousands of troops based on large ships, but also
an equivalent number of men on light fast boats “to cut off fords and strategic

9. Some of the more important surveys of naval warfare during this period include Zhang
Tienu 張鐵牛 and Gao Xiaoxing 高曉星, Zhongguo gudai haijun shi 中國古代海軍史 (Beijing:
Ba-Yi chubanshe, 1993); David Graff, Medieval Chinese Warfare, 300–900 (Routledge, 2002);
Peter Lorge, “Water Forces and Naval Operations”, in David Graff and Robin Higham (eds), A
Military History of China (Westview 2002), 81–96. One other influential study of pre-modern
Chinese naval warfare is Edward Dreyer, “The Poyang Campaign 1363: Inland Naval Warfare in
the Founding of the Ming Dynasty,” in Frank Kierman and John Fairbank (eds), Chinese Ways
in Warfare (Harvard 1974), 202–42; however, it is beyond the period of focus of this study, and
the campaign follows quite a different pattern.
10. Chittick, Andrew, “The Transformation of Naval Warfare in Early Medieval China: the
Role of Light Fast Boats,” Journal of Asian History 44.2 (2010), 128–150.
6 andrew chittick

points.”11 In the civil war of 466 CE between rival claimants for the southern
throne, for example, a force of fifty large warships (dajian 大艦) and two
hundred ge-boats was opposed by a force consisting primarily of “flying ge-
boats” which succeeded in breaking through the enemy lines and beheading
and capturing many of the enemy.12 The commander of the troops on the
winning side had substantial experience in naval warfare; by comparison,
the chief tactician for the losing side is recorded as having complained that
he “had never been trained in naval combat.”13 Training and proficiency in
small-boat warfare had become a military necessity.
One important element of naval warfare training was boat racing, a practice
that developed in southern provincial military squadrons around this time.
The races were called jingdu 競渡, which means “competing to cross.” The
practice probably originated from military training exercises that modeled the
crossing of a contested river; the term is used in a passage in the Jiu Tang shu
to refer to actual military combat, a cross-river assault by Nanzhao armies in
southern Sichuan in 869.
In the twelfth month (of 869 CE), {Nanzhao/Man leader} Piao Xin 驃信 sent a
dozen men from the Qingping Office 清平官 to offer a “false surrender.” After
parleying with {Imperial commander} Dou Pang 竇滂 , the Man army’s boats
and rafts fought for the {river} crossing (Man jun chuan fa jing du 蠻軍船筏競
渡 ). The Zhongwu and Wuning Army troops united to oppose them, engaging
in battle (jie zhan 接戰 ) from the seventh to the ninth watch (ca. noon to four
p.m.). The Man army slowly retreated.14

This passage shows that the term jingdu still had some currency as a
military term, even as late as the tenth century. In the parallel sections of
the Xin Tang shu and Zizhi tongjian, however, the phrasing of the passage is

11. Shen Yue, Song shu 74.1935; see also Yao Silian, Liang shu 1.8. Neither of these naval
campaigns is otherwise described with the kind of detail given for the 466 civil war. (This and all
subsequent references to the standard dynastic histories use the series published by Zhonghua
shuju since 1959.)
12. Song shu 84.2139. This shows that the long boats were equipped with ramming gear and
grappling equipment for boarding enemy ships. The mengchong 蒙衝, a type of armored ram-
ming vessel noted in the Three Kingdoms period and also described in the Taibai yinjing, was
probably essentially an armored ge, more or less the equivalent of heavy armored cavalry. See
Needham, 678–82, 686.
13. Song shu 84.2142
14. Jiu Tang shu 19A.673.
the song navy and the invention of dragon boat racing 7

changed, probably to avoid confusion with the more common meaning of

the term: a staged boat-racing competition.15 The earliest use of the term in
this sense comes from the mid-sixth century Jing-Chu suishi ji 荊楚隨時記,
which describes the custom as practiced in the central Yangzi region:
On the fifth day of the fifth month they have jingdu. . . . The boats are selected
for lightness and speed and are called “flying ducks” (feifu 飛鳧 ). One may
style itself the “Water Army” (shuijun 水軍 ), another may style itself the “Water
Horse” (shuima 水馬 ). The provincial generals and gentry all watch from the
water’s edge.16

The geographical treatise of the Suishu states that the practice was common
in the south, especially in Xiangyang and Jiangling 江陵, the primary garrison
towns of the central Yangzi region.17 By the late Tang, the races are known
to have been widely held in southern river towns on festival days.18 The most
favored date was Duanwu 端午, the midsummer festival on the fifth day of
the fifth lunar month, which was well-established by the Han dynasty as a
time for warding off evil spirits. The races were conceptualized as another way
to accomplish this, not so much by the usual preventative practices (such as
hanging up medicinal herbs or tying on talismanic armbands), but by actively
frightening and threatening evil spirit armies with a show of force. In other
words, local armed groups were presented as protecting local communities
not just from human enemies, but from demonic ones as well.19
Though the races certainly had these ceremonial and apotropaic elements,
we should not lose sight of the fact that they remained fundamentally martial
and competitive events. In Hangzhou, and probably elsewhere as well, the
responsibility for organizing and overseeing the races was in the hands of

15. Xin Tang shu 222.6285 switches from jingdu to 爭岸, “fought for the riverbank,” while
Sima Guang, Zizhi tongjian (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1956) 251.8151–2 uses 爭渡, “fought for
the crossing.”
16. Zong Lin 宗懍, Wang Yurong 王毓榮 (ed), Jing-Chu suishiji jiaozhu 荊楚歲時記校
注 (Taipei: Wenjin chubanshe, 1988), 131.
17. Sui shu 31.897.
18. The Tang-era evidence is all from the Yangzi valley and Zhejiang. By Song times there is
evidence that the races were held in areas of modern Fujian and Guangdong as well, probably
a result of the extensive migrations into these regions from the Yangzi regions in the late Tang
and Five Dynasties periods.
19. {Author}, “Competitive Spectacle,” 75–83.
8 andrew chittick

local military officials.20 Other accounts indicate that boats were expressly
designed to maximize speed, and the rowers treated the event “as if they were
practicing for their enemies.”21 The races themselves were unpredictable and
often violent affairs; one Tang official stationed in Hunan noted that their end
result was “bloody eyebrows, wounded heads . . . overturned boats and broken
paddles.”22 Another official in Zhejiang reported that three boatloads of men
died in one episode.23 The violent and competitive nature of the races made
them a great spectator sport, as well as an excellent venue for gambling.24
Several Tang imperial officials wrote accounts which denounced the races as
symptomatic of excessive militarism and corrupt morals, and asked for them
to be suppressed.25 These references show that the military and competitive
basis of the local boat races remained a central part of the tradition throughout
the Tang period.
The military role of the boat races is somewhat obscured, however, by the
lack of any major naval campaigns following the Sui and Tang conquest of the
south. As a result, the histories of this period say little about naval warfare and
nothing at all about the role of small-boat tactics. The significance of military
control of southern waterways would nonetheless have grown substantially,
due to the rapid growth in the size and scope of commercial shipping. By
the late Tang many hundreds of government ships moved tax grain along the
Yangzi and its major tributaries before traveling up the Grand Canal towards
the capital. Alongside these were a much greater array of commercial ships,
the largest carrying upwards of four hundred tons and having several hundred
sailors aboard.26 Protection and taxation of commercial shipping would have
relied on the military control of waterways through the use of fast patrol and

