Chapter FOUR: 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 coördinating 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.