INTRO:

Hello and welcome to Myth Monsters, my name is Erin and I’ll be your host for these little snack bite size podcasts on folklore and mythical monsters from around the world. 

These podcasts focus on the actual cryptids, folklore and mythic monsters from global mythology, rather than focusing on full stories of heroes and their big adventures.

I’ll also be dropping in some references that they have to recent culture and where you can see these represented in modern day content so you can learn more, and get as obsessed as I am about these absolute legends of the mythological world.

We’re doing something a little different today and heading over to the East to talk about Nian, the mythical beast behind New Year in Chinese culture. He’s kind of our first named monster too actually so the format for this episode might be a little disjointed in comparison to normal but it’s an absolutely great story.

Before we start though, I would love to give a big shoutout to my cousin Charlie and his lovely wife Echo, who is Chinese herself, for helping me with this episode, from pronunciations to suggestions of modern adaptations - they’ve massively helped and they also put forward this monster, so thank you for your support from the beginning and I love you both very much.

DESCRIPTION:

Nian is described as a beast that lives under the sea or in the mountains in China. He’s a massive monster, who has a jaw big enough to devour many people in a single mouthful, and had horns, an enormous tail, and a combination of the body of a bull with the head of a lion. Some versions of the myth describe it as having a lion's face, a dog's body and a very prominent set of front teeth, whilst others are that it’s bigger than an elephant, with two long horns and razor sharp teeth.

He’s also sometimes described as a demon, but I think that’s more a turn of phrase, he would be considered a beast or monster - although it does seem that he might be immortal based on the stories.

Nian would live on his own until the end of the lunar year, then he would run down to nearby villages and hunt people and livestock to eat. He would eat all the food, livestock and grain, and apparently his favourite snack was children - so it was often used as a boogeyman/warning kind of story too. It was considered deadly and it was massively feared around the time this myth was going around.  

It’s only weaknesses were loud noises, fire and the colour red, 

Just as a note too, Nian was considered a singular monster, there weren’t multiples of him - he was just the one dude. Although in some modern adaptations, it’s implied there are multiple, the mythology has only ever said that there was one and only one Nian.

Also just as context if you didn’t know much about Chinese New Year - it’s celebrated every year between January 21st and February 20th, whenever the newest moon appears, celebrating the end of Winter, and the beginning of the spring. It’s one of the most important holidays in China and the surrounding countries too like Tibet, Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Cambodia to name a few. This celebration goes on for 15 days, until the 15th day of the new year - which is when the Lantern festival wraps up the holiday. 

ORIGIN:

So time for the origin story - back in ancient times, the race of man was still a bit weak and were realistically just prey for animals in the mountains. One of these was Nian. The Jade Emperor, one of the Chinese deities, knew this was a bit too much and forced Nian to stay in his mountain most of the time, the only exception being the 1st and the 15th day of every new year as spring bloomed. Nian was so hungry at this point, he would eat entire villages of people who would be silly enough to leave themselves open to an attack. 

The villagers did eventually learn when he would be released, they would board up their windows, leave food out and only go out during the brightest part of the day, hoping that the monster would pass them by without killing anyone in their household. 

However, the gods realised that actually this was a bit much too, and decided one year to go down and assist the villages against his annual feasting.

So totally related, a random old man visited the village before Nian's descent. He heard the villagers talking about Nian, and asked them why they feared him, as there was only one of him and many of them - surely he can’t kill all of them? The villagers practically laughed him off, and went and locked themselves away for the night. However, that night Nian never came to the village. 

The reason? The old man had found Nian, got on his back and ridden him around the countryside all evening - attempting to tire the beast out. Nian went back to his cave in the morning, starving hungry but completely worn out. The old man did this for the next few nights, and word spread around the village that he was the one delaying it. 

However, he said that he couldn’t protect them like this forever, and explained that actually, he was a God and had other things to do, like Gods do, ya know. We assume this is the Jade Emperor, based on the origins of this story, but this isn’t actually confirmed.

Anyway, the villagers were scared the Nian would come back and they begged him to help them kill the monster. The old man replied that Nian cannot be killed, but you can make him stop attacking the village, as he’s easily spooked. He doesn’t like the colour red, and is scared of loud noises and strange creatures. They came up with a plan to hang red signs on their doors, make loud noises with drums, music and set off fireworks. Most importantly, to give the children face masks and lanterns to protect them from his gnashers. Very literally paint the town red.

Nian came that night, and was petrified of the noise and red everywhere and fled back to his cave. During the same month every year, the villagers did the same thing, and Nian eventually never came back.

Eventually this became tradition nationwide to keep Nian away from any villages, and this is now how China celebrates the Lunar New Year.

Now onto the origins of this myth. The earliest written down versions that refer to Nian as a creature, date back to as early as the 20th century in Shanghai. This actually spreads some doubt on whether Nian is actually authentic as a part of traditional folklore, or if it’s more of an old wives’ tale. However, as I’ve said numerous times before on this podcast, that’s really all folklore is as a whole!

