DANCING DRAGONS

… not faith by fable lives,
But from the faith the fable springs

Robert Penn Warren: Love’s Voice

The Rabbit, perched on the Dragon’s ophidian neck and hanging tightly onto his bovine ears, was tired from the long flight through clouds and ice and rain, but his eyes were bright with excitement. In the grey chill of a mid February Mancunian morning they had at last come to the end of their journey. “What, Jitù, in the Name of the Nine Emperors are we doing here?” demanded the Dragon. “Come to see the Dancing Dragons, Yinglóng.” replied the Rabbit.” You didn’t have to come, although I am very grateful for the ride.” he added hastily. “Let’s wait over there.” he said and pointed to the corner of the square in which they had landed. “None of them can see us, but we shall have a wonderful view of them. Don’t you find all this very exciting?”
        
“No; I find it all rather depressing. In the real world we don’t actually exist, you and I. Doesn’t it worry you that we are merely part of a myth, a corporate figment, a story men tell sitting around the fireside.” He laid his camel shaped head on his ten great claws and sighed. “We seem to me to be merely their make-believe answer to unanswerable questions. Men are rational beings who live as best they can, and then they die. They come from nowhere, and they become nothing. I have never quite understood why they are so enthralled to these stories. Do we honestly make any essential or substantial difference to their lives?”
        
As was his wont when thinking, the Rabbit slowly scratched the back of his right ear, leaving his left ear stuck up in the air like some eccentric furry flag pole. “I think,” he said quietly, “that without that storytelling, the New Year for the folk in every China Town would be a sad festival. For them you are their symbol of a kindly power, of wisdom and strength. You are their model of excellence and success. When the people in the streets see your effigy they remember that there is an eternal force that keeps them safe from danger. They cannot see that strength, they do not hear it call, they can neither touch it nor taste it, but in the pantomime of the dance the spirit of the dragon brings them hope, and that is a most precious gift.”
        
The noise around them swelled into an approaching crescendo of gongs and cymbals, firecrackers and drums. Round the corner into the square where the Dragon and the Rabbit stood came a crowd of excited laughing people following the dancing dragon - twenty joyous undulating metres of yellow and orange shimmering silken scales, and a vast horned mask of red and green and gold, its cavernous mouth stretching after the great scarlet pearl of wisdom carried on a long pole before it.
        
“Oh, Gold Moon-Rabbit,” sighed the Dragon, “do you really believe in all this? “ “Yes, I think I do” answered the Rabbit slowly. “I believe in that power of which all this hope and joy is a dancing shadow on a wall. Today, Old Dragon, we are a piece of that shadow, and it points us all to the stars."

Naomi