The Legend of Chinese New Year

Hi guys since Chinese New Year is just around the corner I think it will be nice for us to know more about this super important celebration that we Chinese look forward to every year.

You must be wondering how Chinese New Year came about right? Legend has it that during the first day of the new year a great beast called "Nian" （年兽） or "Year" in Chinese will venture into villages to devour livestock and villagers especially children. Therefore in order to please this mythical beast, the villages have no choice but to offer all the crops and livestocks to it in order to safe their lives.

The legendary monster,'Nian'

This trend has continued for many year but on one particular year a small little girl was out playing while "Nian" was busy eating all the villagers offering. "Nian" saw the girl, instead of eating the girl it ran out of the village knocking down pans and other metal utilities causing a long bang which made it to run faster.



From this incident, villagers knew that the beast was afraid of red color and loud noise. Therefore in order to keep "Nian" （年兽） away from their village, they wil hang up red lanterns and other red color items at their house door and window. They also burn fire crackers to make sure it will not dare to come on the first day of the new year. From then on wards no one has ever seen the beast again.



Actually, no one knew how true this story is but this eventually became one of our custom to wear red color clothes and also to burn fire crackers to celebrate the first day of Chinese New Year. So the next time, don't be surprise if you see the Chinese hanging up red lanterns and other red color decorations on Chinese New Year ok ...

We wish all of you "Gong Xi Fat Cai".