When I was a boy in China

BY YAN PHOU LEE
BOSTON LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY
Copyright, 1887, by D. Lothrop & Company.
On a certain day in the year 1861, I was born. I cannot give you the exact date, because the Chinese year is different from the English year, and our months being lunar, that is, reckoned by the revolution of the moon around the earth, are consequently shorter than yours. We reckon time from the accessions of Emperors, and also by cycles of sixty years each. The year of my birth, 1861, was the first year of the Emperor Tung-che. We have twelve months ordinarily; and we say, instead of “January, February,” etc., “Regular Moon, Second Moon, Third Moon,” etc. Each third year is a leap year, and has an extra month so as to make each of the lunar years equal to a solar year. Accordingly, taking the English calendar as a standard, our New Year’s Day varies. Therefore, although I am sure that I was born on the twenty-first day of the Second Moon, in Chinese, I don’t know my exact birthday in English; and consequently, living in America as I have for many years, I have been cheated of my birthday celebration.
Being born a boy, there was a deal of rejoicing in the family, and among numerous relatives. If I had happened to be a girl, it would have been very different; the reason for which I will tell in a chapter on “Girls of my Acquaintance.” My aged grandfather smiled with satisfaction when the news reached him in Fungshun, three hundred miles away to the East, where he was holding office as Literary Sub-Chancellor. Congratulations poured in in the shape of presents of rich cloths, jewelry and pigs’ feet. These gifts came a month after my birth, which day is always celebrated as a christening-day is in England. On that day, which we call the “Completion of the Moon,” my name was given to me. I started with the surname “Lee” which my family and clan possess in common; and to that “Yan Phou,” which signifies “Wealth by Imperial Favor,” was added—Lee Yan Phou. But I now arrange my name in accordance with American custom.