Short Story: New Year's Special

It's just after the Chinese New Year!

It is also called the Spring Festival. In 2006, the Spring Festival folklore was approved by the State Council in China to be included in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage lists. Chinese New Year (Lunar New Year) was designated as a United Nations holiday by the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly. Every Chinese New Year is the happiest time for children to receive lucky money! New Year's money is an important custom in traditional Chinese culture, it is usually referred to during this period to give children with a red envelope wrapped. Some are given on New Year's Eve and some on the first day of the New Year according to different customs.

Every New Year's Eve in ancient China, a beast called “Sui(祟)” would come out to harm people by touching a sleeping child on the head, which would make the child cry and get sick. People fear that the evil spirits will come out and harm people, so they will stay with kids on New Year's Eve, which is called the “Shou Sui(守祟)”. Later, a family put eight copper coins on the child's pillow, and when Sui came, he was scared off by the eight coins. Therefore, people called this money "defeat Sui (压祟)”. Because the words "祟" and "岁" are homophones in Chinese, the money is called "压岁钱" (lucky money) as the years go by. In addition to warding off evil spirits, lucky money also represents the love, care and blessings of the elders to the younger generation. The gift of lucky money is an expression of blessings from elders to their juniors wishing them peace, health, academic progress and career success in the new year.

As it is a story, the other version is in Jiaxing Province, there was a family surnamed Guan, the couple had a child in their old age, and they treat him as the jewel in the palm of their hand. During New Year's Eve, the child played with a package wrapped in red paper containing eight copper coins until bedtime and wrapped eight copper coins on the side of the pillow. In the middle of the night, Sui came and touched the head of the child with its white hand, the child's pillow suddenly cracked out a bright light, and the beast hastily retracted his hand, screamed and fled.

Edited By Anna Cao