Nobility | Ascendancy | Righteousness
In this post I will show you some historical Chinese dragons you might not have seen before. They are the inspiration behind one of my jewelry collections (hello—if we have never met before, my name is Elire Dantes and I design jewelry inspired by Eastern antiquity).
Let's get into it.
When we think of Chinese dragons this is the typical image that comes to mind:
Historian Raymond Stanley Dawson in his book "The Chinese Experience" describes the Chinese dragon like this:
As chief among the animals the dragon was supposed to be composed of outstanding features of other animals. The traditional description gives it the horns of a stag, the forehead of a camel, the eyes of a demon, the neck of a snake, the belly of a sea-monster, the scales of a carp, the claws of an eagle, the pads of a tiger, and the ears of an ox.
The image on the right checks all the boxes, although I'm not sure what's so particular about the forehead of a camel.
However, this depiction of a dragon comes from the last dynasty of China, though its physiognomy has more or less been consistent since the Tang Dynasty (618-907).
To find the image of the dragon I'm interested in, we have to hit rewind. The very first dragon found in Chinese artifacts comes from the eastern part of Southern Mongolia, northeast of modern-day Beijing. This was the site of the Hongshan culture, a civilization that existed between 4500 and 3000 BCE. It is one of many contemporary neolithic cultures across China that left behind jade objects. Not a lot is known today about the Hongshan way of life as it was a pre-literate society, but most likely they subsisted on farming and hunting, and had a system of governance centered on chieftains. Their burial sites contained a treasure trove of jade artifacts that were used for adornment and ceremony.
One such object is a C-shaped dragon with a plain fringe along its nape, almond eyes and a stubborn snout. Though it has none of the bells and whistles of our Qing dragon, the object's simple lines convey the energy and majesty of a dragon, so it is hard to imagine it as anything but.
As time went on, people still venerated and depicted dragons in their art. But as the art of jade working advanced, more details were incorporated. Artists added lines and textures, though the overall fluid gesture of the body remained consistent. The best examples come from the Western and Eastern Zhou dynasties (1046-771 BCE and 771-256 BCE). The proliferation of dragon artifacts may be because it was during this time that the dragon was adopted as the symbol of royalty, as the ruler of a society was seen to have claimed their rights from heaven. I consider the jade dragons from this period the sweet spot between abstraction and realism.
Case in point: this magnificent piece belonging to the British Museum:
What I love about this piece is that it's detailed enough so that its unmistakably a dragon, but not so descriptive as to be literal. The form itself is well balanced and the snarling expression on the dragon's face brings it all to life. The whole object is only 9 centimeters long!
Here are several other examples from the Smithsonian collections:
If you're interested in learning more about Chinese jades (of which dragons are just one type), I recommend the book Art in the Quest of Heaven and Truth from the National Palace Museum in Taiwan. It covers the incredible technique of jade work in a step-by-step illustration. Because nephrite and jadeite (both specific types of jade) are very hard, they could not have been carved with metal tools, but instead must be abraded using different grits of fine sand composed of harder minerals. Any object could take months or even years to complete. When smelting was developed in the Bronze Age, the process got a little easier, but not by much. Each step of cutting, shaping, drilling, and refining had to be done using crude hand tools until the development of foot-pedaled motors.
For a deep-dive, have a look at Elizabeth Childs-Johnson's research. She explores the various forms in which dragons were depicted in early Chinese decorative art. There are similarities between how dragons were depicted in jade versus bronze, but also many striking similarities.
The above is just a taste of the archaeological and technical aspects of Chinese jade dragons. There is too much to be said about the mythology of dragons in Chinese culture, so for the purpose of this post, we'll leave it at that.