Dragon Beard Grass

Dragon Beard Grass is a medicinal plant whose fine green blades and crimson roots make it both a practical ingredient in a life-saving remedy and the living trace of the Old Dragon’s departure from Green Island. When Mulan and her companions find the island’s hills barren of it, the absence becomes more than an obstacle: it points toward a place in turmoil. Its eventual return gives the quest a remedy and the island a visible sign of restoration.

Appearance and Medicinal Use

The Jade Rabbit describes Dragon Beard Grass as fine and wavy, capable of growing quite long, with bright-red roots when pulled from the earth. Mulan initially asks what it looks like beyond being green, a question that anticipates the detail that will later confirm she has found the right plant: the roots are crimson, like unraveled red silk threads. The plant’s appearance is distinctive, but its importance is not ornamental. It is one of two plants required for the cure, and the time remaining to gather what is needed is limited.

The grass must be carried carefully once collected. Lu Ting-Pin gives Mulan a pouch made from leaves treated with yellow oil, which he says is completely waterproof, so the precious plants will be protected during the voyage. At the later preparation of the remedy, Lu Ting-Pin calls urgently for the grass alongside the flower. Mulan takes both from the bag at her hip and drops them into the hot water in the cut-bottom of Lu Ting-Pin’s gourd. The plants dissolve, turning the water silvery violet and releasing a crisp scent compared to a cool spring morning. The Jade Rabbit drinks the mixture, but his eyes remain closed in the scene; the passage shows the grass entering the remedy, not the outcome of his recovery.

The Old Dragon’s Gift

The Jade Rabbit tells Mulan that the grass once covered the island’s hills in lush growth, extending all the way out to sea. Its origin lies in the story of the Old Dragon, an aged Immortal who lived on the island collecting herbs and plants and making medicines. People came to him for help, medicine, and advice, and his apparent wisdom and power led many to believe he was a dragon spirit in human form. Even those who did not share that belief called him the Old Dragon.

When the Old Dragon announced that he would leave, the islanders gathered to plead with him to stay. As he rose into the sky on a cloud, the desperate people reached for him and caught his long beard. Its hairs came away easily, like young weeds pulled from a garden, and tiny drops of red blood trickled from their ends. The people released the hairs in horror; the wind carried them across the island. They took root in soil enriched by the peaceful heart of the island, and the resulting growth spread until the island was carpeted with green Dragon Beard Grass. The island came to be called Green Island. In this account, the plant’s red roots retain a physical trace of the Old Dragon’s blood, while its spread recalls the gift left behind as he departed.

Disappearance and the Search

The old abundance has vanished by the time Mulan, the Jade Rabbit, and Lu Ting-Pin search for the grass. Lu Ting-Pin confidently promises that they will hunt beneath every rock and bush, but after docking and eating a quick meal of tea eggs and smelly tofu from a street peddler, they climb into the countryside and find not a single blade. The Jade Rabbit searches beneath a stone while Mulan struggles over crumbling dirt. From the highest hill, she can see their boat by its bright red sail and, beyond it, a cavern with what appears to be a statue at its opening; the landscape offers landmarks, but no medicinal plant.

The barren ground is connected in the Jade Rabbit’s mind to a change in the island’s soil. He says that for all the soil to have changed, the heart of the island must be in turmoil. Mulan recalls that the soil changed about twenty years earlier, around the time the Stone Statue appeared, and wonders whether the two events are connected. The narrative leaves her proposed connection as a question at this point, but the grass’s absence gives the island’s condition an immediate consequence: the party cannot gather an ingredient needed for the cure.

When the Jade Rabbit concludes that there is no chance of finding Dragon Beard Grass there, Lu Ting-Pin agrees. Mulan’s fear is sharpened by the thought of Xiu lying still in bed, but she also remembers that the Jade Rabbit needs the cure. She accepts that they must find the grass, even as he explains that they cannot travel elsewhere: only two days remain to reach the Queen Mother’s Garden before the new moon, and they must leave the following day. The plant’s disappearance therefore threatens both patients and compresses the journey into a deadline.

Return and Significance

Before leaving, Mulan goes back to the Stone Statue and the Odd-Shaped Rock. In the morning, she finds that both have crumbled into piles of dust and dirt. When she reaches toward the mounds, a gale blows the dust into the air. Sunlight catches the particles, making them glitter around her, and another gust scatters them over the cliffs. Where the two forms stood, she notices a thin layer of dust and something green beneath it: delicate stalks, as long as her fingers, curved and waving with the ocean’s rumble.

Mulan tests the discovery by gently pulling a sprout. Its roots are crimson, the identifying feature the Jade Rabbit had described. She gathers more and races over the hills to the Jade Rabbit and Lu Ting-Pin, holding the slender plants in her fist. Her arrival changes the search from failure to provision: the grass has reappeared in time to be packed for the voyage and used in the remedy. As the companions sail away, Green Island is no longer the jagged brown mass they had seen before. Yellow-green growth spreads over its peaks and rocks toward the sea, and Mulan understands its greening as evidence that the island’s heart is at peace. Dragon Beard Grass thus links the Old Dragon’s departure, the island’s remembered serenity, the crisis of the search, and the possibility of healing in a single plant.