Long time ago, there was a mythical beast called Nian lived and hiding inside the cave. Every year, Nian will go out from its cave and hunting for food. So, on the first day of Chinese New Year, the villager begin their festival by fighting against the monster. Nian the monster would eat everything such as the livestock, crops, and even children and villagers. In order to protect themselves, they decided to prepare foods in front of the door so Nian would not attack more people.
Until one day, there was a girl wearing a red cloth for the first day of Chinese New Year and scared away the monster. The villagers finally understood that Nian is afraid the colour of red. Since then, they decided to wear all red, preparing red lantern,red spring scrolls, making noise inside the house and using firecrackers to frighten the monster. From then on, Nian never come to the village anymore and finally been captured by Taoist monk.
Later on, they repeated the custom from next generation to the next generation, congratulated each other and had a big celebration.
Angpao; The Red Package
After the great influence of red in celebrating the new year, the culture of red item become common among Chinese people. Red is associated with Lunar holiday, also for wedding ceremony and other Chinese festivals. As they realized red means luck and fortune, even the village has safe from the monster attack, they decided to thread coins with red string. Later on, the red string replaced by a red package as they believed to protect the elderly from evil spirits, sickness and death while for children is to memorialize the increase of age and year commutation . Angpao, Hongbao or Ya Sui; what ever the name it is, it become the 'money of warding off evil spirits.'
The Meaning of New Year Food
Chinese New Year is a great celebration against Nian the monster. To make it joyful and meaningful, Chinese people relate foods with luck, fortune, prosperity and wealth. Spring rolls symbolize wealth because it looks like a gold bars while clams are similar like bouillon. Pomelo in Chinese sounds like 'to have' and tangerine or orange been given to guests because those fruits sounds like wealth and luck, respectively. Fish, or 'yu' in Mandarin sounds like abundance and wish as sticky rice cake symbolize the rich abundance for the coming year.
Ref-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_New_Year
http://www.qingdaochinaguide.com/news/culture/chinese-new-year-nian-legend.html
http://www.chinatownconnection.com/chinese-new-year-legend.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_envelope
http://tmcatalyst.wordpress.com/blog/prima/the-history-of-angpao/
http://chinesefood.about.com/od/chinesenewyear/a/symbolicnewyear.htm
http://chineseculture.about.com/od/chinesefestivals/a/Countdown-To-Chinese-New-Year.htm
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