Legend of the True Dragon: A Fairy Tale Where East and West Meet

​​Like many tra­di­tion­al myths and fairy tales, the pro­tag­o­nist begins the sto­ry by embark­ing on a jour­ney to ful­fill their des­tiny. While these quests are often intense, with knights slay­ing drag­ons or sub­du­ing tigers, ulti­mate­ly lead­ing to the emer­gence of a skilled and com­bat­ive hero. How­ev­er, the “epic adven­ture” in “Drag­on Quest” begins with a bed­time con­ver­sa­tion in a child’s bed­room. The rich palette of warm col­ors and soft water­col­or effects immerse the moth­er and child in a tran­quil and warm atmos­phere. The “most pre­cious secret” shared by the moth­er at this moment offers a sense of secu­ri­ty, even if it requires a relent­less adven­ture.

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​The boy’s (baby’s) mis­sion is not to engage in a con­flict or con­fronta­tion, to slay mon­sters, save princess­es in dis­tress, or suf­fer the suf­fer­ing of the peo­ple. Instead, it is to dis­cov­er the pow­er­ful mag­ic with­in his own heart. His mis­sion is to dis­cov­er the truth about dragons—what exact­ly are drag­ons? And what does drag­on have to do with us?

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​You know, 2024 is the Year of the Drag­on in Chi­na, and the author, Liang Wan­jun, hap­pens to be Chi­nese. For the Chi­nese peo­ple, we are proud to call our­selves descen­dants of the drag­on. So, what exact­ly does the drag­on mean? How­ev­er, the author cur­rent­ly lives in the Unit­ed States, and her two chil­dren are of mixed race, born from mar­riages with West­ern par­ents. In tra­di­tion­al West­ern cul­ture, the drag­on is often seen as the embod­i­ment of evil and destruc­tion. So, how can “descen­dants of the drag­on” nav­i­gate such a cul­tur­al land­scape? You see, this is a tru­ly pro­found ques­tion, one that touch­es upon iden­ti­ty and cul­tur­al inte­gra­tion, and touch­es upon the most fun­da­men­tal aspect of growth: know­ing your­self.

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​This bed­time leg­end revolves around a boy who, inspired and encour­aged by his moth­er, embarks on a remark­able jour­ney of self-dis­cov­ery and under­stand­ing the world. In the sto­ry, he jour­neys into two dis­tinct forests, each inhab­it­ed by a grand­moth­er, rep­re­sent­ing his East­ern and West­ern her­itage. Each grand­moth­er presents him with two dis­tinct images of a drag­on: the West­ern drag­on, sym­bol­iz­ing strength and brav­ery, and the East­ern drag­on, rep­re­sent­ing wis­dom and tol­er­ance.

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​Cha Ho-yun’s illus­tra­tions are excep­tion­al­ly skill­ful, employ­ing strik­ing con­trasts of col­or and detail to vivid­ly depict the dif­fer­ences between these two cul­tures and explore the pos­si­bil­i­ty of har­mo­nious coex­is­tence. Born and raised in the Unit­ed States, this Kore­an-Amer­i­can illus­tra­tor, a grad­u­ate of the Rhode Island School of Design, is well-versed in both West­ern artis­tic tech­niques and tra­di­tion­al East­ern paint­ing. Beyond the cozy bed­time scene in a child’s bed­room, she employs two oth­er dis­tinct artis­tic approach­es to depict a boy’s jour­ney to find a drag­on in dif­fer­ent forests.

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​When search­ing for West­ern drag­ons, she pri­mar­i­ly drew on medieval or Goth­ic visu­al ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with West­ern drag­ons. Frames with intri­cate lines and pat­terns, the dec­o­ra­tive and sym­bol­ic pat­terns fur­ther enhance the mys­ti­cal and leg­endary atmos­phere. Ele­ments resem­bling shields, swords, and oth­er knight­ly accou­trements echo the tra­di­tion­al tale of knights slay­ing drag­ons. In con­trast, when search­ing for East­ern drag­ons, the can­vas­es are more spa­cious and open, incor­po­rat­ing ele­ments of Chi­nese ink paint­ing. The del­i­cate, flow­ing lines and cool­er tones of blue and green high­light the divin­i­ty and ele­gance of East­ern drag­ons. In fact, in this sto­ry, the West­ern drag­on is not the embod­i­ment of evil. Its pri­ma­ry col­ors, fiery red and gold, empha­size its might and mas­sive size, as well as its rel­a­tive­ly pos­i­tive image as a guardian of trea­sure (against fool­ish knights). Through these metic­u­lous­ly designed illus­tra­tions, Che Haoyun not only demon­strates the out­ward dif­fer­ences between the two drag­ons but also explores the deep­er dif­fer­ences in their cul­tur­al sym­bol­ism.

​In addi­tion to win­ning the Calde­cott Sil­ver Medal, “Quest for the Drag­on” also won the Asian Pacif­ic Amer­i­can Lit­er­a­ture Award, which rec­og­nizes out­stand­ing lit­er­ary works that depict the life expe­ri­ences of Asian Pacif­ic Amer­i­cans, enhances the vis­i­bil­i­ty of these works in main­stream soci­ety, and pro­motes the under­stand­ing and respect of the cul­ture and his­to­ry of the Asian Pacif­ic com­mu­ni­ty in the whole soci­ety.