Apparently the use of the fear of noise and fire correlates with ancient legends of the Chinese people having to use firecrackers to drive off some monkey-like predators called the Shanxiao. This info was written down in a book called the Shanhaijing, which in English means Classic of Mountains and Seas, which was a Chinese bestiary and collection of mythical geography and monsters from Chinese folklore! It was written around the 4th century BC - which if you didn’t know, was a very long time ago.

Now to the etymology, in Chinese the word for New Year is Xin Nian—which literally means to "pass over Nian" or "overcome Nian - so even the name for New Year is linked to the Nian myth, keeping that narrative very much alive which is fab.

However, Nian does have a few other meanings in Chinese - there’s a book called The Erya, which is the first Chinese dictionary from the 3rd century BC - which records that the word Nian was first used to mean year during the Zhou dynasty, which was 1000 - 771 BC. Another Chinese dictionary, the Shuowen Jiezi from around 100 AD says that Nian means ripeness of grains, and apparently it was used in talking about a great harvest - which kind of makes sense with the Nian’s voracious appetite.

CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE: 

Onto cultural significance, firstly we have to talk about Chinese New Year festivals - they’re absolutely amazing if you’ve not been to one, or even seen one on TV or in a movie. But you can see Nian represented with the lion dance, and any Lion based costumes are said to be Nian too! You can see these parading the streets during this time, alongside the famous Chinese dragons - which we’ll talk about another time on the podcast.

Art is tricky this week, there are a few ancient Chinese drawings that you can see these, but I would really recommend going to celebrate New Year in your local Chinatown or heading out to China to celebrate this to see the absolute spectacle that is the parades with the costumes. That’s how I would say you can experience this the best, and really get into the culture if that’s something you fancy doing.

There are loads of movies that have Chinese New Year scenes with the Nian costumes, but we’re gonna talk about specific Nian movies - there’s actually a very new 2021 Apple TV only release called Nian, which was shot entirely on an iPhone and as much as I detest Apple products, looks amazing - it’s also got really great reviews. There’s another movie called Nian that came out in 2020, but it looks a bit ropey - so not sure if that one is worth the watch. 

For TV - Nian makes an appearance in an episode of Three Delivery, which is a Canadian cartoon inspired by martial arts movies. Nian’s are also in Spirit Warriors, which was a BBC/CBBC show here in the UK and was based around Chinese myths. Nian here was shown as a ninja human in this show though, but fun fact that it was the first British TV drama to have a predominantly East Asian cast, so there’s that - but negative is that that didn’t happen til 2009, eek.

For games, there are actually quite a few - he features in Guild Wars, World of Warcraft for the Lunar festival, Dota 2, World of Kung Fu, King of Avalon and Perfect World International.

I’ve got two book recommendations this week - one being Chinese myths and Folktales by Barnes and Noble, and the other being Chinese fairy tales and legends by Frederick H Martin, which are both absolutely chock-full of fairy tales and myths from Chinese culture and are both really good for anyone wanting to learn anything about Nian, or any other Chinese folklore.

DO I THINK THEY EXISTED? 

Now it’s time for, do I think they existed?

As much as I love the ongoing tradition and the folklore behind this monster, I’m not massively sure that it’s something that I can get behind existing unfortunately. Although, I’m sure that potentially there may have been rabid dogs or bears that attacked villages, not sure that a lion would be around to eat people. 

I’m not sure the logistics of this existing would work now unfortunately, due to the apparently massive size and the fact that it was only allowed out twice a year, but within two weeks of each other - what would it do the other time? I bet he’s a master pianist, or maybe he has a podcast too or something. We’ve all been stuck in isolation my dude, join the party.

It makes sense that fireworks would scare anything off too, they scare me and I’m a person so. I do love the whole Godly intervention thing too, that they realised they made a horrible mistake in creating it and were like, yeah we’ll help get rid of it now. 

But it’s a great story, with a fantastic enduring legend based around it that still continues today and I just love how enriching this story is to this cultural event as well known as Chinese New Year and the Lantern festivals.

And I can say very whole-heartedly that very few other myth monsters can lay claim to a legacy as long and as amazing as the Nian too - so this was a really great monster for the podcast.

OUTRO: 

See? What a great story, I love learning about this kind of thing and I feel like this should definitely be taught at schools if it wasn’t already - I know I didn’t learn about it, but we always made a big deal out of Chinese New Year - so not sure. 

Next week we’re venturing to pastures new and heading down to Oceania for the mysterious Bunyip from Australian Aboriginal mythology! Sink into the swamp with me next week to look at this ancient creature!

For now thank you so much for listening, it’s been an absolute pleasure. If you enjoyed this podcast, please give it a rating on the service you’re listening on - I’ve got the twitter for any questions, or suggestions on what monsters to cover next and I’d love to hear from you. The social media handles for Tiktok and Instagram are mythmonsterspodcast, and twitter is mythmonsterspod. But all of our content can be found at mythmonsters.co.uk - the shiny new website!

So come join the fun and share this with your pals, they might love me as much as you do.

But for now, stay spooky and I’ll see you later babes.