MCLC: here be dragons (1)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: bob eng <robert_eng at redlands.edu>
Subject: here be dragons (1)
***********************************************************

USC's US-China Institute has a nice collection of stamps around the world
hailing the Year of the Dragon, so readers can compare the image of the
dragon as interpreted in China and elsewhere:

<http://china.usc.edu/ShowArticle.aspx?articleID=2663#stamps>

An Ivory Coast stamp juxtaposes the dragon image with that of Deng
Xiaoping.

Historian Chuck Hayford has an excellent commentary on "Dragons in the
News: Is the Long a Dragon?" on the Frog in a Well China blog. See below.

Bob

===========================================================

Source: Frog in a Well (1/18/12):
http://www.froginawell.net/china/2012/01/dragons-in-the-news-is-a-long-a-dr
agon/

Around the English speaking world, magazine covers and editorial writers
rely on the dragon as a colorful shorthand for ³China²:  ³the dragon is
coming,² the ³dragon is waking,² or  ³the eagle and the dragon.² In the
PRC, Xinhua, the official news agency, reports ³Year of Dragon Stamp
Arouses Debate among Public.² One writer complained: ³The moment I saw the
design of the dragon stamp on newspaper, I was almost scared to death.²

Relax. We will not need a St. George the Dragon Slayer to come to our
rescue. The Chinese long is a different creature from a dragon.

Wolfram Eberhard reassures us that in ³sharp contrast to Western ideas on
this subject, the Chinese dragon is a good natured and benign creature: a
symbol of natural male vigor and fertility,² a primordial representative
of the yang side of things. 1.

Eberhard warns that ³combining as it does all sorts of mythological and
cosmological notions, the dragon is one of China¹s most complex and
multi-tiered symbols.² In the cosmology which was systematized under the
Han dynasty, the dragon  stood in the east, which came pretty naturally,
since the east was the region of sunrise and rain, as opposed to the west,
land of the cold, dry yin, where the white tiger ruled over death. A
³tiger and dragon² fight, whether in martial arts or in Ang Lee¹s 2000
movie ³Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,² is the clash of opposite styles.

In the Book of Changes (Yijing), says Edward Shaugnessy, University of
Chicago specialist on early China, the ³Heavenly Dragon² is an ³organizing
image.²  As the creature associated with spring and dawn, ³first hidden in
watery depths beneath the horizon, the dragon then appears in the fields
before suddenly jumping up to fly through the summer sky. However, even
the dragon cannot fly forever. When it gets too high ­ and too arrogant ­
it is cut off at the neck to descend once more into the watery depths.²2

Dragons come in all shapes and sizes, and they have the handy ability to
expand to fill up all space or shrink as small as a silkworm. For starters
there are ³heavenly dragons (tian long),² ³spirit dragons (shen long),²
earth-dragons (di long),² ³dragons which guard treasure (fu-cang long),²
and Flying Dragons (feilong). And this is before we even get to the other
dragon-like creatures, such as the qilin, fenghuang, and pixie. (If you
want to know what a qilin looks like, you¹ll find one on a bottle of Kirin
Beer, since ³kirin² is the Japanese pronunciation of qilin).

So ³dragon² isn¹t a great translation for the Chinese long. ³A long is a
long,² says Thorsten Pattberg, a scholar at Peking University¹s Institute
of World Literature, in a good humored column with a serious point in
China Daily (January 16, 2012) (here).  He says it¹s ³maybe even a
tianlong, but please, please do not use Œdragon.¹ That kind of linguistic
imperialism happened to your unique Sichuan xiongmao once, remember? Now
it¹s a Western Œpanda.¹² If Westerners used the correct word, long, it
would remind them that they are facing something culturally new,² not a
³dragon.²

Pattberg objects that ³Western caricaturists love to depict China as the
European-style dragon: huge and red (of course), clumsy and pear-bodied,
fierce, with tiny wings and a small flame,² but the truth is that the
³Chinese long are majestic, divine creatures, snake-bodied Š and embody
happiness, wisdom and virtue. In the West, on the other hand, it¹s a
virtue to slay the dragon for a happy ending.²

>From the Han dynasty onward, the dragon naturally came to be the symbol of
the Emperor. The mother of the founder of the Han dynasty knew that great
things were in store when a dragon appeared over her head and she then
became pregnant with him.

But even in China, you¹d better not mess with dragons. Dragon spittle was
powerful stuff. A girl servant of a Zhou dynasty king was made pregnant by
dragon spittle (or at least that¹s what she told her father).  This early
form of sperm donation produced Baosi, who became the concubine of King
You. He doted on her so madly that he would light the beacons which warned
of oncoming barbarians and make her laugh when his armies came running.
After a few times, the vassals stopped falling for the joke, and when the
barbarians then did show up, they overthrew the Western Zhou dynasty.

Another hoary tale is that an artist once painted four flying dragons on
the wall of a temple but didn¹t put the pupils in their eyes ­ ³they will
fly away if I do,² he explained. But the crowd insisted. Of course, he
gave in, but when he had finished the eyes on the first two dragons, they
came to life, brought down mighty crashes of thunder, and flew off.

Dragons appear in Chinese bathrooms, or at least their heads do: longtou
(dragon head) means ³faucet.² Don¹t get your hopes up if you¹re offered a
³dragon shrimp,² though, since a longxia is just a lobster.

Things get messy when Westerners use the Chinese dragon. One of the more
interesting is Dragon Lady. In the 1930s, a newspaper syndicate
commissioned Milton Caniff to produce a topical comic strip about the
Orient. He came up with ³Terry and the Pirates,² starring a young American
adventurer who run up against a number of villains. Caniff recalled that
he wanted an ³Oriental villain who was not a Fu Manchu.² He came up with
the Dragon Lady, a Eurasian temptress, since ³putting it into a woman made
it ten times more interesting, an irresistible combination, mean and
beautiful.²3  Many strong women were called Dragon Ladies, but the most
surprising use of the term was for the CIA¹s Lockheed U-2 spy-plane,
nicknamed the ³Dragon Lady.²

I can certainly understand Pattberg¹s objection. No self respecting
Chinese long would want to hang out with rough, low life Western dragons
who go around accosting virgins or let themselves be associated with the
³Grand Dragons² of the Ku Klux Klan. But it¹s too late. We¹re stuck with
³Chinese Dragon.²

For a listing of examples showing that ³Dragon² has gone native, see the
mesmerizing website TVTropes, which catalogues ³devices and conventions
that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience
members¹ minds and expectations.² There are pages on ³The Dragon² (here)
and ³Tiger versus Dragon,² (here) which clearly are good Chinese long.

If that doesn¹t convince you, ask  yourself if ³Dragon Dance² could really
work as ³Long Dance²  or if ³Dragon Boat Festival² would work as ³Long
Boat Festival.²