20. Liu Chongyuan 劉崇遠, Jinhua zi zabian 金華子雜編, in Tang-Wudai-Song biji shiwu
zhong (Shenyang: Liaoning jiaoyu chubanshe, 2000), 3. See also Wang Dang 王黨, Tang yulin
唐語林 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1987) 3.315 for another version of the Jinhuazi tale.
21. Yuan Zhen (779–831), “Competing boats” 競舟, Yuanshi changqing ji 3/3a-b, also Quan
Tang shi 398.990.
22. Zhang Jianfeng 張建封 (fl. 770s–790s), “Boat race song” 競渡歌, Quan Tang shi 275.695.
23. Li Rong 李 冗 , Duyi zhi 獨 異 志 , at http://www.capaw.com/SKQS/ShowArticle.
asp?ArticleID=16994, in supplemental section.
24. Kang Tingzhi 康廷芝 (fl. late 600s), “In opposition to gambling on jingdu races” Dui
jingdu duqian pan 對競渡賭錢判, Quan Tang wen, j. 260; Yuan Zhen, “Competing boats.”
25. Zhang Jianfeng, “Boat race song”; Yuan Zhen, “Competing boats.”
26. Li Zhao 李肇, Tang guo shi bu 唐國史補 (Shanghai: Gudian wenxue chubanshe, 1957),
62–3.
the song navy and the invention of dragon boat racing 9

reconnaissance boats. Despite this important and expanding function, naval

squadrons were still relegated to limited and mundane roles that flew under
the radar of imperial history-writing; similarly, boat racing remained a practice
of southern military garrison towns, and was not much more than a curious
local custom to those few imperial elites who chose to write about it.
Boat racing’s impact on imperial culture came from quite a different
quarter: as a form of entertainment for the emperor and his courtiers in the
pleasure gardens of Chang’an, Luoyang, and especially Yangzhou. The Tang
imperial court adopted a variety of competitive sports with martial origins,
such as hunting, polo, wrestling, and horse racing, both for military training
and for imperial entertainment. Given the dearth of naval campaigns, and
the more general lack of a naval orientation amongst the dominant northern
military elite, boat racing appears to have been primarily for entertainment,
not training. An account in Longjin fengsui pan 龍筋鳳髓判, a miscellany
compiled during the reign of Empress Wu, records a lengthy response by
Zhang Zhuo 張鷟 to a request for five thousand strings of cash to commission
the building, in Yangzhou, of ten jingdu boats to be used for races at Luoyang.
The boat races were being overseen by the Ponds and Gardens division
(chiyuan fencao 池苑分曹) of the Directorate of Waterways (shuihengjian 水
衡監, also known as the dushuijian 都水監), which was otherwise responsible
for imperial excursions for amusement; it was not a military office. The boats
were heavily decorated and exorbitantly expensive, not the sort of craft that
could be used in wartime. As Zhang’s critical response says, “A gold boat cannot
float on the water; a jade oar cannot ride the swells. The number to be built
is not many, so how can the money used be so vast?”27 In another episode in
825 CE, an imperial order to procure just thirty racing boats was estimated to
require the expense of half a years’ worth of transit taxes.28 Such large outlay
for relatively small craft clearly indicates that they were very elaborate and
designed for entertainment, not for combat.
These “show” races staged by the imperial court nonetheless had an
important effect: they brought the sport to the attention of court literati,
who observed the races and wrote memorials and poems about them, often

27. Zhang Zhuo 張鷟 (ca. 660–740), Longjin fengsui pan 龍筋鳳髓判, j. 2. Similar criticisms
of cost in late Tang times are found in Jiu Tang shu 17A.515–16 and 171.4445.
28. Jiu Tang shu 17A.515–16; Jiu Tang shu 171.4445; Xin Tang shu 126.4431; Zizhi tongjian
243.7844. The first and fourth of these sources say twenty boats rather than thirty.
10 andrew chittick

at imperial request. As a result, boat racing developed a range of poetic and

visual imagery that it had almost certainly lacked when it was a rough martial
practice in the provinces. Literati writings about the imperially-sponsored
races confirm the sense that they were essentially pleasure outings, with few
if any military overtones.29 Since the races were viewed as a “southern” (more
specifically a central Yangzi) custom, poets derived much of their imagery
from the Chu Verses, the Han-dynasty anthology of southern-style poetry based
around a core of works attributed to Qu Yuan which had become the reign-
ing literary archetype for all references to southern culture. For example, the
racing boats were referred to as “cassia boats” (guizhou 桂舟) and the oars
as “orchid oars” (lanrao 蘭橈 or lanzhao 蘭棹) or “cassia oars” (guizhao 桂
棹), allusions to the “Lord of the Xiang River” (Xiangjun 湘君), one of the
Nine Songs that, along with the poem “Encountering Sorrow” (Lisao 離騷),
formed the core of the Chu Verses.30 Other poetic references elaborated and
enriched the legend, first recorded in the sixth century CE, which linked
Qu Yuan’s famous suicide to the Duanwu date, and attributed the races to
an effort to save Qu Yuan from drowning.31 The tradition of oarsmen’s songs
(zhaoge xing, 櫂歌行 or 棹歌行), which in turn linked to the legend of the
old fisherman (yufu 漁父) who encountered Qu Yuan just prior to his suicide,
were also brought into play.32 Finally, animal imagery was used profusely;
Zhang’s memorial uses six kinds of birds in describing the boats, and his and
other texts also make reference to tigers, fish, dragons, and other mythical
beasts.33

29. Poems which address High Tang boat races include Li Huaiyuan 李懷遠 (fl. late 600s-
706), “In response to the observation of boat races at a banquet at Yibi Pool” 凝碧池侍宴看
競渡應制, Quan Tang shi 46.141; Li Shi 李適 (663–711), “In response to sporting boat races at
Xingqing Pool, on imperial order” 帝幸興慶池戲競渡應制, Quan Tang shi 70.186; Xu Yanbo
徐彥伯 (fl. early 700s), “Offered in harmonization with ‘In response to sporting boat races at
Xingqing Pool” 奉和興慶池戲競渡應制, Quan Tang shi 76.197.
30. Zhang Zhuo, Longjin fengsui pan, j. 2; Luo Binwang 駱賓王 (627–84), “Preface: On
viewing jingdu races at Yangzhou” 揚州看競渡序, in Quan Tang wen, j. 199.
31. Zong, Jing-Chu suishiji , 131; Sui shu 31.897; Chu Guangxi 儲光羲 (707–760?, jinshi 726),
“Watching the boat races” 觀競渡, Quan Tang shi 139.324; Zhang Yue 張說 (d. 730), “Watching
boat races at Yuezhou” 岳州觀競渡, Quan Tang shi 88.229; Liu Yuxi 劉禹錫 (772–842; jinshi
793), “Boat race lyric” 競渡曲, Quan Tang shi 356.887.
32. Sui shu 31.897; Chu Guangxi, “Watching the boat races at the Guanzhuang Pool” 官莊
池觀競渡, Quan Tang shi 139.324; Liu Yuxi, “Boat race lyric.”
33. Zhang Zhuo, Longjin fengsui pan, j. 2; Liu Yuxi, “Boat race lyric”; Li Shen 李紳, “East-
the song navy and the invention of dragon boat racing 11

