27 The Dragon Republic: An Unraveling of Yin Nezha

Dragons have been part of East Asian culture for centuries, and their symbolic meaning is forever expanding and holds major cultural significance. Chinese-American author, R.F. Kuang, encapsulates the complicated significance of dragons in her book The Dragon Republic, the second book in her expansive trilogy. The Dragon Republic is an epic fantasy that combines the history of twentieth century China, including heavy influence from the Chinese civil war of 1945, with the world of gods and monsters. Her novel is a thoughtful culmination of the history of China that offers a look into the brutality, violence, and repercussions of war, while drawing from popular East Asian tales to explore topics of loyalty, spirituality, and power. In order to parse through some of the complexities of the novel, I will take a deep look at the complicated character, Yin Nezha, as a way to explore some of these convoluted themes. To do this, I will trace her inspirations of the character Nezha into both Chinese and Hindu mythology, and compare and contrast these older tellings of the character to her current depiction of Nezha. I will also analyze how her adaptation of Nezha both challenges or reflects some of the common themes that Nezha stories often represent, such as loyalty and rebellion. I will also spend some time focusing on Yin Nezha’s traits, powers, and relationships in hopes of pulling together the impact and importance of this character on the overall story being told. To unravel the symbolic and historical intricacies of Kuang’s novel, I wish to delve deeper into the inspirations for the character Nezha and how these origins affect her novel. Most famously, in Chinese mythology, is the appearance of Nezha in Fengshen Yanyi 封神演義 (Investiture of the Gods) and Xi you ji 西遊記 (Journey to the West).^[1] However, R.F. Kuang has mentioned before in an interview that she is more fond of Fengshen Yanyi, and that her writing is largely influenced by this work, so for sake of brevity I will compare the Nezha legend as it appears in Fengshen Yanyi to R.F. Kuang’s depiction of Nezha. In order to breakdown this legend as it relates to Kuang’s story, I want to focus on the following themes: family dynamics, encounters with dragons, piety and loyalty, and death and suicide.

First, I want to focus on contrasting the family dynamics in both of the stories. In The Dragon Republic, Yin Nezha is the second eldest son to father Yin Vaisra and mother Yin Saikara. He has two elder siblings, twin siblings Yin Jinzha and Yin Muzha, and a younger brother Yin Mingzha, all of them being born and raised in the Jade District of Sinegard. Sinegard is the Northern capital of Nikan, which is inspired by the geography, military, and cultural layout of China. Already, we see that Kuang made the decision to change the sibling dynamic of Nezha’s family. First, the two eldest brothers mentioned in Fengshen Yanyi, are now brother and sister in The Dragon Republic. Her choice to make Muzha an elder sister is interesting, especially considering that Muzha never actually appears in the book and is only mentioned to be studying abroad in Hesperia, which is the equivalent of Western Europe and North America in Kuang’s fantasy world. To me, this choice seems to be an emphasis on gendered familial expectations, as Jingzha and Nezha were raised since birth to be warriors, while the sister is kept at a distance from family and country despite being the second born. The sister serves a completely diplomatic role for the family, as does the mother who spends time in Hesperia to negotiate with the Herperians intervention in the ongoing war in Nikan. The men in the family are raised to be generals, whereas the women are expected to deal with global relations and have a separation from warfare. This is significant in the sense that other women outside of the family do not get the same privilege of separation. Women in the countryside during the war are murdered, raped, and displaced from their homes. By making these changes to the family dynamic, Kuang is able to reflect the intersection of gender and status as it relates to wartime periods. Kuang also made another change to the family dynamic through the addition of a younger sibling, Yin Mingzha. This is the most significant change to the familial dynamic, and is perhaps the most powerful difference between the Nezha that Kuang created and the Nezha from the legend.

