Chinese Dragons
In the Western bestiary the dragon is the thing the knight kills. In China it is the opposite animal: it brings the rain, it keeps the rivers, it stands for the emperor, and meeting one is luck rather than danger. Xiang Li has painted it both ways it is usually painted — as a creature, in ink and silk, and as a history, one form for each era that shaped it.
- Paintings
- 5
- Eras drawn
- 9
- Years of the dragon
- 5,000+
- Next dragon year
- 2036
Dragon and Fire
Almost everything in these paintings is ink — the ground a warm, dusty wash, the body built from thousands of separate scales, the whiskers and the mane left as bare silk. Color arrives in one place only, and it is fire.
That restraint is a Forbidden City habit. Xiang Li spent thirty-seven years restoring imperial painting in Beijing, where a dragon is a formal subject with rules — the way the body coils, how the claws are counted, what the creature is allowed to hold. These are those rules, painted loose.
The paintings
Five dragons on silk. Watercolor and ink, tall format, each one a single creature filling the whole sheet — a dragon is not a thing to be shown small.
Dragon and Fire
The only one that burns. Gray-blue scales, an open jaw, and cinnabar flames breaking off the mane in three places. Signed and sealed in the lower right.
Dragon and Cloud
A single great spiral of cloud fills the top of the silk and the dragon comes up out of the water beneath it. The cloud is the weather the dragon is bringing.
Magic Dragon
Head turned up and back over rocks and breaking surf, the body disappearing into cloud behind it. The dragon at the moment it leaves the sea.
Facing Dragon untitled
The frontal dragon of the court robe: antlers spread wide, the face straight at you, the body knotting away below. This is the pose an emperor wore on his chest.
Coiled Dragon untitled
The whole animal in one S-curve, drawn in the round from the tail forward — closest of the five to the dragon as the Song ink painters left it.
Two of the five are listed here under descriptive titles rather than the artist's own; the Dropbox files are untitled. Fei to confirm the names, and the dates and sizes, before launch.
九似
How to read a Chinese dragon
The Chinese dragon is a composite, and it has been described the same way for something like a thousand years: nine resemblances, nine animals it borrows a part from. A Song-era catalogue of natural things gives the list, and painters have worked from it ever since.
It is worth knowing before you look at the paintings on this page, because Xiang Li paints to it. The stag's horns, the camel's head, the hare's eye and the carp's scales are all in there, and once you can name them the creature stops being a shape and starts being an assembly.
- 角似鹿
- Horns of a stag
- 头似驼
- Head of a camel
- 眼似兔
- Eyes of a hare
- 项似蛇
- Neck of a snake
- 腹似蜃
- Belly of a great clam
- 鳞似鱼
- Scales of a carp
- 爪似鹰
- Claws of an eagle
- 掌似虎
- Paws of a tiger
- 耳似牛
- Ears of an ox
Count the claws
Five claws were the emperor's, and for most of the Ming and Qing wearing them without rank was an offense. Princes and high nobles took four; three is the dragon of everyone else, and of most of the porcelain that left China by sea.
The pearl
The flaming pearl the dragon chases or holds is the one prop it is never without — read as thunder, as the moon, as wisdom, depending on who is telling it. When two dragons face each other, the pearl goes between them.
Dragon and phoenix
Paired, the dragon is the emperor and the phoenix the empress: 龍鳳呈祥, dragon and phoenix bringing good fortune. It is why the dragon keeps turning up in a collection of paintings about women — on the robes, the thrones and the screens behind them.
The dragon through the dynasties
The dragon we draw now is an assembly of five thousand years of other dragons: a coiled jade with no legs, a band of bronze ornament, a lacquer ribbon, and then, slowly, an animal. Xiang Li painted one for each era, oldest first, for the Year of the Dragon in 2024.
Free, for teachers and anyone else — all nine plates on one sheet.
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7000 – 2000 BC
Neolithic 新石器时代
A single coiled C cut in jade — the snouted, legless dragon of the Hongshan people, and the oldest dragon anyone has dug up.
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1046 – 771 BC
Western Zhou 西周
A ribbon of an animal, hooked at the jaw: the shape a bronze caster could repeat all the way round a vessel.
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770 – 221 BC
Spring & Autumn · Warring States 春秋战国时期
Lacquer red and black, the body interlacing with itself across coffins, drums and silk.
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206 BC – 220 AD
Han 汉代
Whiskered, long and in flight. The Han dragon is the first that clearly moves.
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618 – 907
Tang 唐代
Two dragons in cinnabar, muscular and full-bodied, chasing each other the way they chase round the back of a Tang mirror.
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960 – 1279
Song 宋代
Ink takes it over. The dragon stops being ornament and becomes a subject for painters — cloud, storm and monochrome.
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1271 – 1368
Yuan 元代
The thin, three-clawed dragon of blue-and-white porcelain, drawn to run round a jar.
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1368 – 1644
Ming 明代
Color, cloud and fire, and the imperial dragon fixed by law: five claws, frontal face, on the robe and on the roof.
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1644 – 1912
Qing 清代
The last imperial dragon — on the court robe among the twelve symbols, and by 1862 on the national flag itself.
These nine were made as a classroom handout, which is why each carries its own title card. Cleaner exports without the lettering would let the page set that type itself — worth asking Fei for.
Dragons elsewhere in the work
On the empresses' robes
Two thousand years of court dress, painted from the record — which means dragons, in every dynasty, on collars, sleeves, thrones and screens.
The zodiac dragon
The only mythical animal in the twelve-year cycle, painted with its name in oracle-bone script. 2024 was its year; 2036 is the next.
Panda and Dragon
The black-and-white painting that pairs the country's living emblem with its imaginary one — one of the most reproduced pictures she has made.
Questions
Are Chinese dragons dangerous?
No — and that is the whole difference. The Chinese dragon is a water spirit: it brings rain, it keeps the rivers and the sea, and it is one of the four benevolent creatures. There is no tradition of killing it. Meeting one is luck.
Why do some dragons have five claws and some three?
Rank. Under the Ming and the Qing the five-clawed dragon belonged to the emperor and using it without the right was punishable; four claws went to princes and senior nobles, and three claws is the dragon of everyone else — including most of the porcelain that was made for export.
When is the next Year of the Dragon?
2036. The last one was 2024, which is when these nine dynasty plates and the free handout were made. A zodiac year starts at Lunar New Year, not on 1 January.
Can I buy a dragon painting?
The originals are sold privately, to collectors and to institutions — write to the studio if you want to be told about one. The scarves and prints on this page ship from the shop.
Take a dragon home
Canvas prints, scarves, puzzles and more — from $14.
Two full-color hardcovers — 217 empresses, 413 painted characters.
Questions? Write to xiangliart@gmail.com