Nian, the New Year Monster

The wind that blows down from the high jagged peaks of the northern mountains at the end of the year, does not just chill the skin. It whispers of things hiding in the dark. In the vast and beautiful land of China, a country of misty rivers, ancient forests, and stories older than the stones themselves, there was once a valley that dreaded the coming of winter. Like all the best legends, this story has been told in a hundred different ways, by grandmothers sitting near warm brick stoves, and by storytellers in bustling marketplaces. But the heart of the tale remains as true today as it was thousands of years ago. It is a story about the turn of the year, a time we now call the Lunar New Year. But back then, it was simply known as the time of the terror. In the heart of this valley lay the village of Peach Blossom. It was a peaceful place for 11 months of the year. The villagers farmed the rich soil, tended their orchards, and watched their children play under the shade of great willow trees. But as the days grew shorter, and the nights stretched out like long black shadows, a heavy silence would fall over the valley. The laughter of the children faded, the songs of the farmers ceased. Everyone, from the oldest grandfather to the smallest toddler, kept their eyes turned toward the dark, jagged outline of the mountain that loomed over their homes. For up in the freezing, wind-swept caves of that mountain, lived Nian. Nian was not an ordinary animal, nor was he a creature of mere myth. He was a beast of immense power and terrible hunger. The old stories say he was larger than an elephant, with a head that looked like a cross between a wild lion and a fierce dragon. A single sharp horn, polished to a deadly gleam, grew from his forehead, pointing toward the sky like a spear. His eyes were twin lanterns of cold, pale fire, and his mouth was filled with rows of teeth as sharp as icicles. But Nian did not eat grass, and he did not hunt the wild deer of the high forests. Nian hungered for the warmth of the valley. He hungered for the grain stored in the barns, the fat pigs in their pens, the gentle cattle in their stalls. And most terrifying of all, he hungered for the villagers themselves. For centuries, Nian slept through the spring, the summer, and the autumn, curled in a ball of icy fur deep within his mountain cavern. But on the very last night of the year, the night when the old year died and the new year was waiting to be born, the beast would wake. His stomach would rumble with a year's worth of hunger, and he would stretch his massive limbs. Then, under the cover of the pitch black moonless night, Nian would descend. The villagers of Peach Blossom had tried everything to protect themselves. They had built thick wooden gates, but Nian's horn splintered them like dry twigs. They had tried to fight them with spears and pitchforks, but the beast's hide was as tough as iron armor, and their weapons simply bounced off his chest, leaving him angry and even hungrier. And so, a grim pattern of dread established itself. Every year, on the eve of the Lunar New Year, the villagers did the only thing they could do to survive. They packed up their most precious belongings, gathered their children and their livestock, and abandoned their homes. They climbed high into the cold, bamboo forested hills on the opposite side of the valley, hiding in deep caves and shivering under blankets, waiting in the dark for the sun to rise. When dawn finally broke on the first day of the new year, they would creep back down to the valley. Every year, they found the same scene of devastation. Doors torn from their hinges, barns emptied, crops trampled into the frozen mud, and the heavy, terrifying footprints of the beast stamped into the snow. They would weep for what they had lost, but they would immediately begin…

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