Flaming pearl
The ball wrapped in flames that Chinese dragons reach for with open jaws, usually called a pearl. What it first stood for is disputed: the sun, thunder or the moon, and for Chinese Buddhists the jewel that grants every wish.
Meaning
Two dragons flying with open mouths towards a ball between them is the commonest and apparently the oldest way of showing the ball, M. W. de Visser wrote in The Dragon in China and Japan (1913). The ball is wrapped in flames and clouds, as W. Perceval Yetts described it in 1912, and is “commonly called a ‘pearl’”; the Chinese themselves, Visser found, mostly call it the “precious pearl”. E. T. C. Werner, in 1922, said the pearl that hangs before the dragon, sometimes from its neck, stands for the sun. The motif is still worked on Chinese wedding clothes: the V&A has a bride’s shoes from Hong Kong, made between 1940 and 1970, embroidered with a dragon and a phoenix chasing a pearl.
Origin and history
Chinese stories gave dragons pearls long before anyone wrote about the ball in the pictures. Visser collected them: a sixth-century book that says certain pearls are spat out by dragons, a dragon in the shape of a child who played with three pearls at the mouth of his den and hid them in his left ear, and the “thunder-pearls” described by the sinologist De Groot, dropped from dragons’ mouths and bright enough to light a whole house at night. When Visser looked for a written explanation of the ball in art, he found that “the sea of texts concerning the dragon, ancient and modern” said nothing about it.
Sun, thunder or moon?
Yetts reported that some took the ball for the sun and that Dr Hirth had brought evidence that it was an emblem of thunder; Werner said it stood for the sun. De Groot, who also read it as thunder, concluded that the dragon, a god of thunder, must be belching the ball out. Visser could not agree. Everything in the dragons’ attitude shows them eager to catch and swallow it, he wrote, and two dragons cannot belch out one ball; the dragon in festival processions follows the ball with its mouth. Then he was shown a Chinese picture of two dragons rushing at a fiery spiral ball, captioned “A couple of dragons facing the moon”. Visser’s suggestion was that the dragons are clouds, and that clouds covering the moon looked like dragons swallowing it, after which the rain fell.
The Buddhist pearl
In one Buddhist temple, Visser read, a gilt glass ball hangs from the roof of the great hall, and eight carved dragons stretch their claws towards it, the “pearl of perfection”. Chinese Buddhists, he concluded, identified the dragon with the naga of Indian Buddhism and the ball with the cintamani, the precious pearl that grants all desires.
On wedding clothes
On the V&A’s Hong Kong shoes the pearl sits between the dragon and the phoenix. The museum notes that white wedding dresses are now popular but that traditional bridal clothes are still worn for the rites before parents and ancestors and at the wedding banquet.
Read next
- Next in Chinese mythology and symbolsFenghuang (Chinese phoenix)The fenghuang (鳳凰), the bird of good omen of Chinese tradition, called the Chinese phoenix in English: a pheasant-like bird with sweeping tail plumes. It was the emblem of the empress, and its appearance was a sign of a peaceful, well-governed age.
- The same shape in Symbols across culturesLabyrinthA single path that winds back and forth to a centre and out again. In Greek myth it was the building Daedalus made at Knossos to hold the Minotaur; medieval churches laid it in their floors, and the Chartres labyrinth of about 1205 to 1215 is still walked.
See also
Chinese dragon (long), Dragon and phoenix, Qilin, Guardian lions (foo dogs), Pixiu (bixie), Azure Dragon (Qinglong).
Sources
- Symbolism in Chinese Art (W. Perceval Yetts, 1912), W. Perceval Yetts, “Symbolism in Chinese Art”, read before the China Society, 18 January 1912 (Leyden: E. J. Brill, 1912), The China Society, p. 23
- Myths and Legends of China (E. T. C. Werner, 1922), E. T. C. Werner, Myths and Legends of China (London: George G. Harrap, 1922), Project Gutenberg ebook 15250, George G. Harrap, ch. XI, The Dragons
- The Dragon in China and Japan (M. W. de Visser, 1913), M. W. de Visser, The Dragon in China and Japan (Amsterdam: Johannes Müller, for the Royal Academy of Sciences at Amsterdam, 1913), Royal Academy of Sciences at Amsterdam, Book I, ch. V, § 15 (pp. 105–108)
- Pair of court shoes for a bride (Victoria and Albert Museum), Victoria and Albert Museum, London, pair of court shoes for a bride, embroidered with a dragon and phoenix, Sun Sun Shoes Factory, Hong Kong, 1940–70, Victoria and Albert Museum, summary description
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from circles or curves and waves.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research
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