When Henry Au-Yeung, director of Grotto Fine Art Limited, co-founded dragon boat team Buzz Dragon 25 years ago, he only had two other teammates. Today, it boasts 65 paddlers – including ones from the Hong Kong Team – who train three times a week on its six fiberglass boats in Aberdeen and Deep Water Bay. Since taking on the role of coach in 2010, Henry has nurtured paddlers who later joined Canadian, Australian, British and American national teams.

Named as a tribute to late teammate Scott Buzby, Buzz Dragon has celebrated and bemoaned its litany of wins, races and broken paddles. Yet, Henry is most proud of the strong community bonds it has built with local fishermen, who have long been the founders and custodians of the sport. Buzz Dragon, he says, is neither a social team imbued with post-training drinks nor, though competitive, a cut-throat team with its eye solely on the prize. While it embraces paddlers hungry for both extremes, Buzz Dragon's deference to Hong Kong's seafaring roots is what has kept the team afloat through a quarter of a century that's survived SARS, social unrest and even COVID-19.

"Back in 2010, Stanley and Discovery Bay races were composed mostly of corporate teams – think Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs – who regarded them as team-bonding events," says Henry. "Most paddlers back then were typical expats whose work and social lives were contained on Hong Kong Island, bookended by weekend dragon-boat practice, meaning they only grazed the surface of the city's dragon boating culture. That's not our goal."

"Buzz Dragon wants to be the bridge between expat and local communities, not just for the sport alone, but in cultural exchange too," he says.

While dating back thousands of years from the Lingnan region of China, modern interpretations of dragon boating began in Hong Kong less than half a century ago and are often regarded as auspicious rituals by local fishermen, most of whom have grown up learning to paddle. Henry estimates 70 fishermen teams in the city, each with its own distinguished customs and taboos.

In 2006, Buzz Dragon commissioned its own teak wood race boat in Dongguan and became the first non-fishermen team to be welcomed in fishermen-exclusive races. The invitation soon extended to the seafarers' annual dinners where karaoke and a few beers dissolved language barriers between the hosts and the team's then majority of expat paddlers. To date, Buzz Dragon precedes every race by paying respects to Tin Hau – the goddess of oceans and protector of sailors. While not every teammate can fully grasp the magnitude of these rituals, Henry says they embed the sport into a bigger, cultural picture.

"You can engage in the thrill of the tournament by training and competing hard; you can gain a sense of community by actively mingling with fellow team members; but showcasing the Hong Kong dragon boat culture to our teammates – especially those who're from overseas – takes dragon boating beyond a mere sport."

Shapeshifting Dragon

While Henry laments the skyrocketing, five-digit entry fees of selected dragon boat races affordable only by multinational companies, he's grateful for the progress the international spotlight has brought the sport. For one, he says, women are now sought-after paddlers in Hong Kong when tradition had banned them from touching or even getting close to the boats, believing that their "negative energy will anger the gods", according to a contested video of a Foshan race in 2022.

The establishment of the International Dragon Boat Federation in 1991 soon declared other standards such as paddle sizes, and, for safety considerations, a ban on stand-up paddling – all adjustments that Henry says have been well received amongst local fishermen, with perhaps a few minor pushbacks on, for instance, the transition from wooden to carbon fiber paddles, which are not mandatory.

In 2010, dragon boating was enlisted in the Asian Games and again in 2018 and 2022. Last year, it was featured as a demonstration sport at the Summer Games in Paris, following its first showcase in the 2022 global event in Tokyo. Henry is hopeful that it will be an official event soon.

Like many teams in the city, Buzz Dragon's major headaches are the high turnover rate amongst team members – particularly during watershed events like pandemics and social unrests – as well as the variance in built and strength consequential of a mixed-race team.

"Balancing a 6'3-tall, 200-pound Caucasian man against a 5'7, 150-pound Asian guy on the same boat is extremely tricky because of different stroke recovery time and power output per stroke," says Henry, adding that strength alone doesn't win races. "Teammates need to work together, earn each other's trust and believe in the timing and rhythm; it's a collective effort. The best team is only as strong as its weakest link – these mental lessons are the most difficult to teach."

Coaching, however, didn't come easy for the self-proclaimed introvert.

A sculptor by training, Henry thrives on solitude and regards people management as a life-long challenge – or in his words, "an art form". Yet, his initial captivation with Buzz Dragon's strong fellowship and infectious team spirit bolstered him to become a coach who thrives on empathy, constructive criticisms and good guidance – all interpersonal skills that he says have aided in his gallery that opened just a year after the founding of his dragon boat team.  "When I am creating art, I can be very private; but the dynamic of my day to day changed when I went into the business of art, having to deal with artists, collectors, curators, auction houses and consultants," says Henry.

"The greatest accomplishment as a coach is seeing someone come to the sport, having never done it before, get attached to the team, dragon boating itself, the culture behind it and also Hong Kong as a city," he says, adding that he's witnessed matrimonies and families formed as a result of Buzz Dragon. "If you see someone three times a week, sparks sure fly!"