Dragon is a zodiac animal but the only unreal animal. No one knows how Dragon was created, I think that it should be from Dinosaur, big, ugly, powerful and king of the universal. So Emperors liked to sit on house with many dragon sculptures, and wore the clothes with dragon robes.
Dragon is important in the daily life of ordinary people, dragon boat race is famous not only in China, but in the world. I am not going to say the history of dragon boat race, you can find on website easily. I want to tell you the related calligraphy with dragon boat.
Character of dragon in old Small Seal script
On the left, it is the head and body of dragon, on the right is the hair of the body and the tail of dragon.
Dragon character in Clerical script:
It is similar as the character in Small Seal script. But more stright lines, less curved lines, are more standardized, which meet the requirement of language, but reduced the artistic characteristics. But it is still like dragon.
Let's see the character "Boat" in old Small Seal script:
It is like a boat. How about the character in clerical script：
It is changed a lot, but still some alike the one in small seal script.
OK, now we know the original "Dragon" 龍，and "Boat" 舟. What did I do? I modified 龍，and put the two characters together
I intentionally extended the right bottom stroke of 龍 to form a boat-like stroke, and changed the middle horizontal stroke to diagonal to form oar-like stroke in character 舟. With three 舟's，the whole work looks like dragon boat racing picture.
The work was changed again to become the following after one year of the creation of the one above.
The major change is the middle stroke of 舟，extended and crossed the horizontal stroke of 龍，puting the oars into the water. So whole work is more like a dragon boat race.
