Arts : By David Schroedel

My Eating Team Has A Paddling Problem

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Zheng Wang was born in China. He came to the United States for college as a teenager. Microsoft called him to Seattle. While traveling the world for so many years, he became isolated from his family in China due to the sheer distance.

What’s a boy to do? How about join a recreational dragon boating team, Hot Sake; plan fun year round activities with your new teammates; and film the whole thing? That’s exactly what he did.

Feeling a bit like a series of home movies shot over a little more than a year, this is a movie revolving around the sport of dragon boat racing. But this is not a movie about sports in the typical sense of competition, overcoming adversity, reaching a pinnacle in the field or any of that Chariots of Fire stuff. Instead of endless competition footage, this movie highlights why many ordinary people do recreational sports: The Team.

The team has the camaraderie, the diversity of people, the lifelong bonds you form with the group you spend several hours a week with rain or shine. Hot Sake was particularly focused on forming these bonds by having year-round events – most revolving around a meal. For Zheng Wang this became his new Seattle family.

If you’ve ever wanted to know about those people huffing and puffing by at the Maritime Festival this is your chance to see why many of them do it – and why Zheng Wang says dragon boat racing is the second most popular sport in the world behind soccer with more athletes at the 2006 Vancouver, BC competition than are scheduled for the 2010 Olympics. It’s about the need for people not the need for competition.

My Eating Team Has A Paddling Problem
Directed by Zheng Wang
88 min feature film
Playing Saturday, October 6
4:15 pm at the School of the Arts Theater
Filmmaker will be present

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