Why should the dragon be regarded as a symbol of the Chinese nation?

The legendary dragon has four legs of an animal. It is the body of a snake, the horn of a deer, the claws of a dog, the scales and whiskers of a fish. It can run on land, swim in the sea and fly in the sky. Visible in ancient stone carvings and brick paintings. The most famous is the stained glass "Nine Dragon Wall" in Beijing Beihai Park, which can be said to perfect the image of the dragon. However, the earliest prototype of the dragon was just a very common snake totem.

What is a totem? Tracing back to the end of primitive society 5,000 years ago, totem was a "sacred object" worshipped by many clans in China at that time. Many tribes use animal portraits as symbols of their tribes. Some draw cows, some snakes, some tigers and some eagles. They regard these animals as "sacred objects" and think that they are the protectors of their ancestors. The unique symbol of this clan is totem. Later, years of war broke out between clans. When the powerful clan annexed the weak clan, the former took the totem of the latter as its own, and added the most powerful characteristics of animals to its own totem. The totem of the Xia clan, the ancestor of the Chinese nation, is said to be a big snake with long horns. Because in people's minds at that time, the creators of human beings were Fuxi and Nu Wa, two "gods" with heads and snakes. People regard their own image as the totem of their clan, in order to thank the "gods" for their statements and protection to mankind. The increasingly powerful Xia clan added many totem of obedient clan to its own snake totem. Over time, it became a grotesque totem, and people named it "dragon". Later, through the imagination and processing of artists of all ages, the shapes became more and more perfect and gradually unified. It was not until the Song Dynasty that the dragon and the "Nine Dragons Wall" seen from the stone statues were basically completed.

In ancient people's minds, the dragon is an aura mascot, which has attracted wide attention from emperors and generals to the people. Later feudal emperors regarded it as a symbol of imperial power, pretending to be the "real dragon emperor", embroidering dragons on their dresses, calling their daily life "Long Ting", calling their descendants "dragon species" "dragon position" and so on.

However, as a concept and ideology of the Chinese nation, the image of the dragon is popular, and it has penetrated into the hearts of every Chinese descendant. From the national tradition, every year on the second day of the second lunar month, there is a folk festival to commemorate the "Dragon Head Up". Dragon lantern dance during the Spring Festival. These national spirits and traditions, which condensed the thoughts, feelings, beliefs and expectations of the descendants of the dragon, became stronger and stronger, and finally condensed into the belief of * * *, making the dragon worshipped by the primitive clan a symbol of China.