Ao Bing's father and aunty. His father is Ao Guangๆๅนฟ, Longwang of the East Sea, and his aunty is Ao Runๆ้ฐ, Longwang of the West Sea. (lรณngwang้พ็ means sovereign of lรณng้พ)
Scholars used to use the word loong but its pronunciation is significantly different from the Chinese character "้พ". Long is better but still not the same. The aunthentic pronunciation is more like [lษ:ueng] and it's pinyin is lรณng.
Translators use the word dragon merely to facilitate better understanding, but the Chinese "้พ" and the Western "dragon" are vastly different, fundamentally distinct, much like two creatures that aren't in the same dimension.
The Chinese ้พlรณng is a sacred mythical creature; they are considered holy beings, existing in a dimension above that of mortals. They hold the responsibility of controlling the wind, lightning, thunder, clouds and rain, regulating the weather, and blessing the abundance of crops. The copulation of ้พlรณng with nine other creatures gave birth to various divine beasts, each bearing some characteristics of the ้พlรณng, but the true ้พlรณng is regarded as the purest and most noble of all.
In China, many people claim to have seen lรณng, with plenty of folk records both before and after the founding of the People's Republic. In the internet era, there are also many videos of lรณng. One of the most famous is footage taken by a college student on her dormitory balcony on a cloudy day, where a lรณng appears in the thunderclouds and then turn its head to gaze the girl. Another notable incident is the CCTV live broadcast of the Gaoyou Lake lรณng water spout event (interestingly, CCTV later edited the live footage, changing the scene of a real lรณng spiraling and disappearing in a flash to show three ridiculous birds that didnโt follow the rules of perspective). These videos can be found on Bilibili if you want to check them out. I think the dormitory and Gaoyou Lake videos are real like they're truely lรณng (the dorm one is especially striking because it looks exactly like the watery ink long on ancient Chinese paintings, with an extraordinary and otherworldly vibe, exuding an overwhelming sense of oppression). Other real videos show that lรณng can fly at incredibly high speeds, like lightning. Folk culture says lรณng can switch between physical and ethereal forms at will, which is why they can move so fast. There are also many fake videos to get clicks online, so one gets to use their own judgment. Itโs widely believed that lรณng appeared as early as the creation of the world, and they made a pact with the ancestors of Chinese people and have been protecting the 'Celestial Realm and Divine Land of Huaxia'ๅๅค็ฅๅท ever since. In the unique Chinese twelve shengxiao็่ culture, lรณng is the only mythical creatureโthe other eleven are common animals. Some scholars think that when shengxiao was created, many people had actually seen lรณng and accepted that they're real, which is why it became one of the twelve shengxiao.
