.png)
The local people covered it with a mat. The government sent people to hold a worship ceremony at the site. However, after a night of severe thunderstorms, the dragon disappeared. Only a ditch remained where it had been.
The History for the Yongping Regional Government recorded that, in the summer of the 19th year of Emperor Daoguang’s rule (1839), a dragon fell from the sky along the lower reaches of the Luanhe River in Laoting County. The dragon lay inert, covered by flies and maggots. Local people made a shelter for it to protect it from the direct sunlight, and they also drizzled cold water on its body. Three days later, after a night of thunderstorms, the dragon left.
Modern sightings
Several events in the past century were also thought to be sightings of dragons.
In August 1944, hundreds of people from Chenjiayuanzi Village in Fuyu County, south of the Songhuajiang River, surrounded a black animal by the riverbank. Yen Dianyuan, an eyewitness, said that the animal was about 7 meters long and looked like a lizard. Its face was almost the same as that of the dragons in classical paintings, with seven or eight thick hard whiskers. The upper body was over one-third meter in diameter. Its four paws went deep into the sand. Crocodile-like scales covered its whole body.
In the summer of 1953, an unidentified animal fell down from the sky in a place south of Henan Province. According to the description by some of the witnesses, the animal looked like a huge shark. The odor of decay attracted countless flies. If it was a shark, it should live in the deep sea. Why did it fall down from the sky? This case might be related to the historical accounts of dragons dropping from the sky.
On Aug. 4, 2000, there was a downpour over Heishanzi Village in China, and afterward the village was covered by a layer of hot steam. All of a sudden, thick clouds came down from the sky and rolled along above the ground. The people in the village were so scared, for they had never seen this kind of weather before. They stayed inside with all the doors and windows shut.
A young man went outside to see what was going on. Soon he was outside his village, and suddenly he was stunned by the sight of two dragon-like animals, one black and one white, lying on the ground in front of him. He saw that the horns, scales, paws, and tails of the animals were exactly the same as those from the traditional dragon paintings except that their whiskers were shorter. He turned around and ran toward the village as fast as he could, shouting, “Come see the dragons; come see the dragons that have fallen from the sky!”
The news quickly spread through the entire region. Police, government officials, and scholars went to Heishanzi Village to investigate. Police officers dispersed the crowd and left several people assigned to guard the animals.
Later, a gust of wind made the dark clouds roll up and down. When it passed, the white animal had disappeared from under the watchful eyes of the guards. The officials were unable to explain the disappearance, and they were equally frustrated about the black one still on the ground.
A farmer said, “I heard that something like this happened several years ago, and people poured water on the dragons to make them return home.” He asked a few young villagers to fetch several mats and they erected a shelter for the animal. They then hauled water in wheelbarrows to the site and sprayed it on the mats so that the water could drip down on the animal from the mats. As of December 2000, the animal was still alive.
As the sky was getting dark in the evening at 6:10 p.m. on Sept. 18, 2000, in Wusong City, Jilin Province, a beam of unusual light shot from the northwest sky above the city, and it soon became brighter and multicolored. Then, a dragon-like creature appeared. Its mouth, whiskers, paws, and scales could all be seen clearly. The dragon was visible for more than 20 minutes. The bright light eventually dimmed to dark red before it slowly disappeared.
Are dragons merely imagination in the realm of spirituality, or do they have physical existence? It is a mystery to us today.
