Chinese Mythology: The Four Dragon Kings
Does anyone remember Ao Guang? Or the other three Dragon Kings? Or did anyone watch Ne Zha 2025?
You may then know of the Four Dragon Kings of Ancient China (四海龙王).
Historically all four of them are male- some recent adaptations will show one (or more) of them as female just for fun. China, even in ancient times, did not have four seas around it- the four dragon kings each correspond to a body of water in the cardinal directions.
The big guy, Ao Guang, the Dragon King of the East, does have a “sea”: the East China Sea.
A carving of Ne Zha fighting Ao Guang (we all remember how that went, right?)
We know and love Ao Guang since he’s the one who got Ne Zha killed (after both he and his son got their asses beat) and is also the guy who gave Sun Wukong his mythical weapon, the Ruyi Jingu Staff (maybe will make a post on mythological weapons at some point).
His third son, Ao Bing, is famous for getting his tendons plucked out by Ne Zha.
Subtitles: I'll pull your tendons out, see if you can still hurt anyone after this! (sorry for Ne Zha being kind of naked, he's a kid who was just taking a bath)
Ao Guang is the biggest, most powerful Dragon King.
In the Fengshen Yanyi (Investiture of the Gods post here), he’s a big dickhead who forces people to give him offerings or he’ll bring them drought and disaster. He’s very powerful, and is the leader of the Four Dragon Kings.
He’s also the sexy dragon dilf dad in Ne Zha 2.
I just cannot get over this character design, oh my goodness.
Ao Run, pronounced Ow Rwen (also sometimes called Ao Ji) is the Dragon King of the West.
He does not have a “sea”: in fact, he rules over the biggest lake in China, Qinghai Lake. It’s big enough that we consider it a sea, I guess. It used to be considered an actual sea (like, connected out to the open ocean) probably because it’s huge, but it was probably never actually a sea.
Lake Qinghai has shrunk a lot. You can tell in this picture: right now it’s about the size of Trinidad.
See all that dry land? Used to be lake.
It’s very blue, which is why it’s called Qinghai 青海 (blue sea). Qing generally refers to a bright blue-teal shade.
Ao Run’s son, Ao Lie, is the dragon that is sentenced to death by the Jade Emperor for setting fire to Ao Run’s palace accidentally and destroying a whole bunch of stuff. In the end, Guanyin Pusa spares Ao Lie’s life and sends him on the Journey to the West with Wukong, Tangsen, Zhu Bajie and Sha Wujing. You may recall that Tangsen had a big fancy white horse- that’s Ao Lie!
You may notice in this picture everyone else's names are labeled except for the horse. It's kind of sad- he's a little irrelevant.
A huge downgrade, from being a fancy dragon prince to a horse, but you can’t say he didn’t deserve it.
He's also featured in Fei Ren Zai (a very funny comic/animation series about mythical figures in modern-day also featuring Ne Zha, Wukong and Erlang Shen).
You may remember Ao Run from Ne Zha 2, 2025 as the sexy dragon lady with the killer sky-splitting manicure.
Sorry, she did things to me when I first saw her appear in her human form.
Ao Shun, pronounced Ow Shwen, is the Dragon King of the North.
He also does not have a “sea”, like Ao Run. His patron body of water is what’s now known as Lake Baikal (Wikipedia better not fail me, I actually had no idea where the North China Sea was supposed to be).
Lake Baikal is the deepest lake in the world, it’s right up there in the south part of Siberia. North enough for you?
Back when the Han dynasty was fighting the Xiongnu (the Huns in Disney’s Mulan, basically), they beat the Xiongnu in a battle here. They saw this huge-ass lake, and decided they’d refer to it as the North China Sea. Lake Baikal is larger than Belgium. A little scary, no?
In Ne Zha 2, he was the freaky purple-green guy with blades all over his body. You may remember him fighting Ao Bing in a very exciting battle sequence. I’m not aware of any myths where he’s of any significance.
A hard pass. Sorry, second uncle. Your big brother and younger sister are much hotter.
Ao Qin, pronounced Ow Chin (敖钦) is the Dragon King of the South.
The South China Sea of recent geopolitical tension fame is in fact a sea. Other than Ao Guang, he’s the only one with an actual sea. There’s not much to say about Ao Qin, he’s not that relevant.
If you remember him from Ne Zha 2, he’s the big red one who’s dumb as bricks..
The Four Dragon Kings are really not that important aside from Ao Guang and Ao Run. Ao Guang is a key mythological figure- he appears in many myths, and is a semi-major character in Journey to the West.
Ao Run contributes mainly by giving Tangsen a horse in the form of his son. Poor Ao Lie.
In the 1979 Ne Zha Conquers the Sea, they are all seen briefly scheming with Ao Guang to go Karen-style and ask for the manager (Jade Emperor).
They're all siblings (since they have the same last name, Ao), with Ao Guang being the oldest brother. The order of ages past that is a little harder to figure out- from what I know, their ages are
I actually don't know where Ao Run is in the ranking, I just know Ao Qin is younger than Ao Shun. As such, Ao Run could be either the youngest, the second youngest or the third youngest.
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