The Spring Festival is the most important and biggest festival in China. To the Chinese people it is as important as Christmas to people in the West.
It is the first day of the lunar calendar and usually lasts for about one month, heralding① the beginning of spring, thus it is known as Spring Festival. This traditional festival is also a festival of reunion, thus no matter how far away people are from their home, they would try their best to get back home to have the Reunion Dinner.
The Chinese meaning of this festival is Guo Nian. Guo means pass over and Nian means year. The origin of the Chinese New Year Festival can be traced back thousands of years.
According to one of the most famous legends, in ancient China there lived a monster named Year who, with a horn on the head, was extremely ferocious. Year lived deep at the bottom of the sea all the year round and climbed up to the shore only on New Year’s Eve to devour② the cattle and kill people’s lives.
Thereupon on the day of every New Year’s Eve people from all villages would flee, bringing along the old and the young, to the remote mountains so as to avoid the calamity caused by the monster of Year.
On the day of that New Year’s Eve the people of Peach Blossom village were bringing along the old and the young to take flight when there came from outside the village an old beggar. With a stick in his hand and a bag hanging upon his arm, he had eyes twinkling like stars and graceful beard as white as silver.
Seized with panic, the villagers were in a great hurry to run away. Some were closing the windows and locking the doors, some were packing, and others were urging the cattle and driving the sheep. At a time when the people were shouting and the horses were neighing③ no one was in the mood to care for the beggar.
Only a grandmother living in the east end of the village gave the old man some food and advised him to flee to the mountains to avoid the Year monster. But the old man stroked his beard and said with a smile, “If you allow me to stay at your home for the night, I’m sure to drive away the monster Year.”
The old woman was surprised to hear this. She looked at him unbelievingly only to find that, with white hair and ruddy④ complexion, the old man had a bearing out of the ordinary. She went on to persuade him to take flight. But he only smiled without reply. Thereupon the grandmother could not help but leave her home and flee to the mountains.
Around midnight the monster Year rushed into the villages. He found the atmosphere was quite different from that of the previous year. The house of the grandmother in the east end of the village was brilliantly illuminated⑤, with bright red paper stuck on the doors. Greatly shocked, the monster gave a strange loud cry.
The monster Year stared angrily at the house for a moment. And then howling furiously, he made a pounce on it. As he approached the door, there came all of a sudden the exploding sounds of bang-bong. Trembling all over, the monster dared not make a step forward.