Toward the end of 2006, an on-line debate -- probably the hottest China had ever seen since the Internet found its way into the country in the early 1990s -- broke out: whether a legendary animal translated into "dragon" should continue to serve as the symbol of China.

Nearly one million Internet surfers have aired their views on remarks of Professor Wu Youfu of Shanghai Foreign Studies University, proposing that the "proper authorities" "revoke" the status of 龍 (pronounced as “long”) as representative of the country's image, even though the legendary animal has a prominent connotation in the Chinese culture many millenniums old.