Dragons riding people in boats: An ODE

Sponsorshipping’ for the cause

BRENDAN CATHCART, VOLUNTEER STAFF

ILLUSTRATION BY BILLY CHUNG

Wearing identical blue uniforms and chanting in unison, team Shaw Communications marched with authority through the thronging crowds down to the starting dock to kick some serious ass at the Canadian Cancer Society’s 2007 Manitoba Dragon Boat Festival, presented by Shaw Cable. Along the riverwalk at The Forks on the weekend of Aug. 7-9, hundreds of competitors were lined up in teams of 25, wearing bright colours and representing the companies that pay them their bi-weekly salaries. Boeing, Scotiabank, Cangeen, Puritone, Grand & Toy; just your regular everyday sports teams reveling in the sport of sponsorship.

“Sponsorship,” says the Canadian Cancer Society website to its prospective sponsors, “demonstrates to the participants, spectators and community that team building and a sense of community are the heart of your corporate philosophy.” Nothing says “team building” like the memorialization of an ancient suicide. Only, just forget about that whole suicide part and what it stood for, it’s not exactly relevant here. In China, however, dragon boating festivals emerged to commemorate Qu Yuan, the 4th-century political critic, poet and statesman, who sunk himself with a boulder in the Miluo River as a protest against corruption and conquest. The Qin kingdom had just begun to take over China’s seven autonomous states by force, and this Qu Yuan could not bear to live through.

Facility Marketing Group, the Winnipeg-based company that facilitated this particular dragon boat festival and others for businesses around the country, chooses a much more upbeat perspective on the purpose of the festival. “This experience,” it says on their website, “is available to communities that wish to bring the excitement and color of a dragon boat event to their marketplace.” No sense in carrying some other culture’s seriously dated, not to mention heavy, baggage when money can be made by simply borrowing the form, minus the content. And in case we forgot the form, it’s Asian, and that’s cool; all anyone had to do was check out the martial arts demonstration down by the water to see that.

Qu Yuan opposed the centralization of power, but Facility Marketing Group says that those are the olden days, today’s about synergy. “Many companies... have found that the social atmosphere, and the team building aspect of dragon boat racing is a valuable tool to assist employees and employers to interact in a friendly and constructive manner outside of the workplace. This translates well when returning to the office in improved efficiency of staff, and better intra-office communications.” And on the plus-plus side, over $1 million was raised for cancer research, and you can’t argue with numbers.

As Team Shaw Communications paddled hard for better corporate visibility, on shore the children were being entertained by Shaw’s update of what they feel is an appropriate use of a mascot—a gentle polar bear with big blue eyes wearing a Shaw sports jersey. Just look how Shaw loves the children.

Back at home after the event I came across another appropriate update while looking up the word “Chuci,” which means “Songs of the South” and is the name Qu Yuan gave to his collection of odes. Google led me to Urbandictionary.com, which defined “Chuci” as: “an affectionate way of calling a girl friend a bitch.” Thankfully there’s a suggested usage accompanying the modernized definition, otherwise I would have been lost. To make proper sense, the urban dictionary tells me that I must say, “Me and my chuci are stuntin’ tonight.”