Andre’s Reviews > A Study of Dragons, East and West > Status Update

Well that bibliography looks... sobering.

The list of chinese dragon names was useful.

So these are the nine sons of the chinese dragon.... what are they supposed to be?

That is the huge dragon that St. George killed? That depiction is only the size of a dog. Or is that supposedly symbolic size? And that Shang dynasty dragon looks nothing like a dragon, more like a pig.

Would be nice if he had such a list of sources for "Western" dragons.

Can't find any of these folktale collections here.

In the Shang Dynasty, neither the image nor the character of the dragon was standardized. Unlike their descendants, the Shang people could use their imagination to change the form of the dragon.

I speculated that this was the case once. And also that over time all these divergent dragons were relegated to being quasi dragons until the standardized dragon was left.

Did he ever actually mention any Western folktales? I cannot remember. Maybe his claim that dragons of myth, folklore and religion in the "West" are all the same meaningwise caused him to ignore folktales in this study.

...in contrast we may take the Dragon flag as representative of ancient China's conservatism, collective obedience, centralized hydraulic state, xenophobia, and cultural continuity. Badly wounded, the dragon was not dead. The spirit of the dragon may shine again, recovering its glory in a new form .

nationalism much?

To the Chinese, however, the mythological dragon is an embodiment of national history and dominant ideology. In most cases, they seek identification with the dragon rather than with the dragon slayer. lt is particularly true for Mao Zedong who changed from a challenger to a creator.
Oh really? Because based on his actions, I would say that Mao is a poisonous folklore dragon.