Rid yourself of Creativity Eating Monsters

How Chinese new year can help us slay our fears

This in-depth post is the second in my 2024 monthly series based on cultural festivals. This month we look at the story behind Chinese New Year and how it can help us chase away the mental ‘monsters’ which eat away at our creativity with their negative talk.

The reimagining and retelling of the story is free to all but paid subscribers get the second half of the essay, the four coaching exercises that follow and access to the discussion chat.

The Early Bird deal has ended but I’ve created a new “Not Exactly Late” offer to welcome those of you who wish to be in on this series from the beginning (subscribe today and you can access the full January coaching post too).

This post has a lot of content so it might be truncated by your email provider. If so, just click through to Substack where you can read it in your browser and then easily access the comments too.

First, a story to set the scene:

In this month many years ago, in the centre of China, there came a moment of important change. But first, in the depth of night, there was a shuffling, creaking sound. Inside the house, Li awoke. He nudged his sister Mai who slept, her dark eyelashes clotted together next to him. As she grumpily batted him away the noise grew and deepened. Now it was a heavy crashing, all feet and grunting. The children froze, eyes as wide as the new moon outside then jumped, and ran, barefoot, jostling for purchase as they careened down the hall to their parents’ room.

“It’s coming! It’s coming for us!” they screamed.

Their parents sat bolt upright, two scared hands each reaching for courage in the other under the covers.

“Again? We must run.”

“No. It’s too late. We must hide.”

“But where?”

The children stood, pyjamas askew, shocked into silence by the lack of reassurance and cuddles. Behind them came the sound of chomping and the smacking of pulpy lips as Nian the lion-faced monster ate the cabbages in the neighbour’s garden. Even tiny Mai knew that this was only an appetiser. Her mouth opened but no scream came out, only the smell of fear from deep below her tonsils.

“Under the bed!”

Together they scrabbled into a huddle, banking on Nian choosing another house, another family this year. There they stayed in the dust and the cold, children’s faces buried into adult shoulders, waiting. As the spring moon fell and a timid sun stretched feelers over the horizon, wails could be heard from the village. Once again, the mighty Nian had applied his incisors to human flesh.

Image by Till Ahrens from Pixabay

The undersized coffins at the funerals were empty of bodies and weighted instead with stones and futility. Nian had gobbled the juicy children, bones and all, leaving not a trace left to claim before lumbering back to the mountains. After the three days of mourning, the community sent the surviving children to play and reform their friendships around the missing. Gathered together around a fire they debated. What had they done to deserve this yearly tragedy? How could next year be different?

The teenage boys wanted to fight, to gather sticks, stones and tharp wood cutting axes and to stay their ground. Their parents shook their heads. “You can’t fight the mythical with the material,” they said. “Next year we must all flee and hide.”

“But won’t the mythical monster only follow us?” the young asked. The middle-aged shrugged, weary with loss. “Maybe,” they said “but we must preserve all we have left the best we can.”

As the year passed, the fear of Nian receded behind daily chores and the gossip and laughter of village life. The first snow fell and as the villages saw the tracks of birds and mice across the fields their memories returned. They could not stop the moon in its cycle. As sure as it renewed itself in November and December, in January it would appear afresh and bring with it the horror of Nian.

They measured out a route, heading north away from the forest, a day’s walk. The youth, their brave enthusiasm tempered now with eleven months more of life, were engaged to drag wood to build a night shelter on the far boundary of the plain. Fathers returned from work a little earlier to hug their children. Mothers turned blind eyes to misbehaviours and pressed sweet treats into insolent mouths. Would their ruse succeed? Or would Nian, with his elephantine feet, simply trample their vegetable patches in his hungry search for flesh? Would he take revenge on all of them for denying him his dinner?

In the early hours of the day before the new Moon, the villagers gathered together by the schoolhouse. The heads of squirming children were counted, packs of food were taken from those on canes and re-distributed to the shoulders of the strong. Suddenly there was the sound of cracking twigs from the woods. The hubbub stopped. Were they too late? Had they simply rounded themselves up into easy-picking?

From the shadows came an old man. The schoolmaster nudged the blacksmith who whispered to the wife of the man who owned the brown cows who turned to the father of the shopkeeper. All had the same question but no one could supply a name. The Elder stepped into the group and bowed. “My name is Yanhuang,” he said. “I can help you.”

The father of the shopkeeper turned to the cow owner’s wife who agreed with the blacksmith when he told the school-master. “We have nothing to lose”. Yanhuang was welcomed into the circle and allowed to speak.

“Leave as you plan,” he said. “I will rid you of Nina. When you return you will see. There will be no deaths and I will teach you what to do next year for yourself.”