By the late Tang dynasty, therefore, we can track two distinct boat racing
traditions: one was practiced in river towns of the Yangzi valley and Zhe­jiang
(and perhaps further south as well) on festival days as a form of military train-
ing and public spectacle, and was believed to have spirit-dispelling effects;
the other, a form of imperial entertainment, used elaborately decorated
boats and served as a rich source of poetic imagery, but shows no sign of
having any military or other practical significance. The local races were
certainly part of the inspiration for the imperial ones; what is less clear is
the relationship between the imagery and literary associations developed
for the imperial races and the actual performative aspects of the local ones.
The consistent use of animal imagery, which reflected the decorations of
the imperial pleasure boats, probably drew on the (presumably less costly)
decorations of the boats used in local garrisons. The rest of the connections
with the Chu Verses tradition, however, do not appear to have had much
if any basis in local boat-racing competitions.34 The most descriptive and
least rhetorically fanciful accounts of provincial races show that many of the
­images we now most closely associate with the races, such as the idea that they
commemorated Qu Yuan, or the exclusive use of dragons as the decorative
motif for the boats, were not yet predominant, if they were present at all, in
the provincial races.35 The linkage and eventual fusing of the imperial and
the local traditions came only with the greatly increased imperial sponsorship
of naval warfare that began in the tenth century and stretched out over the
next several hundred years.

ern Wu Pavillion 東武亭,” the fifth of twenty “New Building Poems 新樓詩,” Quan Tang shi
481.1221; Lu Zhao 盧肇 (fl. 840s), “Boat race poem 競渡詩,” Quan Tang shi 551.1411.
34. For example, it is highly unlikely that ordinary military longboats and oars would be
made out of cassia wood, much less any part of an orchid, thoroughwort, or other fragrant plant;
the term is clearly not descriptive of actual boats, but an imaginative literary flourish. As for Qu
Yuan, though there is one account that says he was considered a water spirit (in the fourth-century
Shiyi ji 拾遺記), his legend in general lacked any of the martial elements that would have made
him a likely target of worship for the races. Yuan Zhen’s poem, “Competing boats,” indicates
that the boatmen made sacrifices to spirits, but does not mention Qu Yuan; accounts in late
imperial gazetteers list many gods who were given direct worship prior the races, but Qu Yuan
is never among them. On the other hand, Liu Yuxi’s poem, “Boat race lyric,” claims that the
rowers in Wuling explicitly commemorated Qu Yuan. This could be attributed to Liu’s literary
imagination, but it is also possible that the Qu Yuan association had by this time begun to affect
local performative traditions. See {Author}, “Competitive Spectacle,” 76.
35. Zhang Jianfeng, “Boat race song”; Yuan Zhen, “Competing boats.”
12 andrew chittick

The expanded role of the imperial navy in the

southern kingdoms and Song
The renewed development of naval warfare capability first occurred in the
tenth-century southern kingdoms that rose to take advantage of the weakness
and collapse of the Tang court. The rulers of the kingdoms in the Yangzi
valley saw boat racing not merely as a curious southern custom and a source
of diversion, but as a fundamental part of their strategy for building naval
warfare capability; they sponsored pre-existing local boat racing traditions as
a means of military recruitment, and developed them more systematically for
naval training. This development was carried out on a much larger scale by
the imperial Song regime, eventually melding many of the aspects of the old
imperial entertainment practices with the more practical need for military
training and review. This marriage of imperial form and local function became
the practice known as dragon boat racing.
The rise of southern warlords following Huang Chao’s rebellion in the 880s
gave new prominence to the need for substantive naval warfare capability. As
they laid the basis for kingdoms that would last for the better part of a century,
southern warlords sought to control the commercial and productive resources
of the south. Their primary enemies were not the northern dynasties, but each
other. For example, pitched battles were waged between the states of Wu
and Chu to control the central Yangzi between Ezhou 鄂州 and Yuezhou
岳州 (modern Wuhan to Yueyang) in the years 905–7. Wu also fought fierce
campaigns with Wu-Yue, based in Zhejiang. Chu, which controlled central
Hunan, fought a variety of naval engagements throughout the first half of the
tenth century with the non-Han people west of Lake Dongting, which the
sources describe as “the Man tribes of valley streams.”36 These campaigns are
not described in much detail in the traditional historical sources, which were
compiled by northerners, but their naval tactics appear to have been similar to
those of the medieval southern dynasties, dominated less by massive armadas
of multi-decked ships than by squadrons of small fast boats and converted
merchant vessels, and relying on rapid strikes, ambushes, incendiary warfare,
and occasional hand-to-hand combat on deck.

36. Accounts of the battles in 905–7 are scattered in the standard histories and assembled
conveniently in Zizhi tongjian 265–6. Accounts of the Man people’s fights with Chu are found
in Jiu Wudai shi 17.236–7 and Xin Wudai shi 186.5421 (biography of Lei Man) and Xin Wudai
shi 66.827–8.
the song navy and the invention of dragon boat racing 13

To support these military efforts, rulers of the tenth-century Yangzi valley

kingdoms stepped up both the recruitment and the review of naval forces by
tapping the energy and prowess represented by local boat-racing competitions.
The evidence for this is explicit in a passage recorded in the Jiangnan yeshi 江
南野史 compiled in the mid-eleventh century, and repeated in other subse-
quent accounts of the southern Tang regime, the successor to the Wu regime
in the lower Yangzi region. The passage begins by delineating the sources of
troops recruited into various named army units under the first southern Tang
emperor, Li Bian 李昪 (r. 937–941). It then follows with this:
Then in the time of Sizhu (Li Jing 李靖 , r. 943–61), the people of every com-
mandery were sanctioned to row jingdu boats, and every Duanwu the officials
would give colored silk and compare their best and worst two-by-two. The winners
were awarded with a silver bowl, and were called “Mark Strikers” (dabiao 打
標 ). All their names were recorded, and they were ultimately gathered as troops,
which were called “Rolling Wave Armies” (lingbo jun 凌波軍 ).37

This account is supported by a mention elsewhere of the southern Tang

office of Rolling-Wave Inspector-in-Chief (lingbo duyuhou 凌波都虞候),
who oversaw the deployment of eight thousand men in naval squadrons in
the defense of the southern Tang capital of Jinling 金陵 (modern Nanjing) in
975 CE.38 These accounts show that commandery governors were authorized
to organize boat races, reward the winners, and then recruit them directly
into specialized units that served as the southern Tang regime’s imperial navy.
The quote from Jiangnan yeshi further implies that this particular recruiting
regimen was an innovation developed during the course of the southern Tang
regime, not a previously established practice. Imperial Tang officials stationed
in southern provincial towns are known to have observed local jingdu races,
and at least sometimes officiated at their start and finish, offered prizes for
them, and recorded the names of the winners.39 However, there is no explicit
evidence that the winners were directly recruited into the imperial military;
37. Long Gun 龍袞, Jiangnan yeshi 江南野史, in Quan Song biji 全宋筆記, series 1, vol. 3
(Zhengzhou: Daxiang chubanshe, 2003), 172. See also parallel accounts in Ma Ling 馬令, Nan
Tang shu 南唐書, in Wudai shishu huibian 五代史書彙編 (Hangzhou chubanshe, 2004), vol.
9 5.5294–5; Lu You 陸游, Nan Tang shu 南唐書, also in Wudai shishu huibian 五代史書彙
編, vol. 9. 3.5491.
38. Bi Yuan, Xu Zizhi tongjian 8.192.
39. Zhang, Longjin fengsui pan, j. 2 (commissions building of boats) ; Zhang Jianfeng,
“Boat race song” (observes, records names); Liu Yuxi, “Boat race lyric” (officiates); Liu, Jinhua
14 andrew chittick

