Dragons are one of the oldest and most common motifs in Chinese art; even today they are a living presence in the Chinese world, decorating furniture, jewelry, clothing, wallpaper--even advertisements. But their favorite abode is the temple, where they crawl on the roof, slither across doors, climb up lanterns and candlesticks and coil around pillars, railings and lattices, testifying to the Chinese people's lasting affection for and fascination with these mysterious creatures.
Their history is as ancient as the people. In an abstruse kind of proto-evolutionary theory the Huai Nan Tzu (first century B.C.) names dragons as the forebears of the phoenix, unicorn, k'un fish and tortoise and thus of all creatures feathered, furry, scaly and shelled. A few centuries later, Wang Fu described their appearance with the "nine similitudes"--having a body like an ox, a mouth like a donkey, eyes like a prawn, ears like an elephant, scales like a fish, whiskers like a man, belly like a snake and claws like a phoenix. "The dragon, born in the water and wandering about wearing five colors, is godlike," relates another ancient work. "When it wants to be small, it can make itself like a silkworm; when it wants to be big, it can fit itself inside the universe; when it wants to go up, it can tread on the clouds; and when it wants to go down, it can enter the abyss--its transformations are endless."
Ubiquitous and ever changing, dragons richly reflect the fertile imagination of the Chinese people and have been a favorite artistic motif for millennia. Appearing first in stylized patterns on Shang dynasty bronzes over 4000 years ago, the dragon has developed ever more dynamic forms over the ages in accordance with cultural vicissitudes and changing aesthetic concepts.
Synthesizing features of diverse creatures, the dragon is an apt symbol of the Chinese people, itself a synthesis of diverse races and cultures, who still today call themselves "children of the dragon."
(Peter Eberly)
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