The adults smiled and raised a murmur of gratitude. The youths scoffed. “He’ll rob us blind,” they said. “You’re just going leave your stuff with a stranger?”

The parents cuffed them on the ears and reminded them that it was by the grace of God that they had themselves survived to think they always knew best. “If the monster is mythical,” they said, “maybe this man is a deity come to protect you from being snacked on.” The teens remembered the gaps in their not-so-long-ago games of hide-and-seek and shut their mouths. The schoolmaster took a carafe of water and three round buns from his pack and laid them at the feet of Yanhuang. Then, bowing gratefully, hopefully, in their leave-taking the villagers trudged off to their hut.

As night fell, they clung to each other for warmth, eventually nodding off to sleep. Until the bangs and cracks started. Loud, deep rhythmic thuds and sharp rat-a-tats carried over the dark land. What was going on? Everyone turned to the schoolteacher who had no answers. They sat as the noise subsided, bonded in their nervousness. Was the silence the sound of victory or did it signify the swallowing of Yanhuang? Finally,Li pointed excitedly into the air, Mai mimicking him. A single red lantern was drifting their way. Their cousin, a lanky youth, grabbed a no-longer-needed bamboo tent pole and, standing on tippy-toes, reached out to snag the lantern from the air. Attached to it was a note. It read simply: Come home now. The held breaths gave way to the nervous laughter of relief.

Late that afternoon, as the fittest approached the village, they saw a large drum in the square. The ground was littered with the casings of firecrackers and the red paper of lanterns. Yanhuang sat on the stoop of the schoolhouse a cup of tea in his hand. “I hope you don’t mind me using your stove,” he said. “Did you sleep OK out there?”

The elders threw up their canes into the air, clacked their remaining teeth and wracked their brains. No, there had never been an event so momentous in the history of the village. The teens checked their bedrooms for their possessions and begrudgingly acknowledged that the old guy might have some powers. The parents fell at his feet and begged him for his secret.

“Nian is all bluster and body and teeth,” he said. “But his weakness is in his ears and his eyes. Have you noticed that he eats the children whole? He cannot stand the colour of red - not even the blood of his prey. Have you noticed that he comes in the dead of dark? He cannot stand the sight of light. And do you remember how he doesn’t eat until you have fallen silent in your hidey-holes? He cannot stand noise. Stand your ground and make yourself bright and loud and Nian will be gone. No!” Here he held up his hand as the villagers pressed on him gold and honours. “No. it was my life’s work to do this. Knowing this is enough”. With that Yanhuang turned and left down the trail on which he had come, never to be seen again.

The next year the villagers gathered in December to debate. Should they build the lair again for the weak and young and leave the strong to try Yanhuang’s tricks? No said the women. Making noise did not require muscles. They would stay because if even one was eaten they all grieved anyway. No said the elders. Holding a light did not require vigour. They would stay because the wisdom of years was nothing if you gave up on miracles too soon.

So, as the new spring moon appeared in the sky they did as Yanhuang said, planting firecrackers ready on the boundary, giving the teens drums to beat and the eldest and youngest red paper lanterns to hold. In the dead of night, they waited for the first scrunch of leaves from within the forest. As Nian approached the perimeter, his mouth ready for treats, they lit the first firecrackers, tapped on the drum skins and sat, the heat of the candles inside the lanterns warming their hands. Through the thickets they saw the moon reflecting on Nian’s curved teeth, the white of his anticipatory eyes gleaming between the leaves. Trembling, they let off bigger fireworks, drummed in unison and stood on tottery legs, lanterns raised. Nian halted. Encouraged the parents ran the lines, setting off a furore of crackers. Sweat pooled on the shoulders of the teens as they rounded the drums. The Elders shouted and waved their lanterns sending arcs of light across the sky. Nian shut his capacious mouth and, head hung low, backed away through the undergrowth, his sinuous tail writhing a path of humble retreat.

Monstrous creative myths and how to rid yourself of them.

I live just a few miles from the oldest Chinatown in Europe, established in Liverpool by migrant textile workers from Shanghai in the nineteenth century. When I read the tale which underpins the lion dances which will take place in red lantern-bedecked streets on 15th February this year, I immediately thought about the mythical monsters who come to eat our creative projects before they can grow and mature. Not being of Chinese heritage myself, the enactment is not my ceremony to perform (although anyone is welcome to go and watch). Wisdom however is a shared human trait and being a wholly renewable resource, may be taken from wherever it lies. What can this story teach us then about how to overcome the fears and the ‘monsters’ we create in our minds that come to destroy and maim our hopes and intentions for our creativity?

Some monsters are common in the creative village but each of us has our own versions, the ones who want to make us crawl under our bed or run for the hills. These monsters and not made of flesh or puppetry. They are formed from the barbs of words and thoughts.