Read Ebook: The Chinese Dragon by Hayes L Newton Fong Foo Sec Author Of Introduction Etc

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Bronze Dragon, Kang Hsi Period Dragon Colonnade at Chufu Frontispieces Page Emperor Kang Hsi in Dragon Robes 1 The Dragon Throne of the Recent Emperors 2 The Han Dynasty Dragons 7 The Porcelain Dragon Screen 8 The Dragon Staircase 13 An Imperial Dragon 14 Tablet to Confucius 17 Dragon Gateway 18 The Dragon Stone 21 Dragon Eaves-Tile 22 Dragon-Guarded Astrolabe 25 Surrounded by Dragons 26 A Dragon-Mounted Bell 29 A Cloud Dragon 30 Circular Dragon Eaves-Tile 35 Chien Lung Vases 36 A Living Dragon 43 Two Porcelain Dragons 44 The "Dragon Square" 49 The "Dragon Disk" 50 Emperor Kang Hsi on the Dragon Throne 55 A Dragon Lantern 56 A Dragon Column 59 The Gateway to the Dragon Well 60 The Dragon Tablet 63 A Dragon Boat Race in Foochow 64

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.

The popular belief in the dragon is so deeply rooted and so widespread that it is advisable for one to secure an accurate knowledge of the Chinese idea of the venerated saurian if he desires to gain a truly sympathetic understanding of this remarkable people. Nearly every phase of Chinese life bears evidence of the influence of this unique member of the animal kingdom. Particularly is this true in the realms of their art, literature, folklore, zo?logy, history, and religion.

Chinese art employs dragon designs in endless variety. The graceful lines of its symmetrically proportioned body are found in every part of the country painted upon silks and porcelain, woven into brocades, carved on wood, embroidered upon satin, cast in bronze, and chiseled upon marble. It is the most characteristically Chinese of the many Oriental designs which are so attractive to Western students of art.

The literature of the country abounds in references to this marvelous creature as one may readily discover by even a cursory study of its books of history, poetry, letters, medicine, and fiction.

Chinese folklore is replete with countless entertaining stories of the wonderful feats of this great animal, while an infinite number of proverbs and old folks' sayings bear their testimony to the almost universal belief in its existence.

Popular zo?logy 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 Phoenix 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. But because the dragon is equally at home in the air and on the earth, as well as in the sea, it has been ranked as the ruler of all created life below man.

Chinese geomancy for ages has looked to the dragon as a means of determining the fates and fortunes of the "Sons of Han." Until very recently comparatively few Chinese would build a house or bury a corpse without first consulting a geomancer, who would, in one way or another, refer to its probable influence upon his action. It is, moreover, a generally accepted belief that every twelfth hour, day, month, and year of the lunar calendar are under the dragon's dominating control.

Chinese history records scores of appearances of the king of beasts through the four thousand or more years since the age of the three mythical rulers. Appearances of the dragon are connected with the stories of many prominent characters of China's past. Perhaps the most noteworthy reference is one which states that two dragons as guards of honor visited the home of Confucius on the day that great sage was born. These frequent references to the dragon are considered, for the most part, by the majority of Chinese scholars quite as authentic as the statements about the famous worthies themselves.

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. This deity was worshiped on the first and fifteenth of every month.

In the opinion of the writek 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. 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.

Quite recently the writer made a localized study of the universality of the belief in dragons. One hundred representative Chinese of different ages and walks in life in an important city were asked the following questions: Do you believe in the present existence of the dragon? And what percentage of the people of China do you think hold this belief? Eighty-two of the one hundred answered the first question in the affirmative. Regarding the universality of the belief in the dragon these men estimated that at least eighty-six and six-tenths per cent of their fellow nationals believe in its existence. The above study bore out very accurately the writer's estimate of the extent of the popular belief in the dragon. His judgment was based upon questions asked many scores of Chinese in ten different provinces of the country through a period of fourteen years.

