!['Dragons and Drums of the Tang Dynasty' from the 2005 NTDTV Global Gala (The Epoch Times archive)]](/news_images/highres/2006-1-10-drag.jpg)
Chinese people are often called the descendants of the Dragon, and there must be a dragon in any gala celebrating the Chinese New Year. The NTDTV Global Gala will have two types of dragon: the holy one that commands the wind and clouds, and the evil one who makes trouble for a short time. I would like to provide some background about dragons here.
There are many legends about dragons. A popular theory in today's China about the origin of the dragon is that it is a product of human imagination, a fantasy composed of a deer's horns, a snake's neck, an eagle's claws, a turtle's head and a body with scales. I don't agree with such a theory. In China, dragons were worshiped as gods as early as five thousand years ago. It is said in the Buddhist Scriptures that dragons from heaven often listened to Buddha's lectures, indicating that the people of India knew about dragons as early as Sakyamuni's time.
In the summer of 1999, I went to Baghdad on a business trip, and visited the ruins of Babylon 40 kilometers outside Baghdad. The tour guide pointed out an image on the wall and told me it was ancient Babylon's dragon. I studied the dragon in detail. It was similar to a Chinese dragon, except that its body was shorter, the size of a lion. The tour guide teased, "our culture is not as great as China's, even our dragon is shorter than yours."
From the above three examples, it is hard for me to imagine that in ancient times, when China, India, and the Middle East were almost isolated from each other, people from each region would nonetheless imagine a similar kind of being, a dragon. I would rather believe that dragons are truly existing beings, and people in these three different areas saw them and drew them from life.
In traditional Chinese culture, dragons are symbols of the emperor's power, and also are symbols of the hero. In the myth, there are also different levels of dragons. Take The Journey to the West as an example. The highest level is the white dragon horse that obtained the Right Fruit; the next level are the dragon kings of the oceans, the following level are the dragons ruling rivers, and lowest level are the dragons in the wells. There are many other myths and legends about dragons in Chinese history.
Of course, not all the dragons are righteous gods. There are evil dragons, poison dragons and demon dragons. In the Buddhist Scriptures, there is a story about how Mulian fought with two evil dragons and won. In one myth, the Sun-Moon Lake in Taiwan was a place where an evil dragon swallowed the sun and the moon. Later a couple killed the evil dragon with help from a god and set free the sun and the moon.
The dragon in Western culture is vastly different from the oriental dragon. The Western dragons are evil beasts from hell. The western dragon could spit out fire. Unlike the oriental dragon, they have wings.
Chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation describes an extremely vicious and cruel red dragon that has seven heads and ten horns. The red dragon fought against the angels, lost the fight, and fell to the ground. Revelation called the red dragon "the Devil and Satan, who deceived the whole world." This prophecy of the red dragon is similar to that of the fire dragon predicted by the "Plum Blossom Poem," a work of prophecy from the Northern Song Dynasty.
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