Alright, fine.
Ladies and gentlemen of this
supposed fandom, I have one final thing I want you to consider.
Ladies and gentlemen,
this is Patchouli Knowledge. Patchouli is a magician youkai from the Magic Library Voile. But Patchouli
lives in the Scarlet Devil Mansion. Now think about it; that does not make sense!
Why would a magician, a purple beansprout magician, want to live in the Scarlet Devil Mansion, with a bunch of bratty vampires? That does
not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this debate?
Nothing.
Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this debate! It does not make sense! Look at me. I'm a YuugenMagan eye wearing a fedora defending Meiling's status as a generic youkai, and I'm talkin' about Patchouli! Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense! None of this makes sense! And so you have to remember, when you're in front of your computer thinkin' and linkin' the Touhou Wiki, does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed fandom, it does not make sense! If Patchouli lives in the Scarlet Devil Mansion, Hong Meiling is not a dragon! The defense rests.
~~~
Okay seriously now!
There are two meanings for the term "youkai". There's the conversational generic use which refers to pretty much every non-human species, this is what you're usually talking about when you talk about youkai in Gensokyo. However, when you're talking about what specific species a specific character is, that designation becomes much less broad and it's not appropriate to refer to just anything supernatural as a youkai.
I can prove it! Have a look at the
table of contents in Perfect Memento. While Akyu calls it a "Youkai Encyclopedia", she is using the term youkai in the generic sense, because there are some things listed here that are
very obviously not youkai, particularly celestials. This is why it is not correct to say that if Meiling is listed as a proper traditional youkai as her specific species, she can still be anything in the generic youkai umbrella.
But you know what, let's just set that aside because Akyu's failure to be clear about this stuff is whole 'nother bag of potatoes and I don't need it to argue beyond a reasonable doubt that Meiling is not a dragon.
Looking at Factorial's first post, all we have is the (admittedly generous) list of ways in which Meiling makes use of dragon aesthetics. However, this doesn't say anything by itself. For the sake of simplicity, let's just list two possibilities we can draw from this:
A) Meiling is an ordinary youkai with dragon aesthetics
B) Meiling is a dragon!
What evidence is there that supports Meiling being more than just a regular youkai? All the information we have on her is very cut-and-dry. No question marks have been raised, she is plainly stated to be an ordinary youkai who works as Remilia's gate guard and groundskeeper. If any of her bio entries either in the games or in Perfect Memento said something like "she has a mysterious past" or "nobody knows what kind of youkai she really is" then we would have a reason to wonder about it and maybe arrive at the conclusion that she could be a dragon.
Let's compare her to Sakuya. I don't like the "Sakuya is a Lunarian" theory either, but the difference is that it's actually grounded in canon facts: it's unknown how Sakuya came to serve Remilia, Sakuya isn't her real name, there are many rumors about her being from outside Gensokyo, and for some ridiculous reason Eirin knew who she was.
Meiling doesn't have any of these mysteries. They're not unanswered in canon, they're just undiscussed. There's no reason to think that you couldn't just walk up to Meiling, ask away, and have her tell you about herself like you could with any other character.
If you start considering the possibility of Meiling being a dragon, a huge number of problems and questions are raised, like "why isn't she smarter/stronger", "why is she working for Remilia", "why is this issue never ever hinted at in the plot", "why doesn't anyone know that there's a dragon in Gensokyo", etc etc. While you can propose answers to these questions, there is no evidence to support those answers, and when you compare the amount of hoops you have to jump through to validate this theory to the stark simplicity of "she's just a youkai who likes dragons", it becomes clear which is the better explanation.
In fact, I don't know why I didn't think to look this up sooner, but have a look at Meiling's bio in EoSD:
Chinese Girl
Hong Meiling
Ability: Control of Chi
Stage 3 boss. A Chinese-looking youkai.
Her clothing is colorful and somewhat traditional. She is the gatekeeper of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, and prevents intruders from beyond the lake from reaching the mansion. She is by no means a special character, but she is the first character that has something to do with the main story. Even if that something happens to be merely mentioning the Mistress.
She is by no means a special character
There you go. Word of God. Apart from ZUN
directly saying that she's not a dragon, I'm not sure how much clearer it can
possibly get that Meiling is an ordinary, run-of-the-mill youkai. In fact, she likely would have been a throwaway character like many of the early touhou girls if we fans didn't decide that we wub her very much, so I strongly doubt that she's being set up for such an important revelation (at an unbelievably slow pace, at that).
I mean geez if she was a dragon they could've at least had Iku talk to her or something to throw that up in the air, geez