The dragons alongside Santa Rosa Creek regain their heads

“We have our dragons back!” Nancy Wang said with glee Monday afternoon from alongside Santa Rosa Creek, flowing with the gift from recent rains.

Wang, president of the Redwood Empire Chinese Association, addressed a crowd of several dozen people that gathered on the paved creek trail beneath Highway 101 to dedicate the restored mural depicting two sinewy, Asian dragons.

For a time, the mythical creatures’ heads were only implied, seeming to disappear below the sidewalk or around a corner. The reluctant decapitation of the dragons occurred after repeated vandalism shattered their eyes and heads.

Wang and other members of the Chinese-American community last year decried the decision by the Art in Public Places Committee to remove the heads as culturally insensitive.

“It was pretty sad,” Wang said Monday.

Using $8,400 in public-art dollars paid by builders, the committee earlier this year had the mural’s creator, the Artstart mentoring program, restore heads to both dragons. To discourage further vandalism, the heads were not painted on tiles but on thick sheets of steel placed well above the creek trail.

A clearly pleased Nina Bonos, chairman of the art committee, told the dedication ceremony, “Today we celebrate our cultural diversity.”

Lifting high a long paper dragon, dancers with the Chinese-American association dipped and snaked along the walkway to a drum beat, and raised their dragon’s head right up alongside those that now adorn the mural.

Wang explained that by doing so, the dancers would awaken the dragons on the restored piece of public art.

A new placard reads, in English and Chinese, “For thousands of years, the Asian dragon has represented good luck and protection. The dragon is the protector of our city, bringing beneficial rain and controlling floods.”