The boat races are the highlight of Dragon Boat Festival in Jieyang, Guangdong province. (Photo: China Daily)
It's become a routine for Yuan Yutao, 19, to make short videos of other people rowing a dragon boat along a river and post them on the specialized app Kuaishou.
Dragon boat culture is deep-rooted in the Chaoshan area of Guangdong province and his hometown of Jieyang city is an outstanding example, thanks to the city's exquisitely crafted dragon boats and the passion they inspire in the locals.
It's a tradition for Yuan's fellow villagers to paddle in a dragon boat from noon to dusk during Duanwu (Dragon Boat) Festival, which always falls on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. Since childhood, Yuan has enjoyed the excitement of the event and he was overjoyed that his parents finally allowed him to row a dragon boat at the age of 15.
"Young people should become more involved in these festivals, so our cultural heritage can be passed on over the generations," says Yuan, a high school student from a village in Jieyang.
He says his peers are more interested in mobile games and they rarely join him when he invites them along to watch the paddle race. At least his 17-year-old brother has shown interest in boating, albeit under his influence.
Popularity online
The craze for uploading short videos in China offers people like Yuan a great opportunity to promote the country's culture and customs directly through visuals.
"When I tell the paddlers their short videos are popular online, they're very happy and encourage me to film more," he says.
Now his video account "Jieyang dragon boat culture" has about 9,000 fans on Kuaishou, which has around 200 million daily active users, according to the company.
As well as filming his own clips, Yuan also asks his fans to submit their own short videos. He often selects a few to post on his account to aid promotion.
He says many of his fans are dragon boat lovers from the Chaoshan area. They like videos showing closeups of the elegant dragon head and the grand, sacrificial ritual before the boat is lowered into the water.
Local dragon boats are generally 28-meter-long and 1.35-meter-wide. There are seats for 51 paddlers, a drummer, a person to bang the gong and a helmsman.
"For people working in other places, they can watch my videos if they are unable to get back for the festival," he says.
According to Yuan, in Jieyang, only three boats have dragon heads with a red face and white whiskers - two of the boats are old and no longer in use, while the other was built in 2012.
"It's rare and precious because local dragon heads are often seen with black, green or red whiskers," he says.
Located in Nantong town, Fuzhou, Fujian province, Fangzhuang village is well-known for its tradition of making dragon boats, with a history of over 700 years.
Fang Shaohuang is a third-generation inheritor of his family's dragon boat-making techniques, which can be traced back to the end of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). In 2018, the family's technique was enlisted as part of Fuzhou city's intangible cultural heritage.
Fang and his five brothers all learned these skills from a young age, and together they run the family's 1,000-square-meter boat-making factory.
However, among the next generation of his family, only his nephew Fang Jianwei will pick up the mantle.
"It's not a profitable industry. After a day of laborious work, you are covered in dirt and sawdust from head to toe. Young people can't endure hardship and they have better job opportunities," says Fang Jianwei, 30, who has been learning how to build dragon boats for 10 years.
He says it's important that more people, especially youngsters, know about these traditional techniques.
Kuaishou has turned out to be a good channel to promote their boat-making skills.
This year, Fang Jianwei started to post videos of him and his team hard at work on Kuaishou. He now has over 1,100 followers and often communicates with boating fans up and down the country. It also gets him orders from places further afield.
He doesn't reveal the number of annual orders they receive. But he says sales have been dropping a bit in recent years after a few years of steady growth.
"It's probably because young people are not as interested in rowing dragon boats as they once were. It's tiring and can be a sweltering sport to take part in, under the summer sun," he says.
Their boats are 23 meters long, and can accommodate 32 paddlers, a drummer, a gong player, a helmsman and space for someone to set off firecrackers from the bow. The cost is around 20,000 yuan ($2,900), and 80 percent of their customers come from Fujian province.
In the two months leading up to Dragon Boat Festival, the team becomes increasingly busy and often works from 5 am to 9 pm. During the slack season, they prepare materials such as fir wood.
In the past, almost all of the work was manual, but they now use machines such as an electrical saw and drills that help to speed up the process.
"Besides our family members, we only have a handful of staff members who are all elderly men. It will be difficult to hire experienced workers because nobody is inheriting the skills," Fang Jianwei says.
Last year, Li Yan, 26, and her family opened a store selling zongzi (rice dumplings), a popular local delicacy in Fengjing, a town of waterways in Jinshan district of Shanghai.
With its ancient architecture and beautiful scenery, the town is a popular destination for Shanghai residents and tourists from nearby provinces such as Zhejiang.
Li hires experienced elderly women in the town to make traditional southern-style zongzi, which are stuffed with salty meat fillings.
Festive dumplings
At the beginning of this year, she started to post videos about her employees making zongzi to Kuaishou.
Much to her surprise, these short videos helped her family business find new fame and scale new heights by moving to online sales. Her Kuaishou account has more than 21,000 followers, and her most popular video garnered 1.3 million hits.
Some fans visit their store just to shoot videos or livestream the process of making zongzi.
"Our offline business is always good because there is a constant flow of tourists in the scenic area. And since I started to sell zongzi on Kuaishou in April, our turnover has increased greatly. We have to work extra hours because there are so many online orders," Li says.
"Many people are regular customers, who believe our zongzi are attractive in price and quality."
Prices for zongzi range from 4 to 10 yuan for each one. The store's monthly turnover is around 40,000 yuan, and she estimates that the figure in May is about seven or eight times of that, including online and offline sales.
Li says it's essential to carry on the old tradition of making zongzi. They built a kitchen range made of bricks, covered with tiles bearing traditional auspicious patterns. The stove can heat four large iron pots at the same time.
"Nowadays, many people use a pressure cooker to boil zongzi, for convenience and timesaving. But we stick to the traditional way to cook zongzi over a slow fire for three hours - that's why they are so tasty and full of fragrance," Li says.
Indeed, it seems that short videos are spreading the festive atmosphere online and getting more people involved in Dragon Boat Festival.