Chinese people call the Spring Festival “Nian”. But do you know that Nian was once the name of a monster（怪物）?

A long time ago, the monster Nian lived in the mountains. It ate animals. But in winter, it could not find food. So it came to villages and ate a lot of people. It is terrible. People were so afraid of Nian that they locked their doors before evening came during the winter. One day, an old man came to the village. He told people that Nian was afraid of three things—the color red, fire and noise. He told people to play drums（鼓）and gongs（锣）, make big fires and set off fireworks to make Nian go away.

On a moonless, cold night, Nian went to the village again. As soon as it opened its big mouth, people made loud noises and fire. Nian was really afraid and ran away. Wherever it went, there was noise and fire. When Nian was tired and could not run anymore, people killed the monster.

After that, on the coldest day of winter, people beat drums and gongs. In the morning people greet each other happily. So now we have the Spring Festival.

Once, a circle broke. It missed a small part of itself. The circle wanted to be whole, so it went around and looked for its missing piece. But, because it wasn’t complete, it could roll (滚动) only very slowly. It smelled the flowers along the way. It talked with the worms. It enjoyed the sunshine. It found lots of different parts, but none of them fit. It left them all by the side of the road and kept on searching.

One day, the circle found a perfect piece. It was so glad. It could be whole, with nothing missing. It fixed itself and began to roll. Now that it was a perfect circle, it could roll very fast, but too fast to notice the flowers or to talk to the worms. The circle missed the flowers and the worms. It left its perfect piece by the side of the road and rolled slowly away.

Perhaps we are more whole when we are missing something. In some ways, a man who has everything is a poor man. He will never know what it feels like to dream of something better. He will never know the experience of finding something he has always wanted and never had.