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The award cita­tion for this book reads:“Stun­ning imagery and a cap­ti­vat­ing sto­ry­line skill­ful­ly pave a path for explor­ing iden­ti­ty and a child’s own mixed cul­tur­al her­itage.” Author Liang Wan­jun skill­ful­ly presents the com­plex­i­ty of iden­ti­ty and cul­tur­al her­itage through the sto­ry of a fam­i­ly, with the wise guid­ance of two grand­moth­ers. Through the per­spec­tive of the lit­tle boy in the book, we wit­ness the explo­ration of cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty, a process that is not one-way but mul­ti­di­men­sion­al, full of inter­sec­tions and inter­ac­tions.

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​The deep­er theme of the sto­ry is about inner strength -“The pow­er­ful mag­ic that lives with­in you“This mag­ic draws from both the wis­dom and tol­er­ance of the East­ern drag­on and the strength and courage of the West­ern dragon—either drag­on rep­re­sents the true spir­it of the drag­on. Through the fusion of these two pow­er­ful forces, the boy learns to accept his dual iden­ti­ty and how to use this inner strength to face life’s chal­lenges.

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“Drag­on Jour­ney” isn’t just a sto­ry com­par­ing East­ern and West­ern drag­on cul­ture; it’s also a sto­ry about grow­ing up, self-dis­cov­ery, and cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty. With pro­found cul­tur­al insights, it offers young read­ers a valu­able per­spec­tive on how to under­stand and cher­ish their own diverse cul­tur­al back­grounds. Think about it: every­one has a drag­on with­in them. By under­stand­ing and accept­ing this drag­on, we can dis­cov­er our truest strength.

Writ­ten in Bei­jing on May 10, 2024

【About the illustrator’s Chi­nese name】

Kore­an illus­tra­tor Han­na Cha (차호윤) only wrote her Eng­lish name in the Eng­lish ver­sion.Her offi­cial web­siteHannacha.com lists the Kore­an name “차호윤” but not the Chi­nese name! How­ev­er, I know that the Kore­an name is pho­net­ic, so there must be a Chi­nese name. Judg­ing by the pro­nun­ci­a­tion, the last name is most like­ly “Che,” but there are so many pos­si­bil­i­ties for the first name that it’s impos­si­ble to guess.

As a rule, we don’t con­tact cre­ators direct­ly, so we asked our pub­lish­er to inquire. How­ev­er, after repeat­ed inquiries, the Amer­i­can side was adamant that “she does­n’t have a Chi­nese name,” so any trans­la­tion would be accept­able. In des­per­a­tion, I ini­tial­ly resort­ed to trans­lat­ing it as “Che Han­na.” But that name is just too strange! Fur­ther­more, it seems dis­re­spect­ful.

Unable to accept this, I tried to con­tact her per­son­al­ly. I left mes­sages explain­ing the sit­u­a­tion via social media and email. In the email, I specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned my great admi­ra­tion for the Kore­an illus­tra­tor Baek Hee-na (백희나). Ini­tial­ly, due to irre­spon­si­ble pub­lish­ing agents, we trans­lat­ed her name as “Bai Xi Na,” a prac­tice only cor­rect­ed ten years lat­er. I did­n’t want such a regret­table sit­u­a­tion to hap­pen again.

I was par­tic­u­lar­ly hap­py to hear Han­na quick­ly reply to my email, but she explained she was­n’t sure how to write the Chi­nese char­ac­ters for her name and need­ed to ask her par­ents! Fun­ny enough, she actu­al­ly got the name wrong the first time she sent me. Luck­i­ly, she quick­ly real­ized it and emailed back to cor­rect it to “車鎬昀” (Car 鎬昀). Since she rarely uses it, she had to talk to her par­ents before final­ly con­firm­ing it.

Final­ly fig­ured it out! I was so hap­py and incred­i­bly grate­ful to her! I even looked it up in the dic­tio­nary. Hon­est­ly, we rarely use the two Chi­nese char­ac­ters for “镐昀.” It turns out that “镐” can be pro­nounced the same as “皓,” mean­ing bright, while “昀” means sun­light. So, the two-char­ac­ter phrase should be under­stood as “bright sun­shine.”

So, I sent her anoth­er email to tell her that judg­ing from the mean­ing of the Chi­nese char­ac­ters, this is a very beau­ti­ful name, rep­re­sent­ing the spe­cial bless­ing of the per­son who gave it the name. In Eng­lish, it should be“very bright sun­light”.

Gaoyun hap­pi­ly wrote back, say­ing she was over­joyed to learn that her name in Chi­nese had such a beau­ti­ful mean­ing. “It’s a name that my grand­pa has giv­en to me, so the fact that part of his influ­ence will be in this book is now extra mean­ing­ful to me.”“It’s the name my grand­fa­ther gave me, so it means a lot to me that some of his influ­ence will remain in this book.”

Yes, isn’t this what “trans­la­tion” is all about?

Argen­tine Primera División on August 15, 2024

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