L. Newton Hayes

“ There is a feeling among many friends of China, and even among a few Chinese as well, that the effect of the Revolution and the passing of the Dragon Flag will very shortly kill out the dragon idea. This the writer believes is impossible. A belief that has gripped the nation for over forty centuries is not to be shaken even by a great revolution, which, though cataclysmic in itself, yet in relation to the ages which have passed, is little more than a ripple upon the surface of the sea of time. ”

“ When Chinese observe the natural phenomenon which in the West is commonly described as “the sun drawing up water,” they say that what is seen is the dragon sucking up water to form the clouds.
When rain falls upon one man’s field and not upon his neighbor’s, or upon one half of a man’s farm and not upon the other, one explanation which is advanced for this fact is that the line which marks the division of dry and wet land is directly beneath the boundary line of the territory governed by two different dragons. One sees fit to order rain when the other does not. ”

“ One writer, who is anxious to make intelligible to the average person the accepted representation of the king of all created life below man, describes the dragon in terms of animals with many of which we are quite familiar. He says that it has the head of a camel, the horns of a deer, the ears of a cow, the neck of a snake, the body of a fish, the scales of a carp, the claws of an eagle, the eyes of a devil, and the paws of a tiger. ”

“ CHAPTER ONE THE PLACE OF THE DRAGON IN CHINESE LIFE
There are real dragons living in China to-day. These are not the horrible monsters that some have imagined them to be. They are friendly creatures highly revered by all the people. They possess marvelous powers and they occasionally permit themselves to be seen by mortal eyes. Such is the belief of at least seven out of every ten Chinese. ”

“ In the heart of Wuchang there is a steep hill which cuts the business part of the city into two sections. This hill is so steep that it is practically impossible to carry the traffic over it. Some Chinese claim the hill to be the dwelling place of a tortoise, others of a serpent, and still others of a dragon. Some years ago, when Chang Chih Tung was living in that city as viceroy of Hunan and Hupeh, he caused a tunnel to be cut through the hill so that communication from one business center to the other would be facilitated. ”

“ The Chinese species is developed to a higher degree. The latter has a more massive head from which protrude two branching horns. This species, with the single exception of the Chih Lung, or Li Lung, has no wings but travels from place to place upon the clouds.
A still greater difference between the two varieties exists in the matter of disposition. The European dragon is usually portrayed as a cruel monster, the personification of all that is evil, and the enemy of man. Christian art represents it as opposed to law, harmony, and progress and symbolic of sin and paganism. ”

“ This graceful creature fairly throbs with life, and we almost hold our breath as we look with the expectation that it will detach itself from the mural background and launch out into space. It is a living thing, and we feel that in another moment it will jerk back its head and rise to disappear before our very eyes. ”

“ Popular zoölogy places the dragon next to man, at the head of the list of all living creatures, thus occupying the position of the lion or tiger in our Western classification. Strictly speaking, Chinese natural history gives the dragon the rank of king only of scale-covered animals or creatures which live in the sea; the two fabulous creatures, the Chi Ling and the Phœnix respectively, have first place above all beasts and other animals which live upon the earth, and all birds and other creatures which fly in the air. ”

“ Comparatively few Chinese of the older generation seem to question the existence of dragons or to doubt the marvelous powers usually attributed to them. In view of this fact it is surprising to find how ignorant is the average person who holds this belief when asked to give an accurate description of the great creature. Perhaps this is not strange, however, when we remember that there are apparently no books which purport to give any complete account of the dragon. ”

“ The elaborate conception of the dragon which we find to-day in Chinese art and literature is undoubtedly a very different animal from the one which was responsible for the origin of the dragon idea. The fabled sea serpent, the alligator, the salamander, and the boa constrictor have each been regarded as the prototype of this unique creature. It is far more likely, however, that some antediluvian saurian was the true source from which the dragon idea has sprung. ”

“ Each ocean has a dragon king. The members of this species differ from those of the one in which we are the most interested in that dragon kings rarely grow old and never die. The remaining varieties are all quite secondary and practically never appear in any form of art. These are mentioned only occasionally in Chinese literature. This article will therefore be confined to an account of the Shen Lung, or spirit dragon, the real dragon, the dragon which has held China in its spell since the days of Yao and Shun. ”

“ Chinese religion places the dragon in the calendar of its deities as the God of Rain and the Ruler of Rivers, Lakes, and Seas. As such it has been worshiped for centuries. There are probably very few cities of any size in the whole country which, at least until the recent revolution, were without a temple or shrine to the dragon king. ”

“ The dragon is neither [66] a symbol of the Manchu dynasty nor a type of absolute monarchy, and has nothing in common with either. The idea is distinctly a heritage of the Chinese race itself, and as such it will probably live as long as this people. It will survive at least until a generation after Western science has permeated and dominated every seaside village, every mountain hamlet, and every inland city, to the remotest bounds and limits of this vast Republic. ”

“ In the opinion of the writer dwellers in other lands commonly think of the dragon in much the same light as they think of the centaurs, of Geryon or the Minotaur of Grecian fables: a strange mythical creature merely the product of human fancy. It is also probable that most of them think that the majority of Chinese consider it in the same way, but this is a mistaken conception. ”

