The Nine Interspecies Children of the Chinese Dragon
Did you know that the Chinese dragon can mate with any animal and produce viable offspring? I believe this is due to the fact that the dragon itself is an amalgamation of different animals to begin with.
In my recent interview on Substack comparing East vs West perspectives on dragons and snakes, I mentioned how the Chinese dragon came about as a symbolic representation of the merging of prehistoric tribes. Each tribe was represented by a specific animal on totems. Over time, the snake tribe gained dominance. When other tribes joined them to form one nation, each of their representative totem animals was added onto the snake, thus forming the Chinese dragon that we know today. (At least that’s the current dominant hypothesis.)
That same interview ended on a discussion of how different cultural perspectives shape people’s view of what freedom represents. You can check it out here.
Back to the dragon’s nine children. The Chinese saying goes: “龙有九子”, or “the dragon has nine sons.”
He actually has a lot more than nine sons. Nine was just used in ancient times to mean many. But then in the Ming dynasty, scholars added their version of who those nine interspecies sons were, and that list became the definitive answer. Multiple versions actually came out in the Ming Dynasty. The version I chose is from the more popular《怀麓堂集》written by 李东阳.
Other famous interspecies children of the dragon include 麒麟 Qílín (or Kirin in Japanese) which is another child he had with a cow. There’s also the elephant, which is dragon x pig.
As for the nine listed sons of the dragon, they each serve a purpose in society and can be found throughout Chinese cultural artifacts and traditional architecture. Each of their backstories are facinating, some tragic.
The first installation of this series includes the first three sons:
– dragon x cow
– dragon x wolf
– dragon x lynx
You can find the full article on my Substack newsletter:
The Interspecies Progeny of the Chinese Dragon (Part 1/3)
