This week Chinese people all over the world welcome the upcoming Year of the Dragon. Unlike the fire-breathing monster in European mythology, the dragon in China is a good luck charm.
Dragon is a symbol of power, righteousness and prosperity. The Chinese emperor was sitting on the “Dragon Throne”. Of all the twelve zodiac animals, the dragon stands out particularly. It is not only the animal, but a miraculous being.
Chinese couples like to get married in the Dragon year and wish to have a child in the same year. Blessed by the luck dragon, children are confident, courageous, passionate and willing to take risks. “We Chinese people love the dragon,” says the 31-year-old Zhang Li, who wants to get married on New Year’s week. “We admire dragon. It stands for the strength of a great empire. Only the emperor could have symbols of dragon on his clothes.”
In the year of the dragon spirit of optimism prevails. “Change is the key for 2012,” says the Hong Kong fortuneteller Li Juming. “The Chinese say that things change whenever they meet the dragon.” The ascent and descent of the stock markets will continue, but in the global economic crisis, dragon promises new confidence of strong leadership. “The dragon year is important for a healthy and harmonious decade,” says Li Juming. “It is the year in which everything turns for the better.”
Promising combination soothsayer says it is the time of the dragon with the gentle water element, which occurs only every 60 years. The water will keep the stock markets, while the river is supposed to calm the dragon though. The water dragon is considered sympathetically, diplomatically, intelligently and wisely. Water nourishes the nature, makes trees grow. And the wood give the dragon very lucky element.
So shall the water dragon year flow the ideas , and grow the creative flourish economy, like horoscopes would have told us. A famous dragon son Deng Xiaoping, led China, now second largest economy in the world, to prosperity. He had guided over one billion people on the path of economic reform and market opening.
Often dragon years have also seen great upheavals. Chinese remember especially in 1976 when the Cultural Revolution came to an end. Followed the death of Mao Zedong, who had led the country with his campaign again and again into chaos. The same year highly esteemed Prime Minister Zhou Enlai also died. And more than 240 000 people were killed by the earthquake in Tangshan, near Beijing.
In 1988, the following dragon was brewing in China together with great anger over corruption and inflation, escalated in the following spring in the democracy movement. Whether disasters or riots on the one hand, progress, or start on the other side – fortune tellers definitely see a lot of energy, passion and ambition in the Dragon year. According to the traditional lunar calendar the new year starts early this time on 23 January and ends on 9 February 2013.