Dragon Boat Building Technique

Zhongtang town has long been hailed as the "hometown of Chinese dragon boats," and its boat-building craft has been passed down for over three hundred years. The boats it makes are long and slender, willow-leaf shaped and called the "big-head dragon," built of fir and pine with a single-piece keel and jointed hull ribs, the hull narrow and beautifully lined. The technique entered the second national ICH list in 2008, declared from Zhongtang.

The Zhongtang building process covers selecting timber, raising the keel, fixing the ribs, planking the sides, carving head and tail and painting — dozens of steps, mostly by hand. "Snapping the ink line" is the decisive trick for shaping the hull, and the craft has run through five generations, yielding boats both fast and steady.

The Zhongtang dragon-boat craft embodies the water-town culture of Dongguan and the Lingnan woodworking tradition, carrying the customs of clan racing and the Dragon Boat Festival; it is valuable for the study of Chinese traditional boat-building and riverside folklore, and its boats are sold far beyond Dongguan.

Zhongtang town has venues for the transmission and display of the dragon-boat building craft.