there would have been little demand for such recruitment, since the Tang
court did not actively engage in naval warfare following the initial conquest of
the south (and some deployment in the wars against Koguryo in the early 7th
century). By comparison, the rulers of the tenth-century southern kingdoms
were all active military men for whom naval warfare was an essential, life-or-
death requirement. This served as a powerful incentive to use boat racing more
actively as a form of military recruitment, an intensification and formaliza-
tion of what had long been common practice in local southern garrisons, but
probably not at the imperial level.
The states of Chu and Shu, both of which also fielded substantial navies,
appear to have engaged in practices similar to those in southern Tang. Meng
Chang 孟昶, the ruler of Shu from 934–65, had a “Rolling Wave Pavilion”
from which he observed jingdu races.40 Ma Xifan 馬希范, the Chu ruler
from 932–46, also personally oversaw boat racing competitions.41 In one
instance, a county magistrate in Chu wrote a poem protesting a prefectural
order requisitioning jingdu boats and teams in preparation for a visit from the
regional governor.42 Though these accounts could be referring only to the
use of boat racing for entertainment, it is more likely that they were one part
of a system of naval recruitment and review similar to that developed by the
southern Tang regime.
While these southern kingdoms were out of necessity very active in naval
warfare, the Five Dynasties in the northern plains engaged in no naval warfare
at all. Their first efforts came during the Later Zhou campaign against southern
Tang in 955–57 CE. The campaign was initially based entirely on land forces,
and relied on a pontoon bridge across the Huai river, which turned out to
be highly susceptible to naval attacks by the forces of southern Tang. The
Zhou regime had, incredibly, made no preparations for this; naval warfare
appears to have been a wholly foreign idea to them. The Zhou forces adapted
quickly, however, building a navy by using convict laborers for muscle power
and captured southerners for expertise. This navy was sufficient to finish out

zi zabian, 3 (officiates, takes over some responsibilities when locals are not capable); Poyang ji,
quoted in TPYL 66.316 (offers prize).
40. Zhang Tangying 張唐英 (1026–1068), Shu taowu 蜀檮杌, in Quan Song biji 全宋筆
記 1st series, vol. 8 (Zhengzhou: Daxiang chubanshe, 2003), 58.
41. Jiu Wudai shi 133.1762.
42. Xiao Jie 蕭結, “Pizhou tally” 批州符, Quan Tang shi 873.9892.
the song navy and the invention of dragon boat racing 15

the campaign with enough advantage to force southern Tang to cede all the
land north of the Yangzi river.43
The northern navy grew rapidly over the next two decades under the direc-
tion of Zhao Kuangyin 趙匡胤(posthumously known as Song Taizu) who,
having overseen much of the Huainan campaign, overthrew the northern
Zhou regime in 960 and founded the Song dynasty. Taizu established a Boat
Building Office at a lake outside his capital of Bianjing 汴京 (modern Kai-
feng), where naval maneuvers were conducted in preparation for campaigns
to overthrow the Chu regime in 963. His regime then dug a larger lake,
drafted naval troops from newly-conquered Chu, and created a naval unit
called the River Tiger Victors (shui hujie 水虎捷). Taizu personally oversaw
their maneuvers in preparation for the campaign to take Sichuan over the
next several years. He had the lake enlarged still further, calling it the Lake for
Studying War (jiangwu chi 講武池), integrated more naval squadrons seized
from southern Tang in 971, and launched the largest of his naval campaigns
against southern Tang in 974–6.44 He died soon after the successful conclusion
of that campaign.
That boat racing played a military role in the southern regimes is evident
from Song Taizu’s consistent policy during these southern campaigns of
banning the local races altogether, presumably to deny local training and
recruitment channels for southern militarists. According to the Xu zizhi
tongjian changbian, the Song conquest of Chu proceeded in the second and
third months of 963. At the beginning of the fourth month, the Song was
taking action to dispose of the dead and the many prisoners of war. On the
fourth day of that month, they banned all jingdu races in Hunan, around the
time when practices for them would ordinarily have begun. Two days after
banning the races, they began digging their new lake for naval exercises west
of Bianjing, and founded a new navy made up of captured Chu forces.45 The

43. For the initial development of the Zhou campaign, see Jiu Wudai shi 117.1563–4; for a
full account, see Zizhi tongjian 293.9560–74. In English, the best account is Peter Lorge, War
Politics and Society in Early Modern China, 900–1795 (New York: Routledge, 2005), 27–8; see
also Denis Twitchett and Paul Jakov Smith (eds), Cambridge History of China, vol 5 pt 1: The
Sung Dynasty and Its Precursors, 907–1279 (Cambridge University Press, 2009), chapters 1–2.
44. Songshi 1.8, 12, 14, 17; 3.41–4; 187.4595, 4599; Li Tao, Xu zizhi tongjian changbian 4/7b;
Lorge, War Politics and Society, 31–2.
45. Li Tao 李燾 (1100s), Xu Zizhi tongjian changbian 續資治通鑑長編 (Shijie Shuju edi-
tion, 1961) 4/7b. According to Fang Zhiming 范致明 (fl. ca. 1100), Yueyang fengtu ji 岳陽風土
16 andrew chittick

banning of local boat races in the midst of this tight sequence of events was
certainly not a coincidence; it only makes sense as an effort to shut down the
Chu system of local military recruitment and draft Chu fighting men directly
into the expanding Song imperial navy instead. The same pattern was followed
in the conquest of Shu, following which the people of Sichuan were explicitly
prohibited from collecting money for jingdu races.46
At the same time, however, the Song regime’s adoption of southern naval
practices included their practices of recruitment, training, and review. Song
Taizu was perennially at war during his reign, and most of the battles had
a naval component; not surprisingly, he was closely involved with his naval
forces, personally going out to review naval warfare exercises twenty-eight
times during his sixteen years of rule.47 By the time his brother Taizong took
over in 976, the conquest of the south was largely complete, and one might
expect Song investment in naval warfare to slack off, as it had following the
initial conquests by the Tang regime. Initially this was not the case. Under
Taizong, the old Water Tiger navy was re-organized, and an even better naval
training facility, the Jinming Lake 金明池, was built. Taizong began visiting
the lake annually, usually in the third or fourth month, to review his naval
forces. These visits are mentioned repeatedly in the official Song History:
in the annals, in the treatise on the rituals for Military Review, and in the
treatise on the rituals for Excursions and Oversight. In at least one instance,
the exercises are explicitly identified as jingdu races.48
There was some lessening of intensity over time, however. While reviewing
the troops in 984, Taizong is supposed to have said that naval warfare is “a
practice of southerners. Now their lands are all settled, so we have no more
use for it. The current exercises are just to show that we have not forgotten
how to fight.”49 The record of this statement is paralleled by a clear shift in
nomenclature in the Song annals; while the naval reviews up through 984
are recorded as “observing the practice of naval warfare” (guan xi shui zhan
觀習水戰), subsequent visits to the Jinming Lake facility are described as
“observing water entertainments” (guan shui xi 觀水戲), a term used in both

