A pig dragon or zhūlóng (Chinese: 玉豬龍, 玉猪龙) is a type of jade artifact from neolithic China. Pig dragons are zoomorphic forms with a pig-like head and elongated limbless body coiled around to the head and described as "suggestively fetal". Early pig dragons are thick and stubby, and later examples have more graceful, snakelike bodies.
Pig dragons were produced by the Hongshan culture. Along with the same culture's jade eagles (玉鷹), they often featured as grave goods. For example see . Pig bones have been found interred alongside humans at Hongshan burial sites, suggesting that the animal had some ritual significance.
There is some speculation that the pig dragon is the first representation of the Chinese dragon. The character for "dragon" in the earliest Chinese writing has a similar coiled form, as do later jade dragon amulets from the Shang period.
Famous quotes containing the words pig and/or dragon:
“He had the oaks for heating and for light.
He had a hen, he had a pig in sight.
He had a well, he had the rain to catch.
He had a ten-by-twenty garden patch.
Nor did he lack for common entertainment.
That I assume was what our passing train meant.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“And then at last our bliss
Full and perfect is,
But now begins; for from this happy day
The old Dragon underground,
In straiter limits bound,
Not half so far casts his usurped sway,
And, wroth to see his kingdom fail,
Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)