MY Christian friend who was here on a visit recently really wanted to buy traditional Chinese suits to take home as souvenirs. We took him to the famous Silk Street tourist shopping mall where he browsed from stall to stall but could not find anything that appealed to him.
“It’s not the price,” he explained. “It looks like every one of them has the dragon motif.”
Obviously, he did not want to have anything to do with the dragon. To the Chinese, the dragon is the national symbol, a mythical creature, benign, strong, righteous and protective, and it has influenced China’s culture and that of its neighbouring countries like Japan, Korea and Vietnam for thousands of years.
So, a traditional Chinese suit is not culturally correct without the dragon motif and many Westerners like it as it is. They like to have it on their T-shirts, their kungfu outfits and even have it fashionably tattooed on their bodies.
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As China continues to interact with the West and come under increasing Western influence, the dragon, like other things traditionally Chinese, is in a bit of trouble.
A storm is brewing on the Net over an out-of-the-box suggestion that it should be dethroned and replaced as the national symbol of China.
It all started with a proposal by the deputy president of the Shanghai Public Relations Association, Prof Wu Youfu, who feels that the iconic dragon may no longer be suitable as a national symbol of modern China.
According to a media report, Prof Wu argued that the dragon is seen in Western culture as a symbol of “arbitrariness and offensiveness” and, as such, does not fit the image of a rising China that’s a peaceful and harmonious nation.
Noting that the bias from Westerners who know little about China’s culture may cause a negative impact on the country, the report says that Prof Wu and his team are now working on a new symbol based on positive Chinese characteristics.
Although Prof Wu subsequently explained that the report was not quite correct, the controversy he sparked off is raging on nevertheless, as the suggestion has touched a raw nerve in the Chinese who are proud of their culture.
They feel so strongly about keeping the dragon as their national symbol regardless of the fact that it is not enshrined in the Constitution as a national symbol.
The Chinese website sina.com did a survey and found that 90% of 100,000 respondents wanted to keep the dragon as the Chinese icon.
However, one expert feels that the Chinese word long should be used instead of the English word “dragon” to avoid any negative connotation.
Pang Jin, director of the China Research Centre on Dragon and Phoenix Culture, explained that the dragon of the West and China’s are different.
He said the dragon in Western countries represents evil and is usually seen as a symbol of arbitrariness and offensiveness.
“However, the dragon in China is a supernatural animal that is always good without aggression. What is more, the dragon in Western culture is low in rank but in China it is a spiritual and cultural symbol representing prosperity and good luck,” he was quoted as saying.
Visually, the Chinese dragon is a combination of several animal parts. It has the horns of a deer, the head of a crocodile with bulging eyeballs, flared nostrils sprouting two lengths of hair and a goatee. It has the body of a snake and four legs with the claws of an eagle.
According to Chinese mythology, the dragon, which controls the weather and thus the fortune of the ancient agricultural society, always moves among the clouds.
It has permeated Chinese culture for thousands of years to the extent that it was adopted as the royal emblem of every Chinese dynasty. Accordingly, Chinese emperors sat on a dragon throne, wore a dragon robe, and slept on a dragon bed.
He lived and worked in royal palaces decorated with dragon motifs and was even buried in royal mausoleums decorated with similar motifs.
The dragon is also featured in tens of thousands of art works in various shapes and sizes and in different postures and appears in books, poems and in ancient architecture.
Such is the attraction of this mythical creature that many Chinese today still pride themselves as Long Di Chuan Ren or “Inheritors of the dragon (culture)” even though the creature is non-existent.
Prof Guan Shijie of Peking University was quoted as saying that to some extent the misconception of the Chinese dragon is due to faulty translation.
Thus, he suggested that the Chinese word long be used for the Chinese mascot to distinguish it from the baddie dragon of the West.
On the other hand, Prof Yu Guomin of Renmin University believes that a PR campaign is needed to spruce up the image of the Chinese dragon.
“If the ogre Shrek can become famous and loveable in America, I think the Chinese dragon can learn from it too,” he mused.
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