Piecing together China's common foundations

The Chinese call themselves the "descendants of the dragon", a demonstration of the influence of this mythical being as a totem. Li says that dragon culture is believed to be closely connected to the rise of Chinese civilization.

Guo Wu, a researcher at the Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, says that similar to Chinese civilization, which had many points of origin and gradually coalesced into a unified whole, dragon images appeared in different places during the Neolithic Age and gradually resolved into a fixed image during the Shang Dynasty (c. 16th century-11th century BC).

"From Chahai Culture, dragon worship is part of Chinese culture and also an important symbol of the origins of Chinese civilization," Li says.