Liu has lived through other changes in boat racing. "Back in 1988, the government here presented people in the US with two dragon boats. In those days, most freight containers were 40m long, so we built boats with nine sets of oars that would fit just right.
After that, it became the fashion for men's boats to have nine sets. [Previously the norm had been 11 sets.] It also made it easier to get teams together," Liu said.
The competition boats racing in this year's event will have nine sets of oars for men and seven sets of oars for women. It is amusing to think that the configuration of nine oars for the most Chinese of boat races was set by the size of freight containers in the 1980s.
In 2000, two of Liu's dragon boats appeared in the International Festival of Sailors and the Sea held in Brest, France. Both had been made by Liu, and in a display competition, Liu also was at the tiller. Liu's boats have been made gifts of state by Taiwan's government and can now be found in Japan, the US, South Africa, Germany and Finland.
While Liu is now part of Taiwan's presence abroad, he continues to make his boats out of the rather unexceptional workshop behind the river dikes along the Keelung River.
And he works in a way that recalls a past time.
"I have no diagrams," he said. "All the blueprints are in my head. I just need to be told how many pairs of oars are required, and I just work it out from there."
With around 102 teams participating in the Taipei City event alone, the dragon boat race still has considerable pull. But for Liu, it is a long way off from the heyday of racing.
Conflict between Taipei City and Taipei County has also produced politics that are likely to detract from the two major events on the Tachia section of the Keelung River and at Pitan on the Hsintien River. "People think about politics these days, and not about the race," Liu said.
RSS