In The Dragon Republic, when Nezha was young, he was in charge of taking care of Mingzha, but he ultimately failed to do so. While visiting a grotto that Vaisra had banned them from entering, Mingzha was eaten by a dragon. The Yin family is a wealthy, northern family, in which Yin Vaisra is an important Warlord and general. Mingzha was spoiled rotten by his parents, and was highly endeared by Yin Saikara who dressed him in so much gold jewelry that he jingled when he walked. He was a flaunting of this wealth and upper class status that encapsulated the House of Yin, yet the carelessness and innocence of the child ultimately got him killed. When Mingzha died, Nezha wanted Mingzha to remove his jewelry because he was “worried it might drag him down under waves that already came up to his chest,”^[2] but Mingzha did not, and instead ran ahead as if he was “weightless.” This moment seems very symbolic of the expectations of the Yin brothers and their familial roles. Nezha, being older, is more aware of the position of their family and how it sets up great expectations that can weigh them down. Whereas Mingzha still possesses an innocence and doesn’t understand the harshness of the world. This was the first time that Nezha was given a direct responsibility from his father, and he faults his insubordination as being the cause of Mingzha’s death. Later in the novel, Nehza lamented that “I wanted to explore the grotto. It was my idea to begin with. I put it into Mingzha’s head. It was my fault.”^[3] We can see that Nezha bears full responsibility and understands that his actions can quickly impact the lives of others. As an elder son of the Dragon Warlord, Nezha had to take on a heavy burden, and be a soldier instead of a son. Mingzha died with a childlike innocence, whereas Nezha lives a life which is a constant balance of pain, power, and competing loyalties. Being a child himself, he took on a lot of responsibility and even more so after Mingzha’s death. He saw directly how brutality can ruthlessly take an innocent life within seconds, and that he has the power and influence to put people in a position that makes them susceptible to becoming a victim at the hands of that brutality.

Next, I want to bring attention to how these encounters with dragons appear in The Dragon Republic as compared to in Fengshen Yanyi. There is another direct nod towards the Nezha legend in this series, in which Nezha was almost killed by General Seiryu, whose name means Azure Dragon of the East. In the original tale, Nezha kills Ao Bing and bests Ao Guang. However, in this novel, the person who represents these eastern dragons would have successfully killed Nezha if not for his shamanic abilities gifted to him by the Dragon Lord. There is a dichotomy here with how dragons are represented and how encounters with them affect Nezha. On one hand, the character who resembles the original dragon Ao Guang almost kills Nezha, but then we also have the Dragon Lord who is keeping Nezha alive and in a sense is Nezha. In both Hindu and Chinese mythos, “the beauty of the Nezha and Krsna narratives depended upon the contrast between the handsome child and the hideous monster,”^[4] but in Kuang’s novel this contrast is done within the same subject. Nezha is described countless times as the epitome of beauty in the novel, however, everytime he fell victim to dragons that beauty was turned hideous. When General Seiryu almost killed him he got severely burned, and although the Dragon God healed him, his physical appearance became “mottled with scars” that “looked like glass that had been shattered and glued back together.”^[5] It seems like General Seiryu was more of an easter egg of sorts, meaning that it was just a fun addition for readers to connect to past Nezha legends, as no other significance can be obviously derived. However, the contrast with the Dragon Lord and Nezha is a lot more pertinent, especially when looking at the internal struggle that Nezha experiences throughout the novel.

Kuang’s decision to make the dragon prince conflate with Nezha is interesting, especially when examining it as a comparison to other versions of the story:

Nezha is the hero of our dreams because he lives what is impossible in real life. He manages to avoid the law of exchange, living into himself, in complete autonomy and disregard of those like the dragon kings that obstruct him, even sometimes removing them. The narcissistic element is absent from the 1979 animation, in which revolutionary ideology has replaced the psychological want. The protagonist’s wanton acts of violence are provided with ideological justification. Thus, Nezha murders the dragon prince not in an unbridled display of egotistic power, but because the creature has abducted an innocent child, whom it intends to devour…The welfare of the people replaces desire as the primary motivation for Nezha’s actions. His two principal feats—the suicide and the rebirth– are equally guided by the commitment for social justice rather than by familial tension.^[6]

