Hen_gai_gai is a photographic documentation project by photographer Lavina Lim and artist William Lim, centred on Gai Gai, a ceramic chicken they collected in Mexico in 2023. Since then, Gai Gai has travelled on over 50 trips across more than 35 countries, documenting global togetherness and solidarity despite geopolitical polarisation. We asked Gai Gai to share their adventures around Hong Kong in a new series of articles.
If I had feet, they would be called Phoenix’s Claws in Cantonese: 鳳爪 (fung6 zaau2). Which would’ve been very cool, but sadly I do not have feet. Although my porcelain body was created in the likeness of a chicken, whoever created me gave me a round base in the place of legs and feet.
Life as the only porcelain chicken I know can feel so lonely. Not knowing who created me, why I am the way I am, or even what my ethnicity is doesn’t make it any easier to find my place in the universe. I’ve even started to wonder if not having feet was my creator’s way of making it more difficult, by physically taking away the one part of a chicken’s body that would’ve allowed me to make claims of being related to Chinese phoenixes. It’s hard to land on an identity when you don’t have feet.
One morning in mid-May, my human guardian invited me to go with him to Tai Tam Duk to watch the dragon boat team prepare for their races at Tuen Ng, the upcoming Dragon Boat Festival. I’ve never met a dragon or a dragon boat before, so I was quite intrigued.
All I knew about them was that dragon boat racing dates back thousands of years in China as a way to commemorate Qu Yuan, a Chinese poet and aristocrat in the State of Chu during the Warring States period. He offered King Qingxiang of Chu his sincere advice in hopes of preserving his country, but his advice was ignored and he was sent into exile. When Chu was later attacked by its warring country Qin, Qu Yuan felt so much despair, he drowned himself in a river on the fifth day of the fifth Lunar Month — Tuen Ng. People who saw him as a hero rowed their boats on the river and threw rice dumplings into the water to protect his body from being devoured by fish.
Now, rice dumplings have become a classic Tuen Ng delicacy, and dragon boat racing has become an international sport since Hong Kong held the world’s first international competition in 1976. Today, the sport has over 50 million participants in more than 60 countries worldwide. Dragon boat racing has become so popular that (sadly unsuccessful) attempts were made to seek approval to become an Olympic sport at both the 2020 Tokyo and 2024 Paris Olympics.
While I continue to look forward to someday watching it at the Olympics, there’s no shortage of opportunities to be a spectator as Hong Kong holds the biggest dragon boat races in the world. Most of the boats used are made in Guangdong, China, with repair and maintenance done in Hong Kong by master shipwrights. The boats used to be made of wood, but nowadays fiber glass is the norm.
On our trip, my human guardian was wearing the dragon boat team’s uniform from last year, a tank top with a drawing of a fierce dragon on it, its pupiless eyes staring straight at me while bearing all its sharp teeth. This must be what dragons look like, and in turn, what dragon boats look like. Yet, what I saw was quite different: floating in the gentle seas next to blue floating docks, the 38-feet dragon boats had a long straight body sandwiched between a dragon head and tail. They were not winding like the dragon on my human guardian’s shirt, nor were their eyes pupiless: above their sharp white teeth, their black eyeballs had pupils painted in gold, with a dot of red vermilion in the middle.
I’ve heard about the eye-dotting ceremony that every dragon boat goes through before they start sailing: once their eyes, nose, tongue, horns and scales are dotted with vermillion, the dragons come alive and open their eyes. The team then adorns the dragon heads with bundles of pleated red ribbons and antlers with fresh leaves before starting to sail in the awakened dragon boats.
I don’t have a red dot in my eyes, but the dragon boats and I oddly look alike. We both have really long necks, mine from a stylistic choice by my mysterious maker, theirs from having the necks of snakes as part of their mythical combination of different animal parts. I have blue brush strokes on my white body for feathers; they have scales of carps painted in gold. I have a chicken comb on my head; they have deer antlers with feathers and fresh leaves zip-tied to them. As I tried to count all nine anatomical components of a classic Chinese dragon on the dragon boats, I couldn’t help noticing that dragon boats don’t have legs either! Where are the claws of hawks and footpads of tigers that dragons are supposed to have? How are they supposed to sail the seas without any limbs?
I tried asking the dragon, but it just averted its eyes. I am, after all, not a real phoenix; it would be too far beneath a dragon’s station to speak to me, a porcelain chicken with no prestigious or mythical roots to speak of. But, as if to answer my question, more than 20 crew members donning new uniforms took their places in one of the dragon boats. The drummer sat at the bow, the steersperson stood at the stern and the paddlers sat in pairs to fill up the long and narrow body of the boat.
Once they started moving, I saw what it meant by the dragon boat coming alive. The drum beat strongly like a heart, pacing every single paddler into a united rhythm of peddling, sending bursts of power pulsing through the entire body of the dragon. The steersperson was like the brain, using their oar to steer the boat towards their destination on changing currents. The paddlers, each with one paddle on their side of the boat, rows with might and determination through the waters as a team. I watched in awe as the dragon boat sailed ahead, powered entirely by a group of people who believed in it. They were the voice, the muscles, the blood, the spirit, the limbs of the dragon. Perhaps I, too, came alive because humans believed in me, I thought to myself as my human guardian carried me close to his torso so I could get a better view of the action. Perhaps my place in the universe right now is right here in his arms, sans feet.