Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dinosaur?
by Don Batten
The entry in A Chinese-English Dictionary (published in China in 1979)
for dragon gives the meanings as:
- dragon
- imperial (as in imperial robe)
- a huge extinct reptile: dinosaur
- a surname.
Clearly, the dictionary recognizes that dragons were real animals and the language
also connects dinosaurs to them. Indeed, the characters rendering ‘dinosaur'
in a paleontology context, (‘konglong'), literally mean ‘fearsome dragon'—remember
that the English word ‘dinosaur' was not invented until 1841.
Image from <www.geocities.com/ bernardburn>
The traditional (complex) way of writing ‘dragon’. Chinese people see
the right part as reflecting the spiny back and tail of the dragon.
Also, there are many sayings in Chinese that connect dragons with still-living animals,
such as tigers. For example:
- ‘like a coiling dragon and crouching tiger’—meaning a forbidding
strategic point. A variation on this saying inspired the title of the recent award-winning
Chinese movie, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, meaning a benign looking
place with powerful hidden forces.
- ‘dragon’s pool and tiger’s den’—meaning a dangerous
place.
- ‘dragons rising and tigers leaping’—meaning a scene of bustling
activity.
Furthermore, of the twelve symbols used in the Chinese lunar calendar cycle, eleven
are real animals (pig, rat, rabbit, tiger, etc.), suggesting that the remaining
one, the dragon, is equally real.
The above evidence is consistent with identifying dinosaurs with the dragons of
Chinese history as real animals that have lived not too long ago. This contradicts
the whole idea of an ‘age of dinosaurs’ millions of years before people
existed, and further supports the Biblical account of the real history of the world.
Related articles
(Also available in
Vietnamese)
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