Dragon boat races were held across Hong Kong Wednesday to celebrate the annual Tuen Ng Festival, attracting over 4,000 paddlers and thousands of spectators.

The biggest race of all is the Stanley Dragon Boat Championships which is now in their 39th year. The race organizers, the Stanley Dragon Boat Association, expected as many as 25,000 people at the event despite the unkind weather, which attracted a record 183 teams involving more than 3,500 paddlers.

"Each year we look to new ways to make our event even more enjoyable for both paddlers and spectators," the chairman of the organizing committee Alson Wong Kam-chen said.

This year the association arranged a display of a 50-man dragon boat, providing spectators with a stunning display rarely seen in Hong Kong.

On the Shing Mun River at Sha Tin, eight teams consisting of 210 senior paddlers at an average age of 68, three of them over 80, took part in the dragon boat race.

It is the third consecutive year for such an event supported by the Hong Kong Society For The Aged whose slogan is "Boat racing is not exclusive to youngsters".

Another 250 elders joined a special competition for the cheering squads, who exhibited all kinds of skills and splendid ideas to cheer for their teams.

Other major dragon boat races were held at Castle Peak Bay typhoon shelter in Tuen Mun, Tai Po waterfront, Sai Kung waterfront and Aberdeen typhoon shelter.

Among senior government officials attended Wednesday's races are Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, Legislative Council president Rita Fan Hsu Lai-tai and Secretary for Justice Wong Yan-lung.

An even bigger dragon boat event will be held this weekend in Sha Tin, which has attracted about 3,600 local and international athletes.

To ensure fair competition, the government has spent one million HK dollars on 24 standardized fiberglass boats to be used by the 14 international and 110 local competing teams, comprising both the men's and women's events.

The 250-kilogram boats will replace old wooden ones that weighed anywhere from 270kg to 400kg.

"Since 1991, foreigners have become interested in the event and it has now become an international sport," said Hong Kong Dragon Boat Association president Mike Chung Chi-hung.

The Dragon Boat, or Tuen Ng Festival, is celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month every year to remember great poet Qu Yuan over two thousand years ago, who drowned himself in a river to protest against widespread corruption in the government. To prevent the fish from eating his body, villagers threw rice cakes into the water after racing out in long boats in a failed attempt to save him. Dragon boat racing remains strong since then and has spread to many countries.