Rowing to the same beat, a world away

Every spring, a dragon boat from China's Hangzhou appears on Boston's Charles River.

It is not an ordinary dragon boat. Made in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province, and presented to Boston, its hull is painted in the blue-green color of West Lake, with the emblem of Hangzhou and the Three Pools Mirroring the Moon, one of the lake's best-known landmarks.

Every year around the Dragon Boat Festival, it returns to the river, propelled by the beat of drums and the pull of paddles.

What it carries is a relationship that has endured across the Pacific: the sister-city ties between Hangzhou and Boston.

The bond can be traced back to Leslie Swartz, co-founder of Boston's Dragon Boat Festival, who helped bring dragon boat racing — a traditional cultural gala event in Hangzhou — to Boston in the late 1970s.

Swartz, who was then an adviser to Boston Children's Museum and interested in Chinese culture, traveled to Hangzhou in 1982 and took part in efforts that led the two cities to establish a sister-city relationship, one of the earliest United States-China sister-city ties.

For Swartz, who was also co-founder of the Boston-Hangzhou Sister City Association, the relationship has never been simply a diplomatic agreement. She sees a natural affinity between the two cities. Both have deep connections to water — Hangzhou with the West Lake at the heart of the city, and Boston with the Charles River and its harbor shaping its landscape and identity.

Both also have long traditions of education, literature and intellectual life. For Swartz, these shared traditions are part of what makes the two cities feel naturally connected.