HOW THE DRAGON IDEA ORIGINATED

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. Back in the dawn of history some early member of the human race may have met with one of these monstrous creatures which paleontologists tell us were, in some period of their development, equally at home on land and in the sea, and because of its gigantic size and marvelous powers attributed to it a supernatural origin. In later ages, even the unearthed skeleton of one of these monsters might have been sufficient to have led to the inception of the story. If this theory is correct it is easy to understand how through succeeding ages the belief could have grown and how superstition and coincidence would have done their share to elaborate from the early monster the marvelous creature of the present day.

According to the theory advanced above, the writer believes that the most probable prototype of the dragon is the Brontosaurus of the Mesozoic age, although the present conception of the dragon may easily have sprung from such other prehistoric animals, as the plesiosaurus of the same period or the Iguanodon of the Cenozoic age. Skeletons of these giants of the saurian family and pictures of the reconstructed animals indicate a striking resemblance to the graceful creatures that dominate the art of China.

The first appearance of the true dragon, according to the records of what is considered to be authentic Chinese history, occurred some forty-six centuries ago during the reign of Huang Ti, or Hsuan Yuan, the third of the five great rulers. We are told that after this personage had reigned one hundred and eleven years a large dragon appeared and took him to heaven upon his back. Since that day dragons have been seen in every dynasty and by hundreds of witnesses, as Chinese history abundantly attests. Dragon appearances were considered auspicious, and augured well for the affairs of state. In support of this belief, it is interesting to note that when the late President Yuan Shih-kai was trying to make himself emperor his friends made at least one attempt to unearth what were supposed to be the bones of a dragon. This was done in order that the superstitious among his countrymen might be led to feel that his desire to re?stablish the empire was according to the law of heaven.

For centuries it was the custom for anyone who saw a dragon, either himself or through the magistrate of the district in which he lived, immediately to announce the fact to the emperor. In early days history was often counted from the appearance of a particular dragon.

A popular fable relates that Y? Wang was able to end the great flood 2297 B.C. only after he had succeeded in capturing the dragon, who was said to be responsible for the deluge. The animal was chained in heavy irons and imprisoned, after which the flood subsided. Ever since that time all dragons, we are told, have trembled at the memory of the only man who ever conquered their kind.

THE VARIETIES OF DRAGONS

All true dragons are of two kinds: those which are such by birth and those which become dragons by transformation from fish of the carp species. The transformed variety become dragons by leaping up the waters of a certain cataract upon a western mountain stream. Large numbers of carp swim once each year, we learn, to this waterfall known as the "Dragon's Gate." Here under the cataract they flounder about, jumping and springing up out of the swirling waters; a few of them succeed in getting over the falls to the higher waters above. Those which are successful in this effort become dragons. After the story of this strange occurrence became known to the public, it was incorporated into the life of the people in a popular saying, and scholars who succeeded in passing the great triennial literary examinations were said to have "passed the Dragon Gate." 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.

One ancient authority tells us that there is a class of these great saurians which are known as "lazy dragons." 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 to the surface of the earth and hide in trees, under roofs of houses, and even in the clothing of unsuspecting countrymen. 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. An epithet that in some parts of the country is often hurled at lazy people is "Lan Lung," or "lazy dragon."

WHAT DRAGONS REALLY LOOK LIKE

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 innumerable references to it in Chinese literature largely deal with the dragon's performances and say little about his appearance. In order to make a satisfactory study of the dragon one must, therefore, follow a tedious process of collecting, eliminating, and co?rdinating a multitude of stories, proverbs, and incidents from history, and make a careful study of selected pictures and carvings, and if possible secure interviews with those who profess to have seen the great king of the animal creation.

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.

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.

The "Shoh Wen," a book written during the Tang dynasty, says that the dragon has the following marvelous powers: "It may cause itself to become visible or invisible at will, and it can become long or short, and coarse or fine, at its own good pleasure." This wonderful versatility, of course, makes it difficult for us to find any recorded statement of the maximum length of this creature, since there is no limit set for its expansion. Another book of the Tang dynasty helps out a little, however, when it describes a certain dragon, which was found dead, as having been over one hundred feet long, while other accounts lead us to believe that the dragon at times assumes a size several miles in length. The smallest size of which any statement has been found was the length of a silkworm.

