The small coastal county of Yuyao (in Zhejiang, East China), famous for its many top-ranked scholars, was in September 1690 (the eighth month of the twenty-ninth year of the Kangxi era) overrun by a great number of the above mythological creatures, who brought a great flood in their wake.

This incident, recorded in different local histories from the following years, was larger in scale than most others, but still the appearance of dragons, flood dragons and their likes was a common phenomenon in Late Imperial China (c. 14th–19th century). They were most typically related to various calamities (most often water-related, such as flash floods, but not always), and were most prominent in the stormier coastal areas.  

This paper examines the role of these mythological creatures in a selection of Chinese records of calamities and strange phenomena from coastal and inland China, focusing on the period 1600–1700. Such records are found prominently in lists of “omens” (weather events and other unusual happenings) in the local gazetteers (fangzhi) produced for the various administrative units of the country, as well as in diaries, histories and other writings.

Which roles were ascribed to mythological creatures in bringing calamities? To which extent were they descriptions of calamities, and how literally did people believe in them? And which developments do we see over time and between different localities? Through this research, I hope to gain a better understanding of not only the role of divine animals in Early Modern China, but also of how people conceptualised weather events. 

***

Erling Agøy holds a Ph.D. in Chinese studies from the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental languages at the University of Oslo, where he is currently employed as a lecturer teaching Classical Chinese and environmental history in China. After graduation, he has worked as a Junior Research Fellow at the IKGF, University of Erlangen–Nuremberg, and plans to take up a position as visiting fellow at the Needham Research Institute for East Asian history of science this autumn. His research interests encompass various topics related to Late Imperial China and Chinese environmental history, including especially historical perceptions of climate and climate events, with a focus on the 17th and 18th centuries.