The Beast and the Firecracker: How the World Turned Red

Once upon a time, long before your ah ma was even a baby, the world was a very grey place. The sky was grey, the trees were a dusty brown, and people wore clothes that looked like old dishwater. Back then, people didn’t have much to celebrate. They just tried to stay quiet. Why? Because of Nian.

Now, Nian wasn’t just a monster. He was a beast. He had the body of a bull, the head of a lion, and a horn that could slice through a mountain like a knife through soft tofu. He lived at the bottom of the sea, which was cold and dark. But once every 365 days, when the moon hid its face and the winter wind howled like a hungry dog, Nian would wake up.

He was hungry. Not for rice, not for noodles, and definitely not for veggies. He wanted… well, let’s just say he wasn’t a vegetarian.

The Village of Stone Creek

In a small village called Stone Creek, everyone was packing. “Faster, lah!” Uncle Chen shouted, tossing blankets into a cart. “Nian is coming! If we don’t hide in the mountains, we’re all toast!”

Among the panicked villagers was a boy named Eddy. Eddy was twelve, had hair that always stood up like a startled cat, and was famous for two things: being very skinny and being very loud. While everyone else was afraid of Nian, Eddy was mostly just annoyed.

“Every year we run away,” Eddy complained to his best friend, Belly. “It’s so mafan (troublesome). Why can’t we just fight it?”

Belly, who was much smarter and carried a heavy bamboo staff, rolled her eyes. “Fight it? Eddy, Nian is the size of a house. You are the size of a bamboo shoot. Use your brain, can or not?”

But Eddy didn’t want to run. He looked at the grey village and felt sad. “If we keep running, we’ll never have a home. We need a plan.”

The Old Man and the Red Paper

As the villagers scrambled toward the hills, an old beggar came limping into town. He had a beard so long he practically tripped over it, and he was wearing a tattered coat.

“Food… please…” the old man wheezed.

Everyone ignored him. They were too busy saving their own skins. But Eddy stopped. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, cold sweet potato.

“Here, Gong Gong (Grandpa),” Eddy said. “Eat quick, then run. The Beast is coming tonight.”

The old man ate the potato in two bites. He looked at Eddy with eyes that twinkled like stars. “You have a good heart, boy. But why are you running? Don’t you know Nian is a scaredy-cat?”

Eddy and Belly stared at him. “Scaredy-cat? He eats people!” Belly cried.

The old man chuckled. “He has big teeth, yes. But he has weak eyes and sensitive ears. He hates three things: the color of blood, the sound of thunder, and the smell of burning.”

He reached into his bag and pulled out a scrap of paper. But it wasn’t grey. It was bright. It was bold. It was a color the children had never seen before.

“What is that?” Eddy gasped.

“This,” the old man said, “is Red. It is the color of life, the color of fire, the color that makes the shadows run away.”

The Midnight Stand

The old man disappeared into the mist, leaving Eddy and Belly with a stack of red paper and a crazy idea.

“We’re staying,” Eddy said.

“We’re going to die,” Belly sighed, but she gripped her staff anyway. “Fine. But if I get eaten, I’m haunting your ghost forever.”

They worked all afternoon. They pasted the red paper over the doors of Eddy’s house. They gathered dried bamboo stalks and piled them in the center of the yard. Eddy even found some old blasting powder that the miners used to break rocks. He stuffed the powder into the hollow bamboo sticks.

“What are you doing?” Belly asked.

“Making ‘fire-crackers,'” Eddy grinned. “If Nian wants thunder, I’ll give him a storm.”

The Shadow in the Mist

Night fell. The village was silent. The only sound was the thump-thump of the children’s hearts. Suddenly, the temperature dropped. A thick, salty mist rolled in from the sea.

THUD. THUD. THUD.

The ground shook. A roar ripped through the air—a sound so loud it made Eddy’s teeth ache. Out of the darkness emerged Nian. His scales were green and slimy, and his eyes glowed like two yellow lanterns.

Nian smelled the air. Human scent, he thought. Fresh and tasty.

He headed straight for Eddy’s house. But as he got closer, he stopped. He blinked. He rubbed his eyes with a massive paw.

“What… is… that?” Nian growled in a voice like grinding stones.

The red paper on the door was glowing in the moonlight. To Nian, who lived in the dark grey sea, the red looked like screaming fire. It hurt his eyes. He backed away, hissing.

“Now!” Eddy yelled.

Belly threw a torch into the pile of bamboo.

POP! CRACK! BOOM!

The blasting powder inside the bamboo exploded. It wasn’t just a noise; it was a series of sharp, ear-splitting cracks that echoed off the mountains.

BANG! SNAP! POW!

Nian jumped three feet into the air. He had never heard anything like it. To him, it sounded like a thousand dragons were biting his ears. He started to tremble. His “tough monster” act was falling apart fast.

The World Turns Red

Eddy jumped out from behind a water barrel, waving two huge sheets of red paper like wings. “Go away, you big bully! Go back to your fish friends!”

Belly joined in, banging a metal pot with her staff. CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

Between the blinding red paper, the exploding bamboo “firecrackers,” and the noise, Nian had enough. He tucked his tail between his legs, turned around, and ran so fast he tripped over his own claws. He dove back into the ocean with a giant SPLASH and kept swimming until the water turned warm.

The next morning, the villagers returned. They expected to find ruins. Instead, they found Eddy and Belly eating breakfast on the porch of a house covered in beautiful, bright red paper.

“It worked!” the villagers cried.

“No more running, lah!” Eddy shouted, throwing a piece of red paper into the air.

From 그날 (that day) on, the people of Stone Creek changed everything. They realized that grey was boring and scary. They started painting their doors red. They wore red clothes to keep the “bad luck” away. They made thousands of bamboo firecrackers to celebrate the night Nian ran away.

And do you know what? The color spread. It moved from the houses to the lanterns, from the lanterns to the envelopes, and from the envelopes to the very hearts of the people. The world wasn’t grey anymore. It was full of heat, light, and the loud, happy pop-pop-pop of celebration.

And that, my friends, is why even today, when the New Year comes, we wear our best red shirts, eat way too much food, and make as much noise as possible. Just in case a certain sea monster is thinking about coming back for a snack.