Welcome to Sunday All Day Brunch. This is an open topic thread so grab your favorite drink and one of those Spicy Cranberry Rolls I just made and sit down and relax and tell us what is new in your life. Tomorrow is the start of Chinese New Years and this is the Year of the Dragon so I thought we could talk a little about dragons.
As many of you know I am an artist as well as a fantasy writer. Dragons have always fascinated me. I have always found it interesting that in Western writing dragons are traditionally the villains of the piece. In China however dragons are good. They are protectors. I believe that this may be do to the fact that dragons are serpentine in shape and the ancient belief that a serpent tempted Eve in the Bible makes them suspicious characters. The Chinese didn’t have this hang-up.
I love the shape of the Eastern dragons. For the most part they don’t have wings. I have done many dragon pictures to illustrate my writings. In my first series I have a lot of dragons and one of the main magical creatures are the dragons along with unicorns and elves. My lead dragon is Master Khigh named after the late actor Khigh Dheigh. He is best known for playing Wo Fat on Hawaii 5-O. In real life he was a Taoist priest and an often times lecturer on the I Ching. I have his book The Eleventh Wing.
My grandnephew Tristen loves dragons. He is an Asperger’s child and he and I have a real close bond. He became very excited when I told him about my new book with the Princess Jade and her guardian dragon. It was at his request that I brought in the element of Chinese mythology of the dragon king’s daughter into the stories.
So what can we expect during the Year of the Dragon? Some expect that it will be a year of courage, prosperity, love and cooperation. With such a rosy expectations, the end of the world is likely not going to occur this year. One of the biggest and in my humble opinion being from there the best Chinese New Year’s celebration will be in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Even if you can’t be in a Chinatown to celebrate you can still have a good time. There is a wonderful diary at Daily Kos on the Chinese New Year. I’ll be putting up some Asian inspired recipes on my Monday Breaking Bread diary.
You can find some information on the Chinese Zodiac on my website. I also have some more Chinese New Year’s pictures. Here are a couple of Tristen’s favorite pictures with Western and Eastern dragons.