記 (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1937), 46, advanced practices for the races in the Yueyang
region of Hunan commenced in the fourth month.
46. Li, Xu zizhi tongjian changbian, from Yongle dadian 12306/12b.
47. Songshi 113.2695.
48. Songshi 4.58, 69, 70, 72; 5.80, 87, 89; 113.2696; 121.2830.
49. Songshi 113.2696
the song navy and the invention of dragon boat racing 17

Han and Tang times to encompass a wide variety of waterborne exhibitions,

many of which had no military value.50 The frequency with which these
visits are recorded also declines; Emperor Zhenzong (998–1022) is supposed
to have observed “water entertainments” only four times in 24 years, and the
annals thereafter cease to mention it altogether for several generations, a
period when the Song was preoccupied with northern wars against the Liao
and Xixia regimes, and engaged in no major naval campaigns.51
Despite this apparent faltering of interest at the top, the ties between local
jingdu boat races and the imperial system of military training, recruitment
and review remained well-established in the provinces. The Song military
system stationed prefectural military forces in every decent-sized administra-
tive town, and used them rather like farm clubs or a “minor league” for the
“major league” of the imperial armed forces stationed around the capital. As
the voluminous Song History treatises on military affairs show, many of these
prefectural armies, including virtually every one in the south, had a naval
arm.52 These naval forces rarely engaged in large-scale campaigns, but they
were routinely involved in more local concerns, such as suppressing pirates
and bandits of the rivers and lakes, and shepherding imperial tax grain barges.
They relied on mid-sized, “many-oared boats,” which are described in the Song
huiyao as being broad and flat, around seventy feet long, with 40–50 oarsmen
along the sides, but wide enough to carry two hundred armed fighting men
as well.53
Boat racing would have remained a significant part of this training and
recruitment ladder, as two anecdotes from the Song History suggest. In the
first, a Fiscal Transport Commissioner in Sichuan during Taizong’s early years
required well-trained naval men to man the Three Gorges tax grain transport
ships. He recruited local men who raced in the local jingdu boat races, and
even instituted more advanced training for them in order to develop their
expertise.54 In the second anecdote, an official who had extensive experience
in the central Yangzi region during Zhenzong’s reign was sent to the northern
border. He sought to impress the northern people and the Khitans with “the

50. Songshi 4.58, 69, 70, 72; 5.80, 87, 89.

51. Songshi 113.2697; Paul Jakov Smith, “Shen-tsung’s reign and the new policies of Wang
An-shih,” Smith and Twitchett (eds), Cambridge History of China vol. 5 pt. 1, 347–8.
52. Songshi 189.4650–66, especially 4651–2, 4656.
53. Song huiyao jigao, as quoted in Zhang & Gao, Zhongguo gudai haijun shi, 83.
54. Songshi 301.9995–6, biography of Zhang Bing 張秉.
18 andrew chittick

secrets of naval warfare” by staging jingdu boat racing exhibitions at the Shangsi
上巳 festival early in the third month.55 In both cases, the significance of boat
racing as a form of training, as an exhibition of military preparedness, and as
a potential route for recruitment of troops is clear.
In the late northern Song, the court sought to re-invigorate the impe-
rial navy as a southern bulwark against the newly vigorous threats from the
Jurchens, and re-introduced the regular practice of imperial naval review at
Bianjing. We are fortunate to have an excellent textual record of this practice
in Dongjing menghua lu 東京夢華錄, and also a painting of it, called “Vying
for the Prize-Marker at Jinming Lake” (Jinming chi zhengbiao tu 金明池爭
標圖). The account makes it clear that the imperial military review fused
both the entertaining and the martial practices of earlier times, by includ-
ing elements such as music, dancing, puppet theater, and all manner of the
“hundred entertainments,” but also elements of practical naval war exercises,
including jingdu boat racing.56
According to Menghua lu, the exhibition was organized around a massive,
roughly three-hundred foot long ship, the “Great Dragon Ship” (da long chuan
大龍船), part of a long tradition stretching all the way back to the Han dynasty
of using “dragon ships” for imperial pleasure outings and excursions, of which
we’ll say more in the next section. The Great Dragon Ship was towed out of its
holding area by ten “tiger-head boats” (hutou chuan 虎頭船) with costumed,
dancing figures, and twenty “small dragon boats” (xiao long chuan 小龍船),
each with fifty oarsmen arrayed on them and equipped with flags, drums,
and gongs. At the head of each small dragon boat was an army commandant,
a ranking officer in the imperial Tiger Wing navy, with a signal flag. Once
the Great Dragon Ship was hauled out into the lake, a general commander
atop a pavilion on the shoreline used red signaling flags to instruct the small
dragon boats to engage in maneuvers, which are described in some detail:
The dragon boats break ranks, each with a cry and sound of gongs and drums,
and with painted oars twisting and turning all together make a circular forma-
tion, which is called the “Twisting Net” (xuanluo 旋羅 ). Again from in front of

55. Songshi 324.10480–1, biography of Li Yunze 李允則.

56. Meng Yuanlao 孟元老, Yin Yongwen 尹永文 (ed), Dongjing menghua lu jianzhu 東
京夢華錄箋注 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2007). For a discussion of this important text, see
Stephen West, “The Interpretation of a Dream: The Sources, Evaluation, and Influence of the
Dongjing meng Hua lu,” T’oung Pao 71 (1985), 63–108.
the song navy and the invention of dragon boat racing 19

the Water Pavilion the flag commands them, and the boats break up into two,
each in a circular rank, which is called “Sea Eyes” (haiyan 海眼 ). Again the
flag commands them, and the two ranks of boats face each other, which is called
“Touching Prows” (jiaotou 交頭 ).57

The pinnacle of the water exhibitions was the contest of “vying for the prize”
(zheng biao 爭標). For this contest, a staff was set up in the water, atop which
was attached a silver prize cup and the traditional colored silk prize-banner,
or biao, just as had been done under the southern Tang regime. At the proper
command, the small dragon boats raced two at a time to seize the prize and
return, the winners giving a shout and a bow. The tiger-head boats also had
their turn at racing, following which they all led the Great Dragon Ship back
into its shelter, and the exhibitions were over.
The southern Song regime based at Hangzhou maintained a similar practice
on West Lake. According to Mengliang lu 夢梁錄, the governor oversaw the
races early in the second month, and again in the third month during the
Qingming 清明 festival. The races began with a squadron of dragon boats
“submitting to join the provincial garrison.” The governor then ordered the
erection of a prize-marker on a staff in the middle of the lake, on which
was hung the traditional prize-banner of colorful embroidery, along with a
silver bowl and “imperial paper” (guanzhu 官楮 , perhaps a commission into
imperial service) which was to be awarded to the fastest boat. The boats then
went off to the other side of the lake and proceeded to race in pairs to seize
the mark.58
These practices all had entertaining elements, but they were also very much
a part of military training and preparedness, as the presence and participa-
tion of active military commanders suggests. The ability to coordinate large
numbers of small oared boats in elaborate maneuvers, as well as the ability
to simply row in unison very fast, was essential for training naval forces, just
as hunting and horse races were for training cavalry. The roots of these prac-
tices in provincial jingdu races are also quite evident. The size and style of
the boats, and the paired races for a prize-marker on a staff, are familiar from

57. Meng, Menghua lu, 660–1.

58. Wu Zimu 吳自牧, Meng liang lu 夢梁錄 (Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin chubanshe,
1980), 7. According to Stephen West, “Interpretation of a Dream ,” 101–2, this text is frequently
derivative of the Dongjing meng Hua lu, to the point of copying; however, this particular section
offers an account of the naval exercises which is quite distinct from that of its predecessor.
20 andrew chittick

the numerous accounts of medieval local jingdu races dating from Sui-Tang
times. Though some of these elements may have been taken up centuries
earlier as a part of Tang imperial exhibitions, their employment as a part of
the systematic training, review, and recruitment practices of the imperial navy
was a more recent development, initially among the southern kingdoms, but
reaching its pinnacle in Song times.

