Page 104 - A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols BIG Book

A-Z 97
Buddhist monks are often derided as ‘bald-headed asses’, and in popular parlance
the bald-headed monk is often compared to a penis.

Dove

ge

In ancient India, the dove was the bird of death and the spirit world; in Rome, it was the
bird of love; in China it symbolises fidelity and longevity, probably because doves
pair for life, and both sexes take a share in raising the young ones. Since Tang times, the
dove has figured in the head-dress of the ‘goddess who sends children’ (song zi niang
niang), so it is presumably also seen as a fertility symbol. Carrier pigeons were already in
use at the same time.

Dragon

long

Combining as it does all sorts of mythological and cosmological notions, the dragon is
one of China’s most complex and multi-tiered symbols. Indeed, the word long covers a
variety of heterogeneous beings. In sharp contrast to Western ideas on this subject, the
Chinese dragon is a good-natured and benign creature: a symbol of natural male vigour

and fertility ( yang). From the Han Dynasty (206 BC–AD 220) onwards, the dragon
is also the symbol of the Emperor, the Son of Heaven. It is the first of the ‘360 Scaly
Creatures’ (see the five kinds of creature) and the 5th creature in the Chinese
zodiac. As one of the four creatures of the world directions, the dragon stands in the
East, the region of sunrise, of fertility, of spring rains and of rain in general. In this guise,
he is known as the ‘blue-green dragon’ (qing-long) and is contrasted with the ‘white
tiger’ (bo-hu), the ruler of the West and of death.
In this vegetative connotation, the dragon was imagined as spending the winter under
the earth; on the 2nd day of the 2nd month he rose from the earth into heaven thus
causing the first spring thunder and rainfall. In North China, this was the sign for a start
to be made on the fields. To this day, the Chinese community in Marysville (California)
hold a great dragon-feast to mark this occasion: fireworks representing the dragon are let
off, and whoever finds a piece of one can look forward to a lucky year.