When China hosted the 2008 Beijing Olympics, it deliberately left the dragon out of its mascots, worried that Western audiences would read it as a symbol of aggression. This episode reframes the Chinese dragon from the ground up: its composite anatomy of nine animal resemblances, its 117 scales divided into yang and yin, the Neolithic jade pig dragons of the Hongshan culture, and the chi mu, the mystical lump on its head that lets a wingless creature fly.

It then follows the dragon's transformation into a water and weather deity through the four Dragon Kings, its adoption by emperors who claimed draconic bloodlines, and the deadly claw hierarchy that made a five-clawed dragon high treason for anyone but the emperor. After the fall of the dynasties, the symbol flowed back to the people through the nine sons of the dragon, the zodiac, dragon  ...