Dragons in the street

Dear Gentle Reader,

Chinese New Year, and the Spring Festival, ended over a week ago.

It has taken me this long to find the courage to relate what I saw that night.

Brace yourself for panic; see that picture?

Feel the fear of the people being swept up in the sinuous curves of a dragon who will swiftly collapse their bodies and consume their souls...

You see, Chinese dragons come out to play on Chinese New Year.

Some people are birders. Oh, to belong to such a safe group (unless you are seeking the roc, like that heroic twitcher, Sinbad, who went to tick the roc off his list (the roc was the original mega-bird) but was picked off, himself, instead. Sinbad's story has been tragically misunderstood, but I digress.)

Your humble scribe observes dragons in their natural environment, the crowded streets of Hong Kong.

I kept myself a few floors above the head of the great beast.

Here you can see its glowing eyes and horns...

Yes, I know it is a bit shaky.

I was twitching, in terror.

Dragons, after all, are avaricious, pernicious, cunning, and vastly powerful.

Venom pumps through their arteries; deceit curdles in their veins.

I had long been told, and read repeated warnings in ancient tomes, to never look a dragon in the eye(s) (Cf. The Hobbit, for example).

See how those eyes glow? Those are not eyes I would willingly look into.

No wonder they can see right through a man, and gaze clean into his soul... They must have x-ray eyes or something. Maybe meta-ray eyes? Whatever.

This dragon, fortuitously, did not fly, at least not high.

It had corralled menfolk on the street, and was spinning round and round them, mesmermising them.

It was playing with them, as a cat plays with a butterfly or a songbird.

As you can see, this dragon not only went around these men and women in circles, he (she? I was not about to check, would you?) also spins above citizen's frightened heads and even below their terrified feet as they jump to get away.

The proof is in that photo.

The concierge in my building tried to calm me down, the next day, by telling me that these were not unwilling victims who were simply corralled by the dragon.

The concierge told me that members of some Chinese social groups, fraternal societies similar to the Freemasons or the Rosicrucians or the Elks, actually train to dance with the dragons.

Or something like that.

This might be true, I cannot say for sure.

I suppose this could be an über-dangerous version of running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain...

But, then the concierge started to tell me that nobody was injured, and that this was all for fun. Hah!

I know what I saw.

I saw death, destruction, and despair as the bodies were swept up in the beast's ferocious coils.

That was the dragon's dance.

And he only left when the lion's came to rescue everyone, but that is for another post.

I am too shattered, just recalling that night.

Welcome to my town, your scribe sardonically mutters, as he backs into his apartment building, looking carefully around him...

Tschuess,

Chris, Regina, and a frantic Pommes wondering who will remove shed fur, fill up the water tank, and provide treats and eats if the scribe is eaten by a dragon