In color, dragons are differentiated as being red, yellow, blue, white, or black. During the Manchu dynasty, yellow was the imperial color, and the yellow or golden dragon was designated the imperial dragon. In the preceding dynasty, the Ming dynasty, when red was the national color, it is believed that the red dragon was proclaimed, by decree of the emperor, the official dragon of the empire.

Every careful observer in the Far East has noticed a difference in the number of claws in the pictures of dragons--some possessing three, others four, and still others five claws. The smallest number is found on the dragons of Japanese art. Ordinarily Chinese dragons have four claws, while those of five were recognized as imperial dragons. The two types of Chinese dragons, with these slight variations, are, however, one and the same species, and are identical in every other respect. An attempt has been made to prove that the variation of claws from three through four to five is a historic development, but we can find no conclusive proof to substantiate this theory. It is possible that the ancient dragon designs of China have only three claws on each foot. Japan borrowed her art from China, and it is not unlikely that at the period when she borrowed this design the Chinese dragon was represented with only three claws.

It is said of the carp that it always has exactly thirty-six scales in each row, leading from its head to its tail. After the same manner, dragons are described as possessing eighty-one scales in each series.

The true dragon has nine sons. Each is different in appearance from the other and each possesses his own peculiar characteristics. These children of the dragon are the variants in appearance from the general line which we are accustomed to look for in the dragon, and which we often see in carvings and architecture. The dragon heads on bells, on the peak tiles of temples and palaces, on sword hilts, on monuments, and in similar places are representations of the progeny of the God of Rain and do not portray that god himself.

PEOPLE WHO HAVE SEEN DRAGONS

In spite of the fact that modern zo?logy 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. The writer has had the pleasure of conversing with several Chinese who assert that they have seen the dragon at close range. He has also secured, at secondhand, information from others who are said to have looked upon this most marvelous of creatures. All of the men whom the writer interviewed were of sound mind and were accredited by their acquaintances with being men of reliable character. There is no reason to believe that any one of them were inebriate or under the power of hallucination at the time they witnessed the creatures of their description.

A teacher in a Tientsin school related that he once saw a dragon in his native province, Shantung. The animal had been killed, so it was believed, by the order of heaven, as a punishment for some misdeed, and had fallen to the earth, where it lay as the center of attraction for hundreds of people who came in crowds from that whole countryside. Its appearance was identical with that of the popular pictures with which we are familiar. A school servant, who was also a native of Shantung, and whose home was near the sea, declared that he once saw a dragon. He told the writer that it was about fifteen feet long and that it fell to the earth during a severe rainstorm. It, too, attracted a large crowd of spectators. Although this man was unable to give very satisfactory details, yet his unusual earnestness and apparent sincerity were convincing evidence that he had really seen a monster of a remarkable type.

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 country folk respectfully covered it with matting, but he managed to raise the covering and saw its great cowlike head, its four legs, and its scale-covered body. It was about fifty feet long and blue in color. As in the other two cases, this dragon disappeared from the earth during a heavy storm. It was generally believed that it came to life again and was taken up into the heavens upon a cloud, which formed beneath its body.

The artist who drew the picture of the cloud dragon recounted that, during the thirty-fourth year of the Emperor Kuang Hsu, while he himself was on his way to Peking to receive the seals of a district magistrate, he came across a dragon lying upon the banks of the Yellow River in Shantung province. It was blue in color and was several tens of feet in length. The whole air was filled with a very offensive salt sea odor, and out of respect for the creature, which was supposed to have fallen from heaven, the crowd of people that stood around was busily engaged in sprinkling water upon its body. The head resembled that of a cow and the artist said that except for the long eyebrows the picture of the cloud dragon represented very faithfully what he actually saw.

