The Dragon-Princess

In the Sea of Dungting there is a hill, and in the hill there is a hole so deep that it has no bottom.

A fisherman passing by once slipped and fell into it. He found himself in a country of winding paths that led over hills and through valleys for several miles, until at last he came to a dragon castle standing on a wide plain. Green slime grew there up to his knees. He went to the castle gate, which was guarded by a dragon spraying water in a fine mist. Inside the gate lay a small hornless dragon that raised its head, bared its claws, and would not let him pass.

The fisherman stayed in the cave for several days, living on the green slime, which turned out to be edible and tasted like rice porridge. Finally he found his way out. He told the district magistrate what had happened, the magistrate reported it to the emperor, and the emperor summoned a wise man to explain it.

“There are four paths in that cave,” said the wise man. “One leads to the south-west shore of the Sea of Dungting, one to a valley in the land of the four rivers, one to a cave on Lo-Fu Mountain, and one to an island in the Eastern Sea. In the cave lives the seventh daughter of the Dragon-King of the Eastern Sea, who guards her father’s pearls and treasure. Long ago a fisherboy dived into the water and brought up a pearl from beneath the chin of a black dragon. The dragon was asleep, which is why the boy came back unharmed. The dragon-princess guards thousands upon millions of such jewels, with thousands of small dragons serving as her watchmen. Dragons shy away from wax, but they love fine jade, and kung-tsing, the hollow-green wood, and they like to eat swallows. If someone carried a letter to her, it might be possible to get precious pearls.”

The emperor was delighted and offered a large reward to anyone able to go to the dragon castle as his messenger.

The first to volunteer was a man named So Pi-Lo. But the wise man said, “Your great-great-great-great-grandfather killed more than a hundred dragons of the Eastern Sea before the dragons finally killed him. They are your family’s enemies. You cannot go.”

Next came Lo-Dsi-Tschun from Canton with his two brothers. Their ancestors, they said, had been related to the Dragon-King, so the dragons knew and liked them. They begged to carry the message.

“Do you still have the stone that makes dragons obey?” asked the wise man. They said they had brought it. He examined it. “This stone only works on the dragons that make clouds and send rain. It is no use with the dragons that guard the sea-king’s pearls. Do you have dragon-brain vapor?” They did not. “Then how will you make the dragons hand over their treasure?”

“What shall we do?” asked the emperor.

“Foreign merchants on the Western Ocean trade in dragon-brain vapor,” said the wise man. “Someone must go and get it from them. I also know a holy man skilled in taming dragons who has prepared ten pounds of dragon-stone. Someone should be sent for that too.”

The emperor sent out messengers. They met one of the holy man’s disciples and got two pieces of dragon-stone from him. “That is just what we need,” said the wise man. Several months later a pill of dragon-brain vapor was obtained as well. The emperor, much pleased, had his jewelers carve two little boxes of the finest jade, polished with the ash of the Wutung tree. He had an essence made from the best hollow-green wood, bound with sea-fish glue and hardened in the fire, and from it two vases were made. Then the messengers’ bodies and clothes were rubbed with tree wax, and they were given five hundred roasted swallows to take along.

They went into the cave. When they reached the dragon castle, the little gate dragon smelled the wax, crouched down, and did not hurt them. They gave it a hundred roasted swallows as a bribe to announce them to the Dragon-King’s daughter. Brought before her, they presented the jade boxes, the vases, and the other four hundred swallows, and she received them graciously. They unrolled the emperor’s letter.

In the castle there was a dragon more than a thousand years old who could take human form and understood human speech. Through him the princess learned that the emperor had sent her these gifts, and she sent back three great pearls, seven smaller ones, and a whole bushel of ordinary pearls. The messengers said farewell, rode off on a dragon’s back, and in a moment were on the banks of the Yangtze-kiang. From there they went on to Nanking, the imperial capital, and handed over the treasure.