“ The Dragon Tablet
During the Manchu dynasty, practically every Buddhist and Taoist temple of any size had an imperial dragon tablet in a prominent place upon the altar. Usually this stood before the image. The words it bore were these: “To the reigning emperor. May he live ten thousand years, ten thousand years, ten thousand times ten thousand years.” In the gilded decoration about the characters three dragons twine themselves. Many such tablets may still be seen, although China has now been a Republic for ten years. This photograph was taken in Hangchow in March, 1922. ”

“ One of the men who claimed to have seen a living dragon was by profession an artist. This medallion was drawn by him. “Except for the whiskers, this painting represents what I saw when a young man in Shantung province.” The cloud dragon is a favorite theme of artists. Dragons are supposed to travel about upon the clouds. It is a common belief, and one which was held also by Confucius, that clouds spring from dragons. ”

“ The round disk on the Chinese Dragon Flag, which is often pictured before the mouth of the dragon, is explained by some as a pearl, by others as a huge spider metamorphosed into a ball. We are repeatedly told in fables that dragons have a [65] peculiar fondness for teasing spiders. A more satisfactory theory, however, is that the disk represents the sun. According to this explanation, the dragon is not trying to devour that heavenly body, as some would lead us to suppose, but is gazing with a great longing, for it desires to become like the sun in brilliance. ”

“ We are informed of the remarkable fact that dragons change their bones periodically and as regularly as snakes shed their skins and deer their horns. Dragon bones are supposed to be buried in many high mountains, and their presence has much to do with the determination of fêng-shui. Lofty peaks that are frequently tipped with clouds or enveloped in mist are believed to contain the bones of some great dragon which attract to themselves the moisture of the passing clouds. ”

“ The use of this figure was doubtless to illustrate the difficulty of passing the examinations, for it implied that it was as difficult a task for a man to succeed at these examinations as it was for the carp to leap up over the falls. This figure has, in addition, the happy inference that even as the carp, an ordinary fish, might become a mighty dragon, just so by this supreme effort a scholar might become a master of arts, thus placing the value of the transformation on a very high scale. ”

“ It may be considered a very conservative estimate to state that at least three hundred and sixty million Chinese believe in the actual existence of dragons as firmly as other peoples believe that there are such animals as tigers roaming in the jungles of Bengal and such monsters as walruses wandering over the icy stretches which border the arctic circle, though they themselves may never have set foot upon the shores of India nor have crossed the Arctic Sea. ”

“ However, it seems that the Chinese are not generally accustomed to make such a classification. They rather consider that [16] the one species, Shen Lung, controls and operates in all of these three spheres. Most of the other varieties are minor creatures which are practically unknown and have slight bearing upon this study. The one exception to this rule is the Lung Wang, or dragon king. This species differs from the others in that its members possess a dragon’s head upon a human body. By some this dragon is said to answer to Neptune in Western mythology. ”

“ Invariably these have been described as having scale-covered bodies. One reasonable explanation for the suspended dragons may be found in insipient tornadoes and water spouts which never reach the ground. There seems, however, to be no explanation for the dragon visits described by the five observers, unless it be that strange monsters of the deep either crawled up out of the river and lay on the bank, in a dormant state, or were sucked up by ocean- or river-water spouts, and when the columns of water broke over the land the creatures were dropped far from their natural habitat. ”

“ In spite of the fact that modern zoölogy has never included in the pages of its textbooks descriptions and pictures of the dragon as a creature of reality, yet there are men in China to-day who claim to have seen these animals, some of which have been described very accurately. ”

“ Saints and martyrs are pictured in the process of crushing the dragon beneath their feet. The Chinese dragon, on the other hand, is in this respect very nearly its antithesis. It is a beneficent creature, a friend to man. It brings the rain which produces the crops that in turn supply his food. ”

“ A third person, an elderly gentleman, who is a teacher of classics in one of the schools of Nanking, informed the writer that when he was a young man a dragon fell one night from the sky and lay for twenty-four hours near his home. ”

“ The Thunder God, learning of their desertion from their posts of duty, sends his messengers to search for them and when he discovers their location, kills them with thunderbolts during an electric storm, after the manner of Zeus. This explains to many an unsophisticated man the frequent destruction of life and property during thunderstorms. ”

“ This account of the dragon will not only be of value to foreigners, but it will also be such to Chinese. The author has made this study a hobby for many years and the result of his research is a splendid contribution to the literature on China. It would be a good idea for more people to take up the study of other phases of Chinese life in the same way and thus help to interpret China to the West. ”

“ In referring to the Dragon Flag, the fact is worthy of notice that although this design appeared upon Chinese military banners through many centuries, the selection of the dragon emblem as a national insignia was of comparatively recent date. It is probable that the custom of foreign nations of using national emblems had a large part to play with the adoption of a national flag. ”

“ The bodies of all dragons, we are informed, are symmetrically divided into three sections of equal length, these divisions being from the point of the nose to the shoulders, from the shoulders to the thighs, and from the thighs to the tip of the tail. ”

“ Dragon-Guarded Astrolabe
This exquisitely wrought bronze instrument for measuring the position of the stars may be seen in Peking. It stands at the foot of the ramp leading to the Imperial Observatory. Three hundred years ago the Jesuit astronomer Veribest had this, and a score of other magnificent instruments, cast for the emperor Kang Hsi. Most of these great pieces are surmounted or protected by dragons of the finest workmanship. ”

“ These do not like to exert themselves in the task of directing clouds which carry rain over the surface of the earth. They sometimes make themselves small in size, drop [20] to the surface of the earth and hide in trees, under roofs of houses, and even in the clothing of unsuspecting countrymen. ”