The Dragon Gate

There is a Chinese legend about the The Dragon Gate located at the top of a Yellow River waterfall cascading from a legendary Longmen mountain... 

Every year many carp swim upstream against the strong river's current in an attempt to reach this waterfall and jump over it...

And the reason for that, the legend states, is that the Jade Emperor promised that those carp which could reach the Dragon Gate, and could leap over the waterfall, would turn into mighty dragons...

The transformation process is "quite dramatic". The moment the carp jumps over the gate, "clouds and rains would appear". Afterwards, "fire from the sky" would burn its tail and the carp would be transformed into a dragon...

Soooo...What does this all mean? Wanna guess? 🙂

Here's the philosophical explanation: 

The legend of the carps jumping and crossing over the Dragon Gate to transform into the dragon reminds us of the ability to resist hurdles and achieving success...

Carp is a tough fish that embodies perseverance and determination, can resist big currents in China's ancient Yellow River, swim upstream and rapidly jump above the tides "to reach the heaven", denoting great achievement in ones pursuit or high ambition...

Amazing...But what does this actually mean? What are the roots of this legend? Well, animal calendar markers of course...

Meet Asian Silver Carp...A fish native to Chinese rivers, including Yellow River, which can grow up to 140 cm in length and can weigh up to 50 kg...

This type of carp is migratory, and from April, it swims upstream, to the upper reaches of the Yellow River for spawning...Not something easily missed if you are living next to or of the river...Cause this is what silver carp spawning looks like..

I think this explains why the jumping carp are such a popular motif in Chinese art. 

But why are they linked with dragons? And clouds and rain? And fire from the sky?

Dragon is a symbol of the sun and sun's heat during the hottest time of the year, Jul/Aug...In Western Asia, North Africa, Europe, Jul/Aug is also the driest part of the year...

The time of droughts...

Which is why in these parts of the world dragons breath fire, steal water and cause droughts and death...And we have all the thunder (and rain) gods chasing them away...

But in China, the hottest part of the year is also the wettest part of the year...Here's Yellow River area climate...

Xi'an

Zhengzhou

It is much the same in other parts of China...This is due to the fact that China is in the monsoon zone...

Hence in China, the dragons are associated with rain and thunder...They are basically animal calendar markers for the peak rain and thunderstorm season...

This is the annual distribution of thunderstorms in China. From "Decreasing trend in severe weather occurrence over China during the past 50 years"

The main thunderstorm season starts at the end of April...After the silver carp start swimming upstream and jumping up the waterfalls...

Hence the magic transformation of jumping carp (Apr/May) into dragon (Jul/Aug) which involves clouds, rain and thunder...See dragon spewing water...

Neat, right?

This is not the only place where we find carp mythology...I talked about this in my posts 

Europe: "When fishes swim up Danube"

Mesopotamia: "Carp surfer", "Utu and Enki", "Adda seal", "Goat fish"

Egypt: "Holy carp"

That's it...

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...