The emperor showed the pearls to the wise man. “Of the three great pearls,” he said, “one is a divine wishing-pearl of the third class, and two are black dragon-pearls of middle quality. Of the seven smaller ones, two are serpent-pearls and five are mussel-pearls. The rest are partly sea-crane pearls and partly snail and oyster pearls. They are not as valuable as the great ones, yet few on earth can match them.”

The emperor showed them to his courtiers too, but they thought the wise man was just talking and did not believe him. So the wise man explained: “The light of a first-class wishing-pearl can be seen for forty miles, a second-class one for twenty, and a third-class one for ten. Within its light, no wind or rain, thunder or lightning, water, fire, or weapon can reach. Black dragon-pearls have nine colors and glow at night; inside their light, the poison of snakes and worms is harmless. Serpent-pearls have seven colors and mussel-pearls five, and both shine at night. The fewer spots, the better. They grow inside the mussel, and swell and shrink as the moon waxes and wanes.”

Someone asked how a serpent-pearl could be told from a sea-crane pearl. “The animals themselves know,” said the wise man.

So the emperor picked out one serpent-pearl and one sea-crane pearl, mixed them with a whole bushel of ordinary pearls, and had the lot poured out in the courtyard. Then a big yellow snake and a black crane were brought in and set among them. At once the crane picked up the sea-crane pearl in its beak and began to dance and sing and flap about, while the snake grabbed the serpent-pearl and wound itself around it in many coils. When the courtiers saw this they admitted the wise man was right, and the pearls’ light, large and small, turned out to reach exactly as far as he had said.

In the dragon castle the messengers had eaten delicate food that tasted of flowers, herbs, ointment, and sugar, and they had brought some back to the capital. But in the open air it had turned hard as stone. The emperor ordered the pieces kept in the treasury. He gave the three brothers high rank and titles and a thousand rolls of fine silk each. He also had it looked into why the dragons had not destroyed the fisherman who first stumbled into the cave. It turned out that his fishing clothes had been soaked in oil and tree wax, and the dragons could not stand the smell.

About this tale

This page retells chapter XLV, “The Dragon-Princess,” in Richard Wilhelm’s The Chinese Fairy Book (English by Frederick H. Martens; New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1921). George W. Hood’s plate in the chapter illustrates the embedded account of the fisherboy taking a pearl from beneath a sleeping dragon’s chin; that caption is not the chapter title.

Wilhelm’s note says the image of the pearl under the sleeping dragon’s chin comes from the Taoist philosopher Dschuang Dsi (Zhuangzi). He also links the Dragon-King of the Eastern Sea to other tales in the book and says So Pi-Lo and Lo-Dsi-Tschun also appear in the next chapter, “Help in Need.”

Read the original: The Chinese Fairy Book, with George W. Hood’s plates (Project Gutenberg)

Best for ages 9–12 with discussion: a dragon embassy, threats from guards and hundreds of birds prepared as gifts. Edible cave slime, protective wax and pearls that defeat poison or weapons are story-world inventions, not practical guidance.

Reading the story closely

The opening accidental visitor becomes the reason for a carefully prepared embassy. The adviser distinguishes different kinds of dragon and rejects one supposedly useful stone: expertise in this tale depends on noticing differences, not possessing one universal charm. Yet the long preparation names dragon-stone and vapor without explaining a separate use for each afterward, leaving some of the magic as atmosphere.

Compare two kinds of evidence at the end. The crane and snake act out the pearl categories before the court, while the wax on the fisherman’s clothes supplies a retrospective explanation for his survival. Draw the question each scene answers and the observation the narrative offers. Both work within the fantasy; neither establishes real properties of pearls or cave food.

Questions to ask

• How did the fisherboy of long ago manage to take a pearl from a black dragon?
• Why is So Pi-Lo not allowed to carry the emperor’s letter?
• How does the emperor prove to his doubting courtiers that the wise man knows his pearls?

Related stories

• The Dragon After His Winter Sleep — another short Wilhelm tale of dragon lore
• The Disowned Princess — another daughter of a Dragon-King, from a few chapters later
• The Spirits of the Yellow River — the chapter just before this one in Wilhelm’s book