The waters of China are governed not by a single sea-lord but by dragons. Werner's Myths & Legends of China (a 1922 compilation of Chinese myth) opens its chapter on the waters plainly: "The dragons are spirits of the waters." This is no Western worm to be slain. Beneficent, its nature "whose miraculous changes are inscrutable", the dragon is the essence of the yang (the male principle), "representing the fecundating principle in nature"; and because he sends the rain he "holds in his power prosperity and peace." He is at once "the Neptune of the sea, and appears on dry land."

From there the record descends into a whole submarine officialdom. The five Sea-dragon Kings "feed on pearls and opals" in palaces on the ocean floor; a failed graduate carries a letter down to the Dragon-king of the Tung-t'ing Lake and stumbles into a kingdom of rank, marriage, and grievance. But the water-god's oldest face is hungrier than any of these. At Yeh Hsien a witch chose each year "a pretty girl of low birth" to be "the Queen of the River-god", bathed and robed her, and set her "on a bed which was floated out upon the tide till it disappeared". Families with beautiful daughters fled the town rather than feed him.

The witness that stays with you is the magistrate who ended it. Hsi-men Pao broke the sacrifice with its own logic: bidding the old witch go and tell the god that a fairer maid was coming, he had his attendants, who "seized the witch and threw her into the river." Then disciple after disciple was sent after her into the water to carry the message. At last — "The River-god detains his guest too long," he said, and adjourned the rite. Thereafter, the record notes, "none dared to celebrate the marriage of the River-god."

When the giver of rain is also the taker of daughters, what drowns along with the drowned — and what is saved the moment a magistrate refuses to keep feeding him?