A picture of a dragon

In ancient myths and legends in China and other East Asian regions, the dragon is a magical creature living in the sea. It is the leader of scale insects, the master of sex and weathering rain. It is often used to symbolize good luck.

The most basic feature of the dragon image is "nine similarities", and these nine animals are still controversial. Legend has it that it can be hidden, detailed and huge, short and long. The vernal equinox ascends to the sky, the autumnal equinox dives into the deep, and it calls for rain, and these are the images of dragons developed in the later period, which are more complicated than the original dragons.

Dong Yu, a painter in the Song Dynasty, thought that dragons "have horns like deer, heads like cattle, eyes like shrimp, mouths like donkeys, bellies like snakes, scales like fish, feet like phoenix, beards like people and ears like elephants." This statement gained more recognition in 2 1 century.

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As a totem, the dragon is different from the general totem. It is not a single animal, but a collection of many animals, which highlights the great national spirit and thought of the Chinese nation. The earliest gods in ancient mythology were not people, but animals-totems.

Primitive people can't distinguish the boundaries between human beings and animals, and think that an animal is its own ancestor and protector. This is a totem. Totem, as the ancestor and symbol of clan and tribe, is generally a single animal. When a clan and tribe have a merger war, the victors often destroy their totems after capturing each other, and the newly generated tribe still has a single totem.