1 post tagged “dragon”

A dignified man in a black tang zhuang and a Fu Manchu greets us in Inner Mongolia.  His placid smile rests gently atop a rotund and generous tummy, reminding me vaguely of Buddha.  Dr. Rose shakes his hand vigorously and introduces me.

“This is Mr. Lin, my assistant.”

To me, an “assistant” has always been the little hunchbacked fellow who fetches the mummified brain for the mad scientist.  This role, the role of useless appendage, is new to me.  No one attends a meeting or an event at MoogleTech unless they are going to be of mild utility.

I utter salutary terms of total inconsequence and he nods at me benevolently.  The urge to rub his holiness’ bountiful belly is quite compelling.  I muster my extensive reserves of discipline and perish the thought.

His right hand clamps down on my shoulder.

“Son, are you ready to see China’s first dragon?” he huffs in a heavy Northern accent.

Hmm.  That could be a good pick-up line.

He hands me a pamphlet.  China’s first dragon is the prize discovery of the archeological dig in Chifeng.  It’s a polished jade crescent with an unmistakable head and tail.  When they found it, the sands of time had already shattered it into hundreds of tiny pieces.  Thank God I wasn’t the dig director; I can picture it now:

“What’s that Beverly?  There’s chipped ROCK, you say?  In the dirt?! My stars, call the mayor, there is ROCK buried in the DIRT!  No, it doesn’t look like a dragon to me.  You’re fired.”

The reassembled dragon peers back at me from the pamphlet.  It hails from the oldest village in all of China.  I imagine the journey it made through time, a simple token connecting me with a villager from the ancient past.  How grand!

At the same time, it’s not exactly an artistic miracle.  Maybe it was made by the villages idiot.  I wonder if I bury the clay figures I made in Kindergarten, whether they too will be on the cover of a pamphlet several thousand years from now.  Maybe the pamphlet will be in an alien language.  The Martians might think the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were our revered ancestors.