Another Chinese has related that a business partner of his, while on a journey up the Yangtze River, saw three dragons crossing a mountain range near the shore. Every person on board was spellbound as they watched the three monsters--one yellow, another white, and the third blue--as they majestically made their way with great undd a somewhat uneven surface to the wheels. A well built Studebaker will stand a lot of this kind of banging, but it is not wholly indestructible. So it happened that half-way down the hill the left hind axle snapped at the hub. Thereupon some two hundred dozen ears of early green-corn were strewn along the flinty face of the highway, while Uncle Enoch was hurled, seat and all, accompanied by four dozen eggs and ten pounds of Aunt Henrietta's best butter, into the ditch.

When the circus caravan overtook him Uncle Enoch had captured the runaways and was leading them back to where the wrecked wagon lay by the roadside. More or less butter was mixed with the sandy chin whiskers and an inartistic yellow smooch down the front of his coat showed that the eggs had followed him.

"Rather lively pair of yours; eh, mister?" commented a red-faced man who dropped off the pole-wagon.

"Yes, ruther lively," assented Uncle Enoch, "'Specially when ye don't want 'em to be. The off one's stiddy enough. It's this cantankerous skewbald that started the tantrum. Whoa now, blame ye!" Calico's nose was in the air again and he was snorting excitedly.

"Lemme hold him 'till old Ajax goes by," said the circus man.

"Thank ye. I'll swap him off fust chance I git, ef I don't fetch back nuthin' but a boneyard skate," declared Uncle Enoch.

As Ajax lumbered by, the circus man eyed with interest the dancing Calico. He noted with approval the coat of fantastic design, the springy knees and the fine tail that rippled its white length almost to Calico's heels.

"I'll do better'n that by you, mister," said he. "I've got a fourteen-hundred pound Vermont Morgan, sound as a dollar, only eight years old and ain't afraid o' nothin'. I'll swap him even for your skewbald."

"Like to see him," said Uncle Enoch. "If he's half what ye say it's a trade."

"Here he comes on the band-wagon team;" then, to the driver: "Hey, Bill, pull up!"

In less than half an hour from the time Calico had bolted at sight of the circus cavalcade he was part and parcel of it, and helping to pull one of those mysterious sheeted wagons along in the wake of the terrifying Ajax.

"The old party don't give you a very good send off," said the boss hostler reflectively to Calico, "but I reckon you'll get used to Ajax and the music-chariot before the season's over. Leastways, you're bound to be an ornament to the grand entry."

Calico's life with the Grand Occidental began abruptly and vigorously. The driver of the band-wagon knew his business. Even when half asleep he could see loose traces. After Calico had heard the long lash whistle about his ears a few times he concluded that it was best to do his share of the pulling.

And what pulling it was! There were six horses of them, Calico being one of the swings, but on an uphill grade that old chariot was the most reluctant thing he had ever known. Uncle Enoch's stone-boat, which Calico had once held to be merely a heart-breaking instrument of torture, seemed light in retrospect. Often did he look reproachfully at the monstrous combination of gilded wood and iron. Why need band-wagons be made so exasperatingly heavy? The atrociously carved Pans on the corners, with their scarred faces and broken pipes, were cumbersome enough to make a load for one pair of horses, all by themselves. Calico would think of them as he was straining up a long hill. He could almost feel them pulling back on the traces in a sort of wooden stubbornness. And when the team rattled the old chariot down a rough grade how he hoped that two or three of the figures might be jolted off. But in the morning, when the show lot was reached and the travelling wraps taken off the wagons, there he would see the heavy shouldered Pans all in their places as hideous and as permanent as ever.

It was a hard and bitter lesson which Calico learned, this matter of keeping one's tugs tight. Uncle Enoch had spared the whip, but in the heart of Broncho Bill, who drove the band-wagon, there was no leniency. Ready and strong was his whip hand, and he knew how to make the blood follow the lash. No effort did he waste on fat-padded flanks when he was in earnest. He cut at the ears, where the skin is tender. He could touch up the leaders as easily as he could the wheel-horses, and when he aimed at the swings he never missed fire.

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