On a sunny Saturday afternoon, the typically placid Lake Merced Park located in San Francisco’s quiet southwest was instead the scene of a showdown.

Biceps strained as teams of 20 paddlers pulled and pushed oars with precise timing, a seated guide at the head of the long, narrow dragon boats drumming to keep everyone on beat.

The teams raced 200 meters, a line of buoys on the other end marking the finish for the champions who roared in celebration as their vessel made it through first.

More than 3,000 people were in attendance over two days, watching dozens of crews of all ages race at Lake Merced, culminating with a 2,000-meter race for the top 12 teams. The last iteration was held in 2015 on Treasure Island. Plans to redevelop the island meant the festival that began in 1996 went on indefinite hiatus. Festivals popped up in Oakland and Foster City, but not in San Francisco, where Bay Area dragon boating began.

Enter Henry Ha. The program director at the Community Youth Center has been involved with dragon boat racing for over 20 years: first as a teenage paddler, then as a coach and organizer. He was disappointed with the festival’s end and distraught at seeing the Bay Area’s dragon boat community decline through the pandemic.

But it was trips to China that gave him the inspiration to bring it back.

In 2024 and 2025, Ha brought a youth team to the Pearl River Delta region in China for small November festivals. He remembers being transfixed by the colors, the boats, and the spectacle. But what struck him the most were the banquets. Teams moved from table to table lined with steaming piles of food, toasting each other with cups of tea and shots of fiery baijiu.

“They don’t even talk about congratulations, you win first place,” Ha said.

In contrast to previous iterations, Ha added more educational aspects like hands-on zongzi wrapping demonstrations, Chinese folk music performances, and signage about the history of dragon boat racing. Legend has it that the first Dragon Boat Festival happened over 2,000 years ago when villagers raced out in boats on the Miluo River to search for beloved poet Qu Yuan.

In China, the festival is now celebrated on the first day of the lunar calendar’s fifth month, which is typically in June or July. The tradition is meant to ward off evil and build community.

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It inspired the theme of this year’s returning event.

“The theme of this festival is friendship through dragon boat,” Ha said. “I want people to come out to celebrate because of the history, bring the community together, have a friendly race and enjoy the cultural aspect of the holiday.”

Zachary Louie, 28, a youth coach who went with Ha on the trip last year, remembers the hourslong banquet through the sounds and the smells. Hundreds mingled, made loud conversation, sang off-key songs and laughed boisterously. The backdrop was the aroma of roast pork, fish, and peanuts.

“There was also fireworks,” Louie said. “Everyone, like the entire village, had a whole passion for the sport. It’s so much more than just a sport. It’s also a culture.”

When Ha returned, he joined the California Dragon Boat Association as a director and pitched the festival’s return to the group and the Community Youth Center. Organizing the event took over a year and involved fundraising, permitting, and recruiting vendors and performers.

Jack Zee stepped down from his role as the California Dragon Boat Association’s president to put his full focus on putting on the festival. When crews chose to stay in San Francisco for the festival instead of traveling to race in competitions elsewhere around the same time, he realized that it was a success.

“I was very happy to see the novice teams sign up, because that’s how you grow,” Zee said. “Once you get involved, you do get very excited. You will join a team. You will get others involved.”

Zee said the association hopes to create a dedicated space as part of the Candlestick Park redevelopment. “Our goal is to eventually grow this back into a huge festival,” Zee said. Achieving that is dependent on finding lasting sponsorship.

But the association has shown its willingness to spend to grow the sport locally. It purchased a phoenix boat head and tail from China which Ha said are the first in the United States meant to signal paddling as a mixed-gender sport. Traditionally, dragon boats were for males only, while phoenix boats were for female paddlers.

The phoenix boat was crewed by a group of women ranging from their 20s to their 70s that came together almost overnight.

“Telling people who haven’t touched a paddle for 10, 20, 30 years — I was really excited,” said Dorothy Yeung, a paddler and the founder of the Phoenix Women Warriors team. “Once you paddle, once you race, you never forget. Even though we haven’t paddled for so long, we’re like one mind.”

Yeung helped bring the dragon boat tradition to San Francisco in the 1990s when organizers imported boats from Hong Kong to raise money for a local seniors’ nonprofit.

“In 1997, when we started, we didn’t even know how to paddle,” Yeung said. “We just sat by the swimming pool and rowed. Then the next day we had to go to a race.”

It’s come a long way since then, but what has remained is the muscle memory. Yeung said that even though it had been decades since some of her teammates paddled, they rowed in sync as well as they had before. That rhythm symbolized the bonds she had built through dragon boating.

“It is definitely community building,” Yeung said. “It’s team spirit, community building, dragon boat community.”

District 4 Supervisor Alan Wong, who participated in Saturday’s opening ceremony, said the festival was a throwback to his days paddling for Lincoln High School and CYC while growing up.

“It was an opportunity for me and my fellow high school students to really build camaraderie and teamwork,” Wong said.