In The Dragon Republic, the Dragon Lord tries to obstruct Nezha by attempting to take over his mind and body, yet it is this same dragon that keeps him alive. In a sense, he still tames the Dragon Lord through an internal subjugation, but Nezha never achieves full autonomy as the dragon remains a part of him even when kept tucked away. This dragon has multiple roles in the story as it both displays Nezha’s selfhood and the ways that Nezha is manipulated. Nezha’s ideology was manipulated over the years by his father, but Nezha does have his own commitment to the wellbeing of the people of Nikan and social justice that is separate from his father. We see that Nezha isn’t necessarily loyal to any cause his father wishes, because when Fang Runin implies that his father should become emperor, he hesitates.^[7] Yet he does believe in his father’s republic and that in war the end justifies the means no matter how many lives are lost.^[8] Nezha was raised as a soldier for the republic, but it is clear that he lives in an idealistic world in which he believes it is possible to achieve that republic through any means necessary.

Another reason the Dragon Lord choosing Nezha to be a shaman is significant is due to Nezha’s inability to die. In Fengshen Yanyi, he commits suicide and is resurrected, however, in this novel he cannot commit suicide and cannot be killed due to the healing ability of the Dragon Lord and the use of his body and mind as a conduit for the dragon’s power. In Fengshen Yanyi, he commits suicide, but here, despite the familial expectations and without a threat to his family, he tries to commit suicide because of the physical and mental torture that lies in the burden of being chosen as a shaman to the Dragon Lord. Instead of being a fiendish child-god, Nezha is depicted as a heavily overburdened, and as a pained mortal son whose burden and chosen loyalties have huge repercussions. This invincibility remains consistent, in Fengshen Yanyi with “neither poisonous pills, nor soul stealing, nor high-pitched sound waves”^[9] being able to kill Nezha, and in a similar fashion Yin Nezha survives being stabbed to death, burned alive, poisoned, and even fails from taking his own life.

The dragon also represents a role that Nezha cannot escape, and that if he gives himself completely to the Dragon Lord then he would “become part of his collection” and that the dragon would “do what he wanted to [him], satisfy himself, and [he’d] never leave. [He’d] be trapped, because [he] doesn’t think [he] can die.”^[10] This reads to me as a signifier of the relationship between Vaisra, familial expectations, and Nezha who is trying desperately to keep his autonomy and make the choices that he believes in. However, I do believe that there is significance with the suppression of the Dragon Lord that has less to do with familial tension, and more to do with Nezha’s commitment to social justice apart from his father’s expectations, as mentioned above. There is a line in the novel in which Nezha states that in a civil war, “nothing lasts. . . not friendships, not loyalties, and certainly not empire,”^[11] which suggests a subversion of authority. A son who defies paternal rule exemplifies the hidden animosity between father and son, and it is this subversion of authority that is “key to the Nezha myth.”^[12] There are scenes in the novel where Nezha directly protests his father’s word in front of other warlords and generals. This upfront defiance plays with this subversion of authority as it relates to the relationship between loyalty to a cause and devotion to family.

The themes surrounding loyalty and filial piety are often debated or toyed with in different variations of Nezha stories. For example, in Fengshen Yanyi it is debated if Nezha’s actions are motivated by filial piety or insubordination. Some scholars interpret Nezha’s self-immolation as an act of filial piety due to Nezha offering his flesh and blood to his parents, as well as the act of the suicide itself being a self-sacrifice serving to protect his family from the eastern dragon. However, others believe that the self-immolation and attempted patricide was motivated by Nezha’s resentment of his father. Due to this constant tension between piety and loyalty, I want to explore how Kuang decided to portray the father-son relationship in The Dragon Republic by examining Jinzha and Nezha’s actions as sons in relation to their father.

Yin Vaisra’s inspiration can be traced back to the Hindu origins of the Nezha legend, in which Nezha/Nalakūbara, a yaksha spirit, was the son of the great yaksha king Vaiśravana. Vaiśravana was worshiped as a god of riches and of war, as well as being the Warden of the North and the ruler of the yakshas who inhabit the waters.^[13] There are direct parallels between the two as Yin Vaisra is a rich northern warlord who is in charge of an army that specializes in naval warfare. Kuang’s choice to name Vaisra after the Hindu mythos rather than the Chinese mythos added complexity to the story being told. In tales of Nalakūbara, he never tries to kill his father, instead the tension is between son and father figure (his uncle Ravana). Also, Nalakūbara draws his beauty, wealth, and power from his father,^[14] making the father-son dynamic a lot less upfront than in the Chinese interpretations of the legend, and portraying the father as a more passive character who only offers his son a position which to fill.

