Twice ToldJingangzuan, 1 February 1935: Shushi, 'On passing the year'
- Language
- Chinese
- Reading
- transcribed from the page image
- Translation
- ours
- Retrieved
- 24 September 2026
Two years after his first mention of a beast called Nian, Sun Yusheng wrote a short front-page piece for Jingangzuan under his pen name 漱石. The masthead date is 中華民國廿四年二月一日, 1 February 1935. The Western New Year had just passed and the lunar year-end, when debts fell due, was coming.
烏兔催人、歲華易逝、陽歷年關甫過、陰歷年關又來、一年三百六十日、每日皆匆匆易過、惟此殘年之數日、在富貴者固毫無所苦、而貧乏者殊覺大難、良以銀錢至此、爲一歲總結束之期、乃致點金無術者、往往債台高築、而恨不能與周赧王把臂同登也、憶幼嘗聞諸父老言、年惡獸也、其形似獅非獅、似狗非狗、專喜夜出食人、畫家繪紫微星、柱上所鎖之獸、即係此物、以是迷信之人、每有於新歲間懸之中堂、以爲禳解者、此一說也、雖不見經傳、無從考證、或有爲齊東野人之言、然年爲惡獸、以邇日之社會觀之、頗爲近似、蓋窮人之視年關、恆有生命危險之虞、其慄慄畏懼、有甚於猛獸當前、幾乎不膏其血吻者、是則安得有紫微星其人、爲之執縛此獸、或竟撲殺之、以爲民除此大患、使人人得安度殘冬、相率共遊乎熙皞之天耶、或應之曰、事在人爲、苟平日不欠債、則年便不足畏矣、余聞而憬然曰、敬受教、
Translation
The sun and moon hurry us on and the years slip away. The solar year-end has only just passed and the lunar year-end is here again. Of the three hundred and sixty days in a year, every one goes by in a rush except these last few, which cost the rich nothing and the poor a great deal, because this is when the year’s accounts are settled. Those who cannot conjure money end up piling debts to the sky, and wish they could climb King Nan of Zhou’s debt tower arm in arm with him.
I remember hearing the elders say, when I was small, that Nian was an evil beast. It was shaped like a lion and not a lion, like a dog and not a dog, and it liked to come out at night and eat people. The beast chained to the pillar in paintings of the Ziwei star is this very creature, which is why superstitious people hang such a picture in the main hall at the New Year to ward it off. That is one account. It is not in the classics and there is no way to check it; it may be the talk of country folk. Still, looking at society these days, the Nian as an evil beast is not far from the truth. To the poor, the year-end reckoning is a threat to life itself. Their trembling dread is worse than that of someone facing a fierce beast, all but feeding its bloody jaws. Where is a Ziwei to seize and bind this beast, or kill it outright, and rid the people of this great evil, so that everyone could get safely through the last of winter and live together in peace and plenty?
Someone replied: it is up to people themselves. If you don’t run up debts in ordinary times, the Nian is nothing to fear. When I heard this I woke up and said: I stand corrected.
Notes
- Transcription conventions: characters as printed, with the printer’s 、 as the only punctuation. The first character of the reply, 應, is partly broken on the page.
- 年關, “the year’s pass”, was the lunar year-end, when shops and lenders collected debts. 債台高築 alludes to King Nan of Zhou, said to have hidden from his creditors on a tower.
- Compared with the 1933 column, the name Nian is no longer one guess among two: the beast is given a shape (lion-like, dog-like), a habit (eating people at night), and a source (the elders, in the writer’s childhood). The link to the Ziwei print stays. The writer says outright that the story is not in the classics.
- The piece is as much about year-end debt as about the beast. The Nian is used as a figure for the creditors, and the ending turns it into a joke about thrift.