春节的由来

Source: : Global Times [09:41 February 08 2010]

Spring Festival is the first traditional festival in China in the year. It begins on the first day of the first month of the Chinese lunar calendar and ends on the 15th day, so the Spring Festival is also called “Lunar New Year”.

The origin of Chinese Lunar New Year can be traced back more than 4,000 years through a series of legends. According to one of the famous legends, in ancient China there once lived a ferocious horned beast called “Nian” which literally means “year” in Chinese. The beast lived in deep sea throughout the year but surfaced on New Year’s Eve to eat cattle and people in Peach Blossom village. People would flee to the remote mountainous areas on the New Year’s Eve to avoid the monster.

However, one New Year’s Eve, an old man holding a stick came to the Peach Blossom village. The villagers were in a hurry to run away, closing their windows and locking the doors. No one cared about the old beggar. Only a grandmother gave the old man some food and told him to run away. But the old man told her that he can drive away the beast and insisted he would stay and beat the monster.

At the midnight, the Nian beast entered the village and found the old woman’s house was lit and a piece of red paper was pasted on the door panels. The monster was about to leap into the house, but stopped when it heard the sound of loud crackling from the courtyard.

In fact, the beast was scared of the color red, fire and the sound of explosions. At that moment the old man came out of the door with a bright red cloak and laughed heartily. The beast was so terrified that it fled the village.

The story soon spread to the other villagers who concluded the old man was celestial being who came to help them, and that the red paper, red cloth and firecrackers can drive out the Nian monster.

Since then, on every New Year’s Eve, people paste red-paper couplets and set off firecrackers and light up candles. This custom has been passed down for generations to today.