The only time in the book that Vaisra is described as “look[ing] like a father”^[15] is when Jinzha is thought to be dead, but this moment was brief and he quickly pulled himself together again. Vaisra raised his sons to go to Sinegard academy and study in warfare, so that they could work alongside him when the time to enact his rebellion came. It was later alluded to in the book that Vaisra actually knew about the Dragon Lord and that he set up his sons. Fang Runin, main character and shaman of the Phoenix god, accused Vaisra of allowing his sons into the grotto knowing what the dragon could do because he “wanted a weapon of [his] own,”^[16] but his first son wasn’t expendable as his other sons were. This line of questioning depicts Vaisra as a puppeteer of sorts, who saw his sons not as family, but as pieces that he could strategically manipulate to achieve his plans to achieve a Nikara Republic. Vaisra distances himself from warfare and never himself fights directly for his cause, rather he sends his sons out to do the fighting for him. This exemplifies that passive father role that is pertinent in the Hindu mythology, where Vaisra has given his sons a position that they must navigate accordingly.

There is an ongoing rivalry between Jinzha and Nezha in how they strategize and pursue battle, however, since Jinzha is older, decisions tend to fall in his favor. This relationship between obedience towards the father and acting as political pieces in a war brings into question the themes of piety versus loyalty once again. Filial piety primarily exists within a private realm, whereas loyalty falls into the political sphere, which means that the two tend to clash with each other. Whereas Nezha was able to voice his opinions against his father numerous times, Jinzha would not do this under any circumstances and was willing to die to fulfill his father’s expectations and his role as a son. The adherence to political loyalty that Nezha displays is consistent with filial piety, as cautioning parents who abuse authority or exhibit wrongheadedness is permissible,^[17] however, it can also be seen as a rebellion to the authority of the father.

Similar to Fengshen Yanyi, it is up to interpretation how Nezha’s defiance against his father can be a depiction of piety or insubordination. Kuang was able to contrast the balance between piety and loyalty by having Jinzha’s actions be motivated by pleasing his father. In attempts to keep up a successful campaign, Jinzha made the decision to push through despite the poor circumstances and recent failures that the Republic Army suffered in order to prove himself to his father. In turn, he ended up being taken hostage by the Empire, murdered, cooked, and sent back to his father in the form of a meat dumpling. A common trope of ambition is the willingness in Chinese literature to eat a family member, which is a measure of political determination.^[18] Given this, the refusal for Vaisra to eat his son as Daji, the Empress, teases is a jab at his lack of determination. Although we never see the alternative, in which Nezha made decisions for the fleet, readers are left to wonder what would have happened if they turned back as Nezha advised, and what would have happened if Nezha was the one in charge instead of his brother. Everything that Jinzha said throughout the book was a direct result of his father, whereas Nezha is able to speak for himself to a certain extent.

Although this was only a small look into Kuang’s expansive mythological inspirations, closely examining the character Yin Nezha revealed a lot of the underlying complexities of the novel. Kuang showed how drawing off of legends and adapting them can really shape how a story is told. Kuang was able to adapt previous mythologies into a commentary on brutality and violence in times of warfare. One cannot read this novel and fully understand it, without fully understanding where it came from.

Bibliography

Kuang, R.F. The Dragon Republic. Harper Voyager, 2020.

Shahar, Meir. “Indian Mythology and the Chinese Imagination: Nezha, Nalakūbara, and Kṛṣṇa.” In India in the Chinese Imagination: Myth, Religion, and Thought, edited by John Kieschnick and Meir Shahar, 21–45. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.

Shahar, Meir. Oedipal God: the Chinese Nezha and his Indian Origins. University of Hawai’i Press, 2015.

Wilson, J. Keith. “Powerful Form and Potent Symbol: The Dragon in Asia.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 77, No. 8 (1990): 286–323.

Xu, Zhonglin 許仲琳. Fengshen Yanyi 封神演義 (Investiture of the Gods), circa 1567-1619.