Long-term cultural influences:

the creation of dragon boat racing
The discussion so far has emphasized the “upward” influence of local jingdu
boat racing on imperial naval training and review. However, elements of
imperial style had a “downward” impact on local practices as well, due to
the Song regime’s promotion of provincial boat racing as a means of training
and recruitment for the imperial navy. Some of these impacts had only a
limited effect on local cultural practices, but they nonetheless offer evidence
of the effect of imperial sponsorship. Other impacts, especially the central
significance of dragon imagery, came to dominate local practices during this
time and have been seen as an inseparable part of the races ever since. This
development can thus be considered the “invention” of dragon boat racing.
An illustrative if ultimately rather limited impact has to do with the date
on which the races were held. From the sixth century forward, most accounts
of provincial races indicate that they were held on or in the weeks leading up
to Duanwu, early in the fifth month, and were associated with the need to
drive off evil spirits through a show of force. However, the boat races staged
for northern and southern Song imperial military review were most often held
early in the third month, at Shangsi, also known as Lustration, roughly at the
time of the Qingming festival.59 Evidence suggests that there was imperial

59. The Shangsi date went back to the Tang imperial races. Jiu Tang shu 171.4445, in an
entry for the spring of the year 824, refers to the imperially-sponsored boats as “Shangsi jingdu
boats” 上巳競渡船, showing that the association between the Shangsi festival and the imperially-
sponsored races was fairly standard in the early ninth century. Bai Juyi’s poem, “Harmonizing on
the Depth of Spring” 和春深 #15 (Quan Tang shi 449) says “Spring’s depth is a family at Shangsi”
and concludes with the line “where rows of paddles contend to cross, a length of embroidered
prize-cloth, lilting,” a clear reference to a boat race held on the Shangsi festival. The biography
of Du Ya 杜亞 (725–98) indicates that the races in the Huainan region were run in the spring (Jiu
Tang shu 146.3963). Both of these latter accounts probably refer to imperially-sponsored races,
the song navy and the invention of dragon boat racing 21

influence to hold local boat races on the “imperial” date, rather than the
“popular” date of Duanwu, presumably to emphasize their links with military
training, and weaken their links to local rivalries, gambling, spirit worship,
and other “undesirable” activities.
Direct evidence of the effort of imperial representatives to affect the date
on which the races were held is found in the section on annual festivals in
Sanshan zhi 三山志, a twelfth-century gazetteer from Fujian. The entry on
the Duanwu festival describes jingdu races and traditional festival activities
at some length, and notes their roots in Chu, the central Yangzi region. The
entry on the Shangsi/Qingming festival, meanwhile, says that two successive
imperial governors “would go to the pavilion at the edge of south lake and
order the people to do jingdu races.”60 This occurred early in the twelfth
century, a time when the northern Song was trying to reinvigorate its naval
preparedness, and clearly represents the effort to train and recruit local men
for imperial naval service, a local version of the practice of imperial training
and review recorded in Dongjing menghua lu. The fact that this local gazetteer
has jingdu races listed under two different festival dates shows that there was
both a fairly customary Duanwu date for the races, and an officially-promoted
Shangsi/Qingming date for them which was more strongly linked to the
imperial military recruitment system.
More circumstantial but still convincing evidence shows that this distinction
had a long-term but geographically circumscribed impact in the region around
the old southern Song capital of Hangzhou. In the late Tang period, fairly
elaborate jingdu races were held on or around the midsummer Duanwu
festival in this region.61 The account in Mengliang lu, however, shows that
by southern Song times the races in West Lake were held in the spring, on
imperial command. The author compares them specifically to the legacy of
the northern Song imperial tradition, stating “even Jinming Lake at Kaifeng
could not have been comparable to them in its liveliness.”62 He makes no men-
tion of any boat races being held at Duanwu. In late imperial times, ­holding

rather than the more informal local festival races, which mostly appear to have settled into the
Duanwu date by this time.
60. Liang Kejia 梁克家, Chunxi Sanshan zhi 淳熙三山志 (Siku quanshu, 1976) 40/5b and
40/7a–b.
61. Li, Duyi zhi, supplemental section, entry dated Baoli 2; Liu, Jinhua zi zabian, 3.
62. Wu, Meng liang lu, 12.
22 andrew chittick

boat races on the Shangsi date continued to be a significant alternative in the

region around Hangzhou, even as the Duanwu date for the races prevailed
throughout most of southern China. Late imperial gazetteers from Hangzhou
and the lower Yangzi delta region record at least eight accounts of races being
run early in the third month. Considering gazetteers from Zhejiang province
as a whole, a spring date is noted for almost a third of all the recorded instances
of jingdu races. By comparison, the Shangsi/Qingming date for boat racing is
very rarely recorded for any other locations in southern China.63 This regional
disparity can best be explained as a long-term legacy of southern Song imperial
influence in the greater Hangzhou region.
Another, much broader but often more elusive sort of impact has to do with
the “classicizing” influence that resulted from the application of high literary
imagery to imperial military terminology and practice, and thence to the run-
ning of local races. For example, the term lingbo 凌波, or “rolling waves,” was
a fairly erudite literary reference to passages from the Chu Verses and several
well-known medieval rhapsodies.64 By the Sui and early Tang it had been
applied to some imperial pleasure craft.65 After the southern kingdoms used
the term for elite naval units, however, it was retained by the Song military
as a term for naval squadrons. The southern Song divided their navy into two
wings, one for louchuan 樓船, a term for large multi-decked warships, and
the other for lingbo, presumably referring to smaller, faster longboats.66 This
use of the term lingbo in this context is certainly not evidence of a direct,
unbroken inheritance from the practices of ancient Chu, but is instead simply
a result of a rather florid Song military parlance.
A much more far-reaching classicizing influence was the association of
the racing boats with dragons, especially the use of the term longzhou 龍舟.
Scholarly accounts of dragon boat racing usually begin by looking at very

