2012—the Year of Dragon

Based on the theory of Chinese astrology, the year of 2012 is a year of water dragon.  It began on January 23, 2012 and will end on February 9, 2013. Among the Five Elements, the color of water is black. So the water dragon is also called as Black dragon. A black dragon can dive deeply into the ocean or lake to hide and wait. Your mind will be filled with all kinds of horrific, cunning, and mystery ideas when you think about it. So it is said that something unexpected may happen in this year. For someone it will be a big successful year, while for some others may be a very bad year.

Chinese people love dragon, because dragon is the symbol of being powerful, intelligent, and noble. Dragon patterns are used to decorate the emperor’s clothing, baby is named as Long (龙(lóng), the Chinese character for dragon) if the baby is a boy. Such as, the Chinese name of the famous action movie star Bruce Lee is 李(lǐ)小(xiǎo)龙(lóng); and Jackie Chan’s Chinese name is 成(chéng)龙(lóng).

There are 12 animal icons in Chinese zodiac; dragon is the only one being alive in human’s imagination. Dragons can swim in the water, crawl on the land, and fly in the sky.  Some dragons are the kings in the sky or under the deep ocean. Some fall down to the ground and become snakes. That is why snake is just behind dragon in the sequence of the 12 zodiac icons.  Since most of the time the dragons fly in the clouds or swim in the wave, nobody can really see them very well. A person whose zodiac symbol is dragon will be considered as very independent and hard to understand or the “deep one”.
The following video shows you how to write this dragon in Chinese.