indessed roscivs

Speaking of the Chinese New Year, I was doing a little reading on Wikipedia about the subject. In the article, I came across this passage:

According to legend, in ancient China, the nián (年), a man-eating beast from the mountains, could silently infiltrate houses to prey on humans. The people later learned that the nian was sensitive to loud noises and the color red, so they scared it away with explosions, fireworks and the liberal use of the color red. These customs led to the first New Year celebrations.

I was quite astounded to realize that I recognized the Chinese character for the beast: 年. It’s the exact same character that the Japanese use for “year” in the phrase ichi-nin-sei (meaning “first year student”), one of the few phrases I’ve learned the kanji for. And “nin” sounds suspiciously like “nián”, the name of the beast.

Sure enough, Wikipedia confirms that “the Chinese word for year is based on the arrival of this beast [Nián]“. Presumably the Japanese then borrowed the word for year from the Chinese, thus preserving this Lion-beast’s name in such mundane phrases as “first year student”.

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