When it comes to the topic of monster, “Nian” is usually the first name that pops up in Chinese people’s minds. As a China born kid, i have heard numerous terrifying stories about superb Chinese monster Nian. In Chinese mythology, Nian has a shape of lion body and head of a unicorn. Ordinarily, Nian lives under the deep sea; however, it will come out and eats people, cattle and children in each spring around Chinese New Year time. With its extraordinary strength, lightening speed and the ability of controlling fire,   Nian can easily tear down a village in minutes. Eye of the Cyclops, neck of the titans (from Attack on titan), heel of the Achilles, even the greatests have their weakness, fortunately, Nian has two. This big bad ferocious beast is very sensitive to loud noises  and is afraid of red color (surprise haha).

By now, you probably can figure out why do Chinese people like to wear red color and light up fireworks during New Year time. With the combination of loud drums and red custom body suit, Chinese Dragon/Lion dance was made to scare off monster Nian essentially. Furthermore, the tradition of giving kids red pocket during New Year shares the same ideas. As far as i know, at least half amount of Chinese traditions were invented because of the existence of monster Nian. How lovely, isn’t it?

Along the same lines as the connection between Nian and Chinese custom; ghost, monsters and hallows have conspicuously effects on the eastern tradition holiday Halloween. And With more and more samples coming together, the relationships between peoples customs and the stories of monsters had me thinking, how much percentage of our tradition was based on the stories of monsters? What would our life be without monsters’ stories? Although monsters are precisely not something that we should be thankful to, our life certainly would be less interesting without them.