On Sunday June 8^th, 2008 this year’s Dragon Boat Festival of Boston will take place on the Charles River. The festival is an ancient celebration of the life and death of Chinese patriot-poet Qu Yuan who lived from 340-278 B.C.

The final Dragon Boat races take place between 9:00am-5:00pm along the Charles in Cambridge.

In addition to this growing and exciting sporting event many Chinese arts and crafts activities will be taking place in tents along Memorial Drive, along with plenty of opportunities to sample Asian foods.

Some of the arts and crafts on display along with workshops so you can try your own hand will include:

• Making authentic and ornamental zong zi
• Dough figures - colored dough made of flour, water and salt, is used to create vivid miniatures of characters and animals
• Chinese Macreme - tying knots in designed patterns C
• Creative fans P
• Paper folding - turned into the fine art by the Japanese called Origami
• Paper cuttings
• Peking Opera Masks
• Brush Painting - watercolor with Chinese brushes on rice paper
• and the abstract art of calligraphy, which requires much patience and practice

There will also be a traditional Dragon Dance Parade at noon over the bridge from the Boston to Cambridge side, and then dance arts, music, and Japanese Taiko drumming during the afternoon in the Big Performance Tent on the Cambridge side.

The festival is at the corner of De Wolfe and memorial Drive - note that Memorial Drive will be closed to traffic on Sunday. You can reach the festival by taking the red line to Harvard Square and then walking down to the Charles River and head for the Weeks Footbridge - just look for the crowds and the information area!

This is one of the major cultural activities of the Boston events calendar, so take the whole family and have a great day out discovering and learning about Chinese culture and arts and cheering on a spectacular sporting event.

For more information check out the official web site here.

Boston is a great destination city and for ideas and suggestions on things to do in Boston and Cambridge check out my Boston vacation site here.

Check back in a few days for more things to do in New England or better still just subscribe to the RSS feed by clicking here.

Cliff Calderwood
Publisher
New England Travel Online Magazine

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