This Saturday, Sept. 14, 27 teams will compete in this year’s Northeast Wisconsin (N.E.W.) Dragon Boat Festival at River Park’s Leach Amphitheater in Oshkosh. In addition to the race, this all-day event will include pan-Asian performances from various cultures (including Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and Hawaiian dance), along with a global market featuring cuisines from around the world.
This year’s festivities will mark the beloved and highly-anticipated festival’s second year back after being revived last year by the City of Oshkosh DEI Committee and the Northeast Wisconsin Chinese Association (NEWCA).
In 2021, the City of Oshkosh DEI committee was looking to host a large multicultural festival. It was around the same time that NEWCA co-director and N.E.W. Dragon Boat Festival co-director Fanni Xie was thinking about reviving the Dragon Boat Festival, which hadn’t been held since 2015.
“It was an immediate yes,” DEI committee member and N.E.W. Dragon Boat Festival co-director Angie Lee said. “I knew a little about the history of the Dragon Boat Festival. I moved to Oshkosh in 2015 and got to witness the very last event and I could feel that it was a palpitating experience.”
Last year’s Dragon Boat Festival drew over 2,500 attendees, and this year, Lee and Xie are expecting an even larger crowd.
“We want to bring a bigger event that invites not only the Chinese population [of Northeast Wisconsin], but focuses on all the pan-Asian cultures, or even multiple cultures to celebrate cultural diversity in the area,” Xie said.
Last year, the festival gave a portion of its proceeds to the Oshkosh Area School District for its cultural programming, with another portion going to NEWCA’s educational programming.
This year, the festival is continuing its efforts to give back to the community, with a designated emphasis on youth.
“Part of the theme [is about] creating legacy,” Lee explained. “All of us come with those immigration stories or stories of our parents making those sacrifices. That’s why we’re very intentional about giving towards cultural programming for youth.”
Two youth club teams will be competing in the race, and in the evening, there will be a brand new Dragon Family Music Night featuring LED lights and a set by DJ Sushi, a Milwaukee-based Hmong artist.
“What’s really neat about her style is [that] she uses traditional Asian derived music [and combined it with] contemporary hip hop, and so we’re excited about that,” Lee said of DJ Sushi’s work.
In addition to the youth teams, at least one team will be made up of breast cancer survivors, a group that has a storied history of competing in dragon boat racing.
“What dragon boat does is bring people together, make them feel a sense of belonging, and diminish loneliness,” Lee explained. “Then there’s obviously the physical health benefits as well. Even with some limited mobility, people can participate.”
Xie adds that even those who aren’t athletic have found themselves wanting to be part of a team.
“This is the beauty of this event: even if you’re not a sporty person, or you’ve never [raced in a dragon boat], you can participate because it’s not only about strengths and skills, [it’s about] 20 people on a boat working together,” she emphasized. “That’s the idea of unity, and the idea of belonging to a team and working together toward the same goal.”
In fact, the sense of belonging that dragon boat racing and this festival cultivates has transcended the annual celebration, and has even become a retention factor for some. One Chinese woman who recently immigrated to Green Bay from New York with her family told Xie that the festival itself and the excitement around it has given her a sense of belonging in Wisconsin.
“She said to me, ‘I’ve been in New York for several years, and this is the first place I feel can become my home,’” Xie recalled. “People want to stay here,” she further emphasized. “People want to stay in Wisconsin to make it home.”
Xie and Lee hope that others will see how crucial celebrations like the N.E.W. Dragon Boat Festival are to the larger northeast Wisconsin ecosystem — from its community members to its minority-owned businesses and nonprofits.
The global market will feature over 50 vendors, serving food, crafts, and novelty services. Nonprofit organizations will also be hosting booths to share their resources with festival-goers.
“We want cities and municipalities to see the value in this [and understand] that it is not just a feel-good celebration,” Lee said. “It has some serious economic value to it as well.”
Overall, The Dragon Boat Festival is committed to creating a sense of value for each and every person who attends. As Lee puts it: “This is a festival to make people feel like they belong, that they’re important, they’re seen, they’re heard, and they’re part of this community.”
