Zhulong (Torch Dragon)

Zhulong, the Torch Dragon, is a giant red dragon of ancient Chinese myth with a human face and a serpent's body, whose opening and closing eyes make day and night in a sunless land of the far north.

The Dragon That Makes Day and Night

The Torch Dragon is a cosmic being rather than a character in a story. The poem "Tianwen" ("Heavenly Questions") in the Chu ci anthology asks a famous riddle: where does the sun not reach, and how does the Torch Dragon light it? The answer is a dark land at the edge of the world, lit only by this dragon.

The Shan Hai Jing (Classic of Mountains and Seas) describes it twice. In one passage it lives on Zhangwei Mountain, beyond the Northwest Sea and north of the Red River. It has a human face, a red serpent's body, and upright eyes. When it closes its eyes the world is dark, and when it opens them it is light. It does not eat, sleep, or breathe, and it summons the wind and rain. It lights up the "Nine Darknesses," and so it is called the Torch Dragon.

Another passage calls a nearly identical god Zhuyin, "Candle of the Dark," who lives at the foot of Bell Mountain. When it looks out it is day, and when it shuts its eyes it is night. When it blows out it is winter, and when it breathes in it is summer. Its body is a thousand li long, and its breath is the wind.

Appearance and Powers

Every source agrees on a human face joined to a long red serpent's body. The Huainanzi, a Han dynasty book of cosmology, places it north of the Yanmen pass, hidden by a mountain where the sun never shines, and says it has a human face, a dragon's body, and no feet. Its powers are on the scale of the universe: light and darkness, the seasons, and the weather all follow its eyes and breath.

Origins and Meaning

Zhulong may preserve a very old idea of a god of the northern sky or of light itself. Some modern writers have suggested it was inspired by the northern lights, or by a myth of the sun's path through the underworld. These are modern theories, and the ancient texts do not explain the creature's origin.

Legacy

The Torch Dragon is one of the oldest examples anywhere of a dragon as a force of creation rather than a monster to be slain. It appears in modern Chinese fantasy novels, art, and games, often as a primeval dragon god. See also our dragon species page.

Related

• Yinglong: Yinglong is the winged dragon of ancient Chinese myth, a rain-bringing servant of the Yellow Emperor who killed the rebel Chiyou and, in other accounts, used its tail to help Yu the Great channel the Great Flood.
• Lóng (Chinese dragon): The lóng is the Chinese dragon: a long, scaly, usually wingless creature with four clawed legs that rules rain, rivers, and seas and became the emblem of the emperor and of Chinese culture.
• Bashe: The Bashe is a gigantic serpent of ancient Chinese myth that swallowed whole elephants and spat out their bones after three years, until the archer Yi slew it at Dongting Lake.
• Shesha: Shesha is the thousand-headed serpent king of Hindu myth who floats on the cosmic ocean as the couch of the god Vishnu and holds up the earth on his hoods; his other name, Ananta, means "endless."
• Dragon Species
• Chinese Dragons

Sources and Further Reading

• Anne Birrell, trans., The Classic of Mountains and Seas (Penguin Classics, 1999)
• David Hawkes, trans., The Songs of the South: An Ancient Chinese Anthology of Poems by Qu Yuan and Other Poets (Penguin Classics, 1985)
• John S. Major, Sarah A. Queen, Andrew Seth Meyer, and Harold D. Roth, trans., The Huainanzi (Columbia University Press, 2010)
• Anne Birrell, Chinese Mythology: An Introduction (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993)

Cite this entry: “Zhulong (Torch Dragon),” Draconika Encyclopedia of Dragons, https://www.draconika.com/dragons/zhulong.