Once upon a time, long, long ago, the cloud-breathing dragons whose breath makes the moisture that nourishes the earth, became so angered by the disrespect of mankind they decided to withhold the rains to teach them a lesson. Without the rains, a severe drought fell over the land; rivers dried up in their courses, the crops withered, the grass turned yellow and fields cracked under the scorching sun. Day after day without rain, the land got drier and drier, and still there was no sign of the rain-bringing dragons, not even a cloud in the sky.  At this time there was a boy named Xiao Sheng, a cheerful and hard-working lad who used to earn just enough money to buy food for himself and his widowed mother by cutting fresh grass and carrying it to the village to sell for cattle fodder. But as the grasses withered and dried without rain, he had to go further and further into the hills to find any that was not dead. Things looked bad for himself and his mama, until one day he came across a patch of rich, lush grass, still thick and green as emeralds where the rest of the hills were parched and dry. He cut armfuls and armfuls of the fresh grass - as much as he could carry to the market - and yet the patch seemed just the same size as when he had found it. So he returned next day to cut more, and the day after, and still the lush grassy patch never diminished in size, no matter how much he took! “Instead of coming all this way every day to cut the grass, I could take some home and replant it there!” Xiao Sheng reasoned sensibly. And so that is what he did. He dug up a patch of the turf, and as he dug down to the roots to his surprise he found a beautiful pearl buried beneath it. “I am twice lucky today!” Xiao Sheng exclaimed happily, admiring the perfectly round and smooth pearl before slipping it into his pocket. Once he got home, he planted the grass beside the hut he shared with his mother. The pearl, they hid in at the bottom of an almost empty rice jar so no one would find it and try to steal it. The next morning Xiao Sheng found the grass withered and dead, but when he looked in the rice jar where he had hidden the pearl, it was magically filled to the top with rice. “It must be a dragon’s pearl!” he exclaimed, “Such pearls increase whatever they are kept with – as it was with the grass, so it is with rice or money!” From that day the poor grass-cutter and his widowed mother lacked for nothing, and since Xiao Sheng was a good and generous boy, they shared their new-found fortune with the other villagers. Hai, rumours began to spread about the source of their prosperity, and were soon filling the ears of the local yuan wai (squire, landowner). “The pearl is mine,” declared the yuan wai greedily, “Since I own the land it was found on, the pearl belongs to me and the boy must give it to its rightful owner!” He sent soldiers to demand the pearl be handed over to him, but Xiao Sheng refused. Rather than have it taken from him by force, he swallowed the pearl. Immediately he felt as if he was on fire! His stomach burned, and he ran to the river to try and quench the raging fire that filled him, drinking and drinking in his thirst until the river was almost dry. And as he drank, his body grew larger and larger and changed, becoming scaled like a carp and antlered like a stag. His hands grew into talons like those of an eagle, his long neck stretched out like a snake, and a serpent-like tail thrashed the river bank as the great dragon finally lifted its head and looked around. The greedy yuan wai and his soldiers tried to flee, but were drowned in the floods as the dragon brought long-waited rain to the parched and arid land, filling the dried up paddy fields and swelling the rivers so that they flowed again in their courses.  Finally the Most Honored and Precious Dragon that was Xiao Sheng left the village, swimming away down the river bearing the flaming pearl in his mouth. He sadly turned to look back at his mother - twenty four times - and each time he turned, his twisting body reshaped the river’s course, so that today that stretch of the river is carved into twenty-four dragonlike bends called Wang Niang Tan - the “looking back at mother bends”. This Chinese folktale has several variations. This version is adapted from that told at The Serene Dragon. The dragon image is from Wikipedia.