First post! Happy Chinese New Year everyone, as it is the year of Dragon
according to the Chinese calendar, i would like to talk a little bit about
Dragon. To me Dragon is a very special animal not only because of its
mysteriousness but also its majesty and high status. Dragon is the only
mythological animal among all 12 animals in the Chinese calendar. Dragon is
ingrained in Chinese culture and is strongly associated with authority and
great honor as it is the highest-ranking animal in the
animal hierarchy in all ages throughout the history of China. It is the
symbol of imperial authority: The dragon was a symbol for the emperor in many Chinese dynasties. The imperial throne was called the Dragon Throne. The rulers’ bodies are called
"longTi" which literally means the body of the dragon, but symbolizes
the precious value of the king's body. During the late Qing Dynasty, the dragon was even adopted as the national flag. The dragon is featured in
the carvings on the steps of imperial palaces and tombs, such as the Forbidden City in Beijing.
As to Dragon’s appearance, we are familiar with
some of the imaginary creatures that possess different characteristics of
multiple animals at the same time, such as the Chimera in mythology. There are variant lists of the nine animal
resemblances. A Sinologist lists that these
characteristics of an authentic dragon: "The horns of a deer.
The head of a camel. A demon's eyes. The neck of a snake. A tortoise's viscera.
A hawk's
claws. The palms of a tiger. A cow's ears. And it hears through its horns, its
ears being deprived of all power of hearing." He notes that, "Others state it has a rabbit's
eyes, a frog's
belly, a carp's scales."
Let’s discuss a little bit about how people imagined Dragon to be
like that, what are the reasons that the dragon possesses those certain
characteristics. For the neck of a snake, I guess it is because that people
thought Dragon is originally an aquatic animal. In the history, people were not
capable of explaining why there were droughts and flood, so they envisioned
that there was some kind of animal in the sea that controls the floods and
rains. Snakes were the most common animal that people would see in the water;
they then put this vision on Dragon’s body.
As it was mentioned that dragon are frequently associated with
rulers. In the past, the rulers were expected to have the privilege to live
longer than normal people. It is been a common sense that a tortoise can live
as long as hundreds of years at least. People assimilated dragon’s length of
life to that of tortoises’, and that is basically why the dragon has viscera of
a tortoise.
