Hai Long China's Good-Luck Monsters

                    "This is a Lurking Dragon Hill"  explained Cen Zhuxian , as Jiland  Dayong ,  a paleontologist  at the University of Peking.  Up a steep cobbled trail above the city if Xingyi  in China's southern Guizhou Province.  Surrounded by countryside , as green as seaweed, rounded hills rise above the rice paddies and cornfields.  It is said that local people used to find their small dragons.  The local bumpkins so to speak did not know that these were fossils.  However like Lake Winnipeg Interlake Gimli area bumpkins they did not know that they were fossils but liked them because the Dragons were a sign of good luck.

                    In a shallow pit  along the hillside several workers found after excavation more than little fossil dragons - 12 to 14 inch long marine reptiles called  keichousarus hui.  The Guizhou dragons as they are popularly known, with their pear shaped bodies and sinuous necks , look like miniature Loch Ness Sea Monster Nessies.  For centuries the local people regarded them as dragons  whose spirits could travel between heaven and earth.

                   No one knows when the Chinese belief in dragons began .  However the belief in dragons and sea monsters eerily similar to the Loch Ness Sea Monster extends back thousands of years.  With serperntlike scaly bodies ,  horses's heads and blazing rabbit's eyes , the dragons inhabited ponds and rivers  and could fly on bat wings to the heavens in spiraling water spouts.  If times were hard and drought stalked the land , people gave them offerings, asked them to breathe out mists and clouds and their heavenly rain.

                   Some Chinese dragons are considered evil, such as the Chien Tang River monster, and the seagoing red -maned Silan , but overall the Chinese Dragons and serpents  are benevolent , embodying fecundity and good fortune.