The Chinese Dragon: the Long, Lord of the Waters and of the Empire
The Chinese long is not a monster but a benign power: from Neolithic graves to the I Ching, from the rain-bringing Dragon Kings to the emperor's emblem.
Anyone who compares the European dragon with the Chinese one immediately notices a profound difference. The long, as the Chinese language calls it, is not an enemy to be struck down but a force of nature, powerful and sometimes dangerous, yet generally benign. It lives in the waters, rises among the clouds and brings rain to the fields. For more than two thousand years it was also the emblem of imperial power, and it still appears today in festivals, temples and decorations of every kind.
Origins in Prehistory
The first images that can be linked to the dragon date back to the Neolithic. In 1987, at Xishuipo in Henan province, archaeologists discovered a burial of the Yangshao culture in which the figure of a dragon and that of a tiger had been laid out in shells beside the deceased; the grave is dated to about six thousand years ago. From the Hongshan culture in the north-east come instead small C-shaped coiled jades, sometimes called “pig-dragons”.
Over the centuries the long took on a composite form. A famous description, attributed to an author of the Han period and passed on by later texts, gives it nine resemblances: the horns of a deer, the head of a camel, the neck of a snake, the belly of a clam, the scales of a carp, the claws of an eagle, the palms of a tiger, the ears of an ox and the eyes of a demon. It is an animal that sums up the whole world, earth, sky and water.
The Dragon in the I Ching and the Cosmos
The Book of Changes, the I Ching, one of China's oldest classics, opens its series of sixty-four hexagrams with Qian, the Creative, whose six lines are described through the stages of a dragon. The hidden dragon must not act, the one appearing in the field announces a meeting with a great man, the one flying in the sky signals fullness, while the arrogant dragon will have cause to repent.
In Chinese cosmology the Azure Dragon, Qinglong, is the guardian of the east, of spring and of the element wood, while the other cardinal points are entrusted to the White Tiger, the Vermilion Bird and the Black Tortoise. The dragon is often shown chasing a flaming pearl, variously interpreted as the sun, the moon or wisdom. Its nature is yang, linked to movement and to rising energy.
Dragon Kings, Rain and Emperors
In popular religion every river, lake and sea had its Dragon King, the Longwang, who lived in an underwater palace and governed the rains. In times of drought communities addressed prayers and processions to him, and many villages had a temple dedicated to him. The Dragon Boat Festival, held on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, likewise joins the cult of the waters to the memory of the poet Qu Yuan.
The dragon was soon associated with the ruler. The historian Sima Qian relates that the mother of the founder of the Han dynasty, while resting beside a pond, was visited by a dragon during a storm. In later periods the five-clawed dragon was reserved for the emperor and his family. The Forbidden City in Beijing, built under the Ming in the fifteenth century, is full of carved, painted and glazed dragons, among them the famous Nine Dragon Wall.
In the West the dragon is the monster the saint impales; in China it is the image of harmony between heaven and earth, of rain that comes at the right moment and of power that governs with order. This difference does not erase the similarities, such as the link with water and treasure, but it shows how the same kind of creature can take on opposite meanings depending on the culture that imagines it.