Dotting the Dragon's Eyes

On the wall of a temple there were four white dragons.

All four were complete. Every scale, every claw, every whisker, every ridge of the spine rising notch by notch like the teeth of a comb. They were painted so well that anyone standing close seemed almost to hear the wind rushing through the curls of cloud around their bodies. Only one place was left blank. None of the four had eyes.

It was not that the eyes were painted too faintly. Nor was it a spoiled painting abandoned halfway. The space was left on purpose. Where each eye should have been there was only white plaster, flat and clean, as if the painter had stopped his brush right there, put it away and gone home.

The wall stood in Anle Temple, in Jinling. Jinling is an old name for the city of Nanjing, a great city that served as the capital for one dynasty after another. And according to an old book, those four eyeless dragons made people ask the same question again and again. Not about a statue, not about a bell tower. About the wall.

The man who painted it was named Zhang Sengyou, and he came from the land of Wu. He lived under the Liang dynasty and served as an official at the court of Emperor Wu of Liang. He once held a post in the emperor's library, and he was also put in charge of painting. Later he rose to the rank of General of the Right Army, and then went out to govern Wuxing.

But those titles are not what made people remember his name.

Emperor Wu of Liang loved to have temples decorated, and he gave most of their walls to one man to paint. That man was Zhang Sengyou. He painted Buddhas, he painted deities, and he painted dragons. People of old said his dragons were not like anyone else's. They did not lie still on the wall. They looked as if they were only resting there for a while.

So the question everyone asked was about the eyes.

Why paint every tiny scale with such care, then leave the two eyes blank? Everyone who stood before that wall must have made a guess. That he had not finished. That he had run out of ink. That he had left one spot undone on purpose, as an excuse to come back.

Zhang Sengyou did answer. And every time, he gave the very same answer: dot in the eyes, and the dragons will fly away.

No one who heard it believed him.

People said he was boasting, talking big, claiming the impossible so that others would marvel at him. That he painted well, everyone agreed. But painting so well that whatever he painted came truly alive was the kind of thing that happens only in stories.

And because they did not believe him, they pressed him. They pressed and pressed. One person asked one day, a few more asked the next, and then a whole crowd surrounded him, begging until he gave in. Just dot them once and see what happens. It is only two dots of ink. Go on, dot them, and everyone will see whether the dragons fly or not.

Day after day, he was asked the same thing. In the end, Zhang Sengyou agreed. He ground his ink and dipped his brush.

He did not dot all four. He dotted only two.

Just four strokes. Two eyes for the first dragon, two eyes for the second. As soon as the brush left the wall, those two had eyes, while the two beside them stayed blank as before.

Then the whole courtyard stood waiting to see what would happen.

Only a moment later, it came.

A clap of thunder. A streak of light ran along the wall. The plaster cracked, the wall opened, and the two dragons that had just been given eyes stepped onto a cloud and flew straight up into the sky. They rose as lightly as two kites whose strings had just been cut. One flash, and it was over. The sky cleared again, and the temple courtyard held only the sound of leaves.

Two dragons were left on the wall.

They were the two whose eyes had not been dotted. Still with every scale, every claw, every whisker. Still lying in the same place, right beside the broken stretch of wall the other two had just passed through.

And this is the best part of the story. The man who wrote it down did not say that two dragons had once been on that wall. He wrote that the two dragons without eyes are still there. Still there. That means when he wrote those words, he believed anyone who wanted to check could simply go to Anle Temple and see for themselves.

That writer was Zhang Yanyuan, who lived under the Tang dynasty. He finished his book in 847, in Chang'an. It is called the Record of Famous Painters of All Dynasties, an account of the celebrated painters of every age. The story of the four dragons is in the seventh volume, and it runs to exactly 51 characters. It is as short as a note on a scrap of paper.

Zhang Yanyuan wrote those words about 300 years after the wall was painted. So he too was only writing down what people had told him, just as we are now retelling what the book records. The wall is no longer there for anyone to visit. No one can prove the story really happened, and no one demands that it must have happened to be worth telling. It is a tale from long ago. It has been told again for more than a thousand years because the picture inside it is so neat and so beautiful.

It is so neat that it has passed through many generations and many lands, and then stayed for good in the Vietnamese language.

People in Vietnam say vẽ rồng điểm mắt, paint the dragon and dot its eyes. They use it for the final touch, the tiny detail that suddenly brings a whole large piece of work to life. An essay is written, but it only becomes a real essay with the right closing sentence. A family meal is laid out, but it only becomes a real meal once a few strands of green onion are scattered over the soup. People praise one another with that saying so often that they sometimes forget where it came from.

But the idea in the story does not stop at a saying. It also lives on as a ritual, one still seen at communal houses and pagodas across Vietnam.

Whenever a new lion head or dragon head is finished, it is not taken out to dance straight away. First comes the ceremony of khai quang điểm nhãn. Khai quang means opening the light, and điểm nhãn means dotting the eyes. People set out incense and flowers before the altar, light incense and bow, place a sacred talisman on the lion's head and tie a red silk ribbon on its horn. Only then is the brush raised. The very last stroke, the one saved until that moment, is the stroke for the eyes.

There is one way this differs completely from the old tale. At Anle Temple, people begged for those two dots, and then the two dragons were gone. In the courtyards of communal houses and pagodas in Vietnam, those two dots are exactly what the whole troupe stands waiting for. Once they are painted, the lion head is considered awake, and the drums break out right after.

Lion dance troupes get ready at the Mid-Autumn Festival, or on the first morning of Tết, the Lunar New Year festival in Vietnam. Before a lion head goes out to dance, someone has surely stood just where Zhang Sengyou once stood, brush in hand, hesitating for a heartbeat before the two final dots.