63. Statistics from Zhang Jianshi 张建世, Zhongguo de longzhou yu jingdu 中国得龙舟
与竞渡 (Beijing: Huaxia chubanshe, 1988), 31–40. Zhang draws much of his basic data from
Wen, “Jiu ge zhong de shuishen yu huanan de longzhou sai shen, 88–9. Neither Zhang nor Wen
offers any explanation of the pattern of dates for staging the races.
64. See Cao Zhi, “Rhapsody on the Luo river goddess” 洛神賦, Wenxuan 19/14b, and Guo
Pu, “Rhapsody on the Yangzi river” 江賦, Wenxuan 12/18b and 12/19b.
65. For example, Zizhi tongjian 180.5620, describing a pleasure boat for Sui Yangdi; but also
Jiu Tang shu 66.2466, where the reference may be to a ship with military purpose in Taizong’s
campaigns against Koguryo.
66. Songshi 187.4583.
the song navy and the invention of dragon boat racing 23

early dragon symbolism, totemism, religious rituals, sacrifices to dragons

and so forth, then map the history of the term “dragon boat” (longzhou or
longchuan 龍船) along with all boating and boat-racing traditions from an-
cient Chu times to the present.67 This approach implies that these traditions
were throughout Chinese history always one and the same, or at least closely
associated.68 However, texts from the medieval period never refer to the racing
boats with the term “dragon boat”; they use a variety of simple names, such
as ge 舸 (the term for a fast longboat), competitive boat (jing zhou 競舟), or
jingdu boat.69 Furthermore, the evidence strongly suggests that the boats were
decorated with all manner of designs, not just dragons; in fact, bird motifs are
mentioned considerably more often.70 Thus, to claim that the origin of the
boat racing tradition is tied to the totemic symbolism of dragons and dragon
boats is clearly unwarranted. This is not to say that the other animal imagery
used for the boats did not possess ritual and religious significance (it surely
did), only that the symbolic significance of the dragon and the dragon boat
had no special relationship with the origin of the races or the way that they
were practiced or perceived in medieval times.
The term longzhou or longchuan was of course often used in medieval
times, but not for racing craft. Instead, it referred to a very large, slow, often
multi-decked and ornately-decorated pleasure ship for imperial use, not suit-
able for racing at all. The tradition dates back to the Han, and played on the
legends of the Chu Verses, in which shamans were supposed to have yoked
“dragon vessels” to ride the clouds and communicate with the gods.71 The

67. Note the list in fn. 2. Essentially all subsequent writing on the festival in both English
and Chinese follows the lead of these scholars in interpreting the Duanwu festival and the races;
for example, Zhang Zhongguo de longzhou yu jingdu.
68. This assumption has been sharply questioned by some Chinese scholars, however; see
Zhang Lundu 张伦笃 and Huang Jingzhong 黄靖中, “Jingdu, longzhou, yu longzhou jingdu
zhi yanjiu 竞渡, 龙舟与龙舟竞渡之研究,” Zhongguo minjian wenhua 2 (1991), 125–42.
69. For example, Zong, Jing-Chu suishiji , 131; Zhang, Longjin fengsui pan, j. 2; Liu, Jinhua
zi zabian, 3.
70. Zong, Jing-Chu suishiji , 131; Zhang, Longjin fengsui pan, j. 2; Zhang Yue, “Watching
boat races at Yuezhou”; Yuan Zhen, “Competing boats.”
71. Examples of dragon-vessels are found in the Dong jun 東君 and He bo 河伯, two of the
“Nine Songs” of the Chuci; see Chen Zizhan 陳子展, Chuci zhijie 楚辭直解 (Shanghai: Fudan
daxue chubanshe, 1996), 72, 74; translations in David Hawkes, Ch’u Tz’u: The Songs of the South
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), 41–42. For the broader history of dragon boat terminology, see
Zhang and Huang, “Jingdu, longzhou,” 125–8.
24 andrew chittick

most famous “dragon ship” was commissioned by Sui Emperor Yang and
used to tour the Grand Canal and the southland; it had four decks and over
one hundred and twenty rooms, and was later referred to in countless Tang-
era poems to evoke an image of imperial luxury and excess.72 The tradition
nonetheless retained its appeal to later emperors; Zhou Emperor Shizong
(955–59) in his campaign against the Khitan in 959 rode a dragon ship at the
head of his naval forces, while Song Taizong rode a dragon ship to observe
the naval war exercises on Jinming Lake in 982 and again in 991.73
The fact that emperors or other sponsoring elites rode “dragon ships” or
other large, ornately-decorated barges in order to observe “water exhibitions,”
including jingdu boat races, suggests how the two traditions came to be associ-
ated. The following passage, dated from the late Tang period, clearly shows
the nature of the relationship:
When Cui Juan 崔涓 was at Hangzhou, their custom on Duanwu was to practice
jingdu on Qiantang Lake 錢塘湖 (i.e. West Lake). Each time, several days in
advance, they would line up a row of racing boats (zhouge 舟舸 ) on the lakeshore
and tie up brightly-decorated ships (caijian 彩艦 ) stretched out from east to west,
each several zhang high, to serve as decorative lake-viewing pavilions. Suddenly
on the eve {of the races} a north wind blew violently, and the decorated ships
(caichuan 彩船 ) were rocked about and could not be controlled. The next day,
they had all been blown by the wind and moored on the southern shore, and
those in charge of them looked at one another with no plan of what to do. Soon
Juan came to the lakeshore and saw this situation . . . {He} smiled a little and
said, “How many competition boats (jingdu chuan 競渡船 ) are there altogether?”
He ordered each decorated barge (caifang 彩舫 ) be tied to thirty-five boats,
and with unified strength all at once drumming the oars they suddenly moved,
amazingly with no difficulty.74

The decorated ships or barges mentioned in this passage refer to large,

colorfully ornamented pleasure craft used for observing the activities on the
lake; they’d have been ten meters or more in height, since a zhang measured
about two-and-a-half meters, and were very much akin to imperial dragon
ships in design and purpose, though not explicitly decorated as dragons. The

72. Sui shu 3.65; see also Victor Cunrui Xiong, Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty: His Life,
Times, and Legacy (Albany: SUNY Press, 2006), 35–7.
73. Jiu Wudai shi 119.1580; Songshi 4.69 and 5.87.
74. Liu, Jinhua zi zabian, 3.
the song navy and the invention of dragon boat racing 25

racing boats were obviously much smaller than this – thirty-five could be tied
to a single barge – yet were able, with unified rowing teams aboard, to move
the larger, more cumbersome pleasure craft. In this passage, the terminology
used for the two types of boat has not yet been conflated.
The creation of the dragon boat racing tradition (initially called longzhou
jingdu 龍舟競渡, later longzhou bisai 龍舟比賽) out of jingdu boat racing
thus is quite explicitly marked by a shift in terminology, the transfer of the term
longzhou from its reference to a luxurious imperial pleasure craft and troop-
reviewing platform to the nimble, sleek racing boats themselves. The account
in Dongjing menghua lu shows that this terminological transformation was
essentially complete by the late northern Song, at least at the imperial level,
as the racing boats were called “small dragon boats” in a direct parallel to the
“Great Dragon Ship” for which they performed.75 The shift in nomenclature
and decoration represented a significant shift in the conceptualization of what
boat races signified: they were now explicitly understood as smaller versions
of the imperial craft, which had not been part of the earlier jingdu tradition.
Even more importantly, this shift opened the door for the massive weight of
the Chu Verses tradition and dragon boat symbolism to be tied directly to the
racing craft, an association which had previously been at best tenuous and
not dominant.
The shift in terminology and imagery probably would not have influenced
popular cultural practice, and thereby come to endure as a “tradition,” if it
had not been accompanied by the active promotion of jingdu in local juris-
dictions for the purpose of Song imperial naval training and recruitment.76
This created a conduit by which imperial “dragon boat” terminology and

