Beijing, Jan 4 (IANS) A set of stamps to mark the Year of the Dragon has aroused a heated debate on the image of the legendary creature after China Post unveiled on the stamp.

“The moment I saw the design, I was almost scared to death,” Zhang Yihe, a noted writer said in her post on weibo.com, China’s Twitter-like social networking service and microblogging service provider.

China Daily quoted another post on the Web as saying: “The dragon on the stamp looks too ferocious.”

“It is roaring and intimidating,” read another.

Few mythological beasts could better arouse a national debate in China than the dragon because Chinese believe they are descendants of the legendary creature, the daily said.

The stamp for the Year of the Dragon, the third set of its kind issued by China Post since 1949, used a make-up that was close to China’s first stamp in 1878 during the Qing Dynasty.

For thousands of years, the Chinese have named each year after an animal in a 12-year cycle.

The dragon ranks fifth in the cycle, after the mouse, ox, tiger and rabbit, but before snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog, and pig. 2012 is the Year of the Dragon.

Dragons are traditionally considered to symbolize auspicious powers in China with their control over water, rainfall, hurricane and floods. Emperors in ancient China used the dragon as a totem of imperial power.

Chen Shaohua, designer of the new stamp, upheld his work, saying the dragon should not be too gentle in image. Otherwise it does not fit the portraits of dragon in the minds of most Chinese.

“Dragon is the deity of the 12 animals in the Chinese Zodiac and you can’t modernize the creature like cartoons,” said Chen, who once designed the emblem of Beijing’s bidding for the 2008 Olympic Games.