No one could believe that we are ice-bound here. Yesterday the thermometer at 2 P.M. stood at 84° in our courtyard; at eight in the morning it had been down to 22°, a difference of 62°! The Chinese complain bitterly of the heat. The Emperor was to go again to pray for snow to-day, and the Peking Gazette publishes an article from one of the Imperial advisers, stating that the want of snow must be ascribed to the anger of heaven on two accounts: 1st, undue severity on the part of minor officials in the Board of Punishments; 2nd, the number of bodies killed in the rebellion and still lying unburied.
What thieves these mandarins are! Some, time ago when the Ti̔en Wang (Prince of Heaven), the chief of the Ta̔i Pi̔ng rebellion, poisoned himself, his son fled carrying with him his father’s great seal, which, on his capture, was carried to the Emperor at Peking. The seal was a huge affair of massive gold with two dragons on the top. Its value was about £600. When the Emperor had seen it, it was handed over to the Prince of Kung and the Grand Council, and by them deposited under lock and key in the council office, the watching of which by night is confided to certain high officials. When the turn of night duty fell to one Sa, a man of good family and a mandarin of the fourth button, the seal was missing. There was a great hue and cry, and all the wretched servants in the office were carried off to the Board of Punishments, where they were tortured secundum artem, the real thief Sa being quite above suspicion. Meanwhile he carried off the seal to a goldsmith’s shop in the Chinese city, telling him that he had received orders from the palace to have it melted down. The man undertook the job and put the seal into the melting-pot; but the two dragons, being harder than the rest of the metal, would not melt, so they were put on one side to wait till a hotter fire could be prepared. As luck would have it a friend of the goldsmith, who had heard of the loss of the seal, came in, and seeing the two dragons, smelt a rat, and laid an information. Sa was tried, found guilty, and strangled in the vegetable market. He was a well-to-do man, and his family were rich people, so the money was not needed. But a little peculation, however small, is dear to a mandarin’s heart.
Sa was not a master of his craft; he had not sufficiently considered the eleventh commandment,—most important to a Chinese official.
LETTER XXIII
Peking, 7th March 1866.
My last letter to you was dated 8th February, on which day the festivities of the Chinese New Year began with the feast of Tsao, the god of the hearth. This, of course, is inaugurated with popping of fireworks and banging of cannon. Tsao is of all the spirits the one most intimately connected with the family, and every year, eight days before the New Year, he goes to heaven to make his report. Now as in every family there must always be some little secrets which it is not desirable should be known in heaven, it is essential that something should be done to prevent Tsao’s tongue from wagging too freely, so offerings are made to him of barley-sugar, that his mouth may be sticky! At the same time, upon either side of his niche, which stands in the kitchen, are pasted posters of red paper, the one bearing the words “Go to heaven and make a good report,” the other “Come back to your palace and bring good luck.” The niche is then burnt, and the god rises to heaven to come back on New Year’s Day, against which time a new niche is prepared for him.
As the New Year approaches, the principal amusement in the streets is flying kites. These are admirably made, and represent all manner of birds, beasts, and fishes. There are some which even represent centipedes, but I have not seen those. In the tail of the kite is placed a sort of Æolian harp, such as I once told you the Chinese attach to their pigeons. I cannot tell you what a strange effect these weird-looking monsters humming high up in the air present. The Street of Lanterns, too, begins to make a great show. Lamps of every variety of shape, from a bouquet of flowers to a fiery dragon, are exposed for sale and bought in quantities.
On New Year’s Eve the houses are cleaned up and put in order. Characters of good omen are pasted on all the door-posts; from the window-sills little strips of red paper stamped like lace flutter in the wind. An altar is erected in the courtyard with candles and offerings, while crackers and fireworks are let off all night to chase away all the evil Spirits that have been about during the year, and especially the Spirit of Poverty.
The 15th of February was the Chinese New Year’s Day. It was a bright, fine day, and the people were all figged out in the best raiment available, either from their own wardrobes or those of the pawnbrokers, whose chests must have been emptied of every article of smart clothing for the occasion. All the shops were shut