This respect for the dragon has relevance today for a remarkable creature which lives around the paddy fields of China's other great river, the Yangtze.
From Hanalei Valley Lookout, gaze down at one of the lushest valleys on the planet, where the heart-shaped leaves of taro rise from a patchwork of flooded fields.
One British birder laments the recent draining of supposedly protected paddies by the Wenyu, a river in Beijing that had been a place of rest for about 200 migratory species.
More than 90 percent of rice is grown in flooded paddies, which use a lot of water and release 11 percent of annual methane emissions, which accounts for one to two percent of total annual greenhouse gas emissions globally.