Dragons of the World – Asia

Ages ago, I did a short post on Dragons of the World, where I whizzed around the globe, highlighting the different dragons which lived in various parts of the world. This month, I’m going to delve into more depth on the subject. Starting in my home continent of Europe, and travelling east, we shall look, in more detail, at the various kinds of dragon you can expect to find around the world.

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Lungs

Asia is famous for it’s wingless dragons, often called lungs, which are usually benevolent dragons and can fly despite their lack of wings. There are four distinct types of lung, with the variation in dragon corresponding to location of the dragon in the world, and they can be easily told apart by the number of claws on each foot.

Chinese Lung

Chinese Lungs, no surprise, live in China, although the tend to prefer the eastern and southern part rather than the colder north. You will often find them living or spending time around rivers and lake, since Chinese Lungs have long been associated with beneficial events, and there is little more beneficial to the land than a good rainfall. Because of this, they have a predominately fish diet, although sometimes small to medium sized birds are in there. Unusually, they like cooked food as well, most dragons prefer raw meat.

They are often blue to dark blue in colour, with a few reported sightings of black Lungs. They have very a great many tendrils on their heads and tails, almost feather like in appearance, and these can go yellow or even white as the Lung ages. Some people have compared the tendrils to that of a lion’s mane, it can get so bushy. A Chinese Lung has five claws on each foot.

Chinese Lungs are both clever and benevolent, and live for extraordinary amounts of time, often over a millennia. In this time, they are able to collect vast amounts of knowledge and wisdom, and this includes a fondness for languages. The average Chinese Lung is capable of speaking over a dozen languages, and although they do not live near human settlements, they are more then happy to converse with humans, as long as the human is respectful towards them.

Japanese Lung (or Ryu) 

Like Chinese Lungs, Japanese Lungs love water, but they prefer hot spots, making the many hot springs and volcanoes in Japan a favoured home for these dragons. They do not, however, have a strict fish diet, and are omnivores, taking in a vast array of food from whatever they can find, although they are very fond of fresh berries.

They are smaller than the Chinese dragon, but more varied in colour, with blues, greens, reds and golds all spotted on various Ryu. Both sexes of Ryu have a small pair of horns on top of their head, quite antler like in appearance, and females have feathered tails, whereas males are otherwise unadorned. Each foot has three claws.

Not quite as peaceful as their Chinese cousins, they will used those horns to attack those they threatened by, although more often they will just escape into the nearest steam pool. They are intelligent, but they do not share the love of languages of the Chinese and will only talk in Dragonese to other dragons. They are however, masters of writing, and some beautiful examples of dragon calligraphy can be found in shrines throughout Japan.

Korean Lung (or Yong)

Less friendly than either the Chinese or the Japanese Lungs, Korean Lungs share the love of hot water of the Japanese, and will nest in hot springs or volcanic waters. They have also been known, if they find an appropriate pool, to heat it up themselves. This also helps with hatching their eggs, since a constant temperature of just boiling water is needed to incubate them properly.

They are very narrow, but longer than the Chinese Lung, reaching up to 50 feet in length at their largest. They have four claws on each foot, and a similar head shape to the Chinese, but no spines along their back and fewer tendrils on the face. Colours for these dragons are yellows and golds in a range of shades, with white manes.

Mainly their diet consists of small mammals, such as deer found in the country. They use their long bodies to strangle and constrict the prey, before swallowing it whole, much like a snake would. It is unknown whether they can disjoint their jaws. They also seem to have a strange dance-like pattern or coiling movement that they can use on prey, which has a hypnotic effects, making it easy for them then wrap their bodies around the prey.

Tibetan Lung

Tibetan Lungs, above all else, are very shy. They are very peaceful creatures, and quite wise, and get on well with the monks that live in the mountains of Tibet. Shared meditation sessions between monks and dragons are rumoured to happen on occasion, and are said to bring the monks great enlightenment, even though the dragons never speak. It isn’t known whether this is because they can’t speak, or because they choose not to.

Despite living in snowy mountains, the Tibetan dragons have not evolved for camouflage, with bright red and orange colours predominate in their scales. They are fairly sleek dragons however, with thin bodies, short heads and necks, spines along the back and a few around the head and tail. This is probably due to the high altitude and low oxygen levels of the mountains. They have five claws on each foot, but unlike the Chinese Lung, one is positioned at the back of the foot, probably to help with climbing icy surfaces.

Their favourite food is the Yeti, which also lives in the harsh cold of the Tibetan mountains, but because of the rarity of this food source, Yak is also predominant in their diet. Primarily they use a strong bite as their main attack, and are strong enough to hold onto struggling prey as they kill it.

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And there you have the dragons of the Asian continent. Next up, Australasian dragons.

 

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