Zhong Jian's dragon lay all taut and sprawled on the ground. He was waiting for a stronger wind to pull it up. "But once it does, I'll easily win the competition," he tells us. "And even if I don't, I'll compete again next year."

Meanwhile, a giant parachute-shaped soft kite in rainbow colors that a crowd of people had been trying to fly for a while, lifted a few meters off the ground only to drop again, sweeping across the ground.

Spectators scurried to get out of its way, not wanting to get caught in the maze of a 100 strings attached to it. Those in the fore of the army of 40-odd people trying to hoist it up fell and rolled a few meters out of the way.

A stunt kite team from Taiyuan in Shanxi province pulled off an awesome feat. Manipulated by four team members, four kites twisted and twirled, rolled and dove into the air, to the tune of lively songs.

The kite runners skipped backwards and bent over, touching the ground almost, as if dancing in sync with the kites they flew.

"I fell in love with kite ballet when I first saw a video on a foreign website about 20 years ago. Few Chinese kite flyers were into the sport at that time," says Niu Yongjun, their leader.

"An American kite team brought stunt kites to the Weifang kite festival in 2009. They helped us buy a set and taught us the basics. When the wind is below 10 kilometer per hour, we select slow movements. It seems you can do anything with your kite. I just love the feeling."

Dan Tonio of San Diego, California, was busy fixing a four-line stunt kite. He runs what he calls the last American kite manufacturing company. Dan was in Weifang not to compete or pursue business interests, but for the pure joy of "hanging out with friends from all across the world".

But how much longer could this ancient sport possibly hold out against the tide of more modern forms of entertainment and shrinking attention spans?

"You can only hope that events like these might help take the cause forward, but there's no guarantee that might actually happen," says Tonio.

One of Weifang's major lures, we realized, was the prospect of meeting old friends and making new ones. As Muammar Quaddafi, a Malaysian who runs the Borneo International Kite Festival, says, "It is about building relationships through kites. The kite-flying fraternity is like one big happy family, cutting across cultures."

And while Weifang as the host city was the seat of many such reunions, it was also, as participant Wang Jiahua says, "an opportunity to develop local economy and for Weifang culture to go out into the world".

Cui Yongli, a Qingdao native and a Weifang festival veteran who has made winning a habit during the past 20 years, has attended several festivals abroad.

"Weifang is mounted on a far larger scale," he says of the annual April festival. "Here you get to see a lot more in terms of people and kites."

His own offering is a case in point. From enormous geometric tiered kites, to the regulation centipede dragon to traditional kites with floral images - one could find every sort under his huge tent. For a while he held the record for the longest snake-shaped kite, measuring slightly more than 882 meters.

"The kite is not just an industry in Weifang but a medium that could make the city earn its place in the world," says Liu Ziqing.

Which is not to discount the value of local pride. At 7, Liu Yixuan is already a seasoned festival-goer, having been here in three past seasons. He pointed gleefully to an enormous soft kite with hedgehog spikes and fuchsia colors, switching allegiance the next moment to a slow-rising motorbike-shaped kite that caught his eye.

"I am definitely going to tell my classmates about the flight of these enormous kites at school tomorrow," he says.