75. It is possible that the terminology dates to the very late Tang and Five Dynasties period.
The poem “Busy” 忙, by Xu Yin 徐夤 (jinshi 894–8), begins: “Paired competing dragon boats
hasten like the wind . . .” 雙競龍舟疾似風 (Quan Tang shi 710.1795), a clear reference to racing
vessels, not the bulky large imperial dragon ships. The 51st of the “palace lyrics” 宮詞 of Huarui
Furen 花蕊夫人 refers to a small dragon boat seizing a prize marker (Quan Tang shi 798.1956);
however, it is one of the poems attributed to her that probably date from the mid-Song period.
Other late Tang poems on jingdu races employ dragon imagery that suggests an association with
the boat’s design and decoration, but they do not use the term “dragon boat”; the best examples
are Zhang Jianfeng, “Boat race song,” in Quan Tang shi 275.695 and Yuan Zhen, “Competing
to Cross/Boat Race” 競渡, Yuanshi changqing ji 3/1b–2a, also Quan Tang shi 398.989–90.
76. Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Afterword: Revisiting the Tradition/Modernity Binary,” in Vlastos
(ed), Mirror of Modernity, 294–95, emphasizes the importance of the sensory dimension of cul-
tural traditions; they endure because they are “embodied through a long process of the training
26 andrew chittick

ritualized performance became widespread in southern China, crowding

out the more eclectic range of animal and bird imagery that had prevailed
previously. The time frame within which this cultural transformation occurred
is clearly in the Song period, though it cannot be dated very precisely. Three
different encyclopedias of local customs in the tenth and eleventh centuries
all mention jingdu boat racing traditions, but none of them mentions any
asso­ciation of the practice with dragons or dragon boats.77 By comparison, the
relevant section in the 13th -century Suishi guangji 歲時廣記 is specifically
entitled “Competition of Dragon Boats” (jing longzhou 競龍舟), and offers
a substantially expanded series of textual citations that creates a prestigious
sanction to the linkage between the jingdu races, Qu Yuan, and the idea of
“dragon boats.” The progression demonstrates that the conflation of the jingdu
and longzhou traditions had become broadly accepted during the intervening
years.78
Perhaps the clearest statement of the evolution from jingdu to longzhou
during Song times comes from Hu Sanxing 胡三省, the late-13th century
annotator of the Zizhi tongjian. Following an appearance of the term jingdu,
Hu appends a brief quote from the earliest use of the term, which makes no
mention of dragon boats or dragon symbolism of any kind. He then adds a
comment of his own:
Since the Tang, in the management of jingdu boats the concern is lightness and
speed. On the front is erected a dragon’s head, on the rear a dragon’s tail, and
the two sides of the boat are carved with dragon scales and colorfully painted;
they’re called dragon boats.”79

This history proves that dragon imagery was not a primary element in the
origins or first several centuries of the boat racing tradition, nor was the en-
trenchment of “dragon boat” symbolism in the tradition due to the roots of

of the senses.” It is this popular performative aspect of the tradition, rather than its literary aspect
(which had been around for many centuries), that I am emphasizing here.
77. Yue Shi 樂史 (930–1007), Taiping huanyu ji 太平寰宇記 (Taibei: Wenhai chubanshe,
1963) vol. 1, 145/3b–4a, 298 (Xiangyang) and 146/5a, 306 (Jingzhou); Han E 韓鄂, Suihua jili
歲華紀麗2/4b; Gao Cheng 高承, Shiwu jiyuan 事物紀原 (Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1992),
920–224.
78. Chen Yuanjing 陳元靚, Suishi guangji (Changsha: Shangwu yinshu guan, 1939) j. 21,
235–6. This point is made by Xia Rixin 夏日新, Changjiang liuyu de suishi jieling 長江流域的
隨時節令 (Wuhan: Hubei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2004), 135.
79. Zizhi tongjian 243.7844
the song navy and the invention of dragon boat racing 27

dragon imagery as a totem from “primitive” society, as has been often claimed.
Instead, the dragon was adopted into the races as a symbol of imperial authority,
as a side effect of imperial military administration, in a much later historical
period.

Conclusion
Dragons and dragon-boat imagery were not the only elements of the Chuci
tradition that came to be associated with jingdu races, but they were by far
the most important, and can be seen as the vanguard for the introduction of
other ritual elements of the Chuci tradition into local boat racing practices
in late imperial times, elements that made up the rich, complex tradition of
dragon boat racing. One notable exception, however, is the idea that the races
commemorated the death of Qu Yuan, an association with a much longer,
more complex genesis which would require another essay to explicate in full.
The Qu Yuan association dates to the very earliest accounts of the races, but
there is good reason to believe that it was more a product of literary imagina-
tion than of performative practice, and was not central to the significance of
the races as they were actually conducted (rather than as they were written
about). Even in late imperial times, after the association with Qu Yuan had
the benefit of a thousand years of literary references, and several centuries’
worth of government promotion of the Qu Yuan cult (which began, along
with the cult of Yue Fei, as an attempt by the southern Song to promote icons
of loyalty), the races’ link to Qu Yuan remained rather tenuous in actual
practice.80 By comparison, dragon and dragon-boat imagery was absolutely
central to late imperial local traditions, and indeed took on a life of its own,
quite independent of imperial associations or literary flourishes.

80. Yang Sichang’s account of the races in Wuling offers a stark contrast between the signifi-
cance of Qu Yuan, on the one hand, and various deified historical generals and martial spirits on
the other. While the classically-educated Yang writes at length about the association of the races
with Qu Yuan, his description of the actual religious rites and dedications to deities conducted
by the boatmen themselves shows that they had no interest in Qu Yuan, and continued to view
the religious aspects of the races from a combat-oriented and spirit-averting perspective for which
Qu Yuan and his legend had no substantive efficacy. By the twentieth century, however, local
races in some areas of Fujian and Taiwan were dedicated to “The Venerated King of Water Im-
mortals” (shuixian zunwang 水仙尊王), broadly understood to be at least partially associated
with, if not equivalent to Qu Yuan (based on author’s fieldwork in June 2011 in Zhangzhou 漳
州 and discussions with Professor Zhang Kan 张侃, Xiamen University Department of History).
28 andrew chittick

This article is written to carry on the fine work of Donald Holzman, whose
piece on the Cold Food Festival lays out so clearly the problems with the sym-
bolic structuralist approach to understanding Chinese festivals. By looking not
for distant “origins” but for concrete historical developments, we can not only
shed light on the contextual significance of Chinese cultural practices, but
also enrich our understanding of particular historical periods. In particular,
the study of boat racing illuminates the ways in which military organization,
training, recruitment, and review served as an important conduit between local
and imperial customs. Just as the local practices of naval warfare and military
training flowed “up” from local garrisons to the southern kingdoms and into
Song imperial style, so too did certain elements of that imperial style eventually
flow back “down” to influence local culture and promote certain traditions
more broadly, in ways which have, over the longer term, had an important
influence on popular religious and ritual practices and conceptualizations.
Viewing boat racing as primarily or exclusively a commemorative act or an
unchanging ritual not only ignores the pivotal role of military history in the
evolution of Chinese culture, but also offers much too limited and static a
picture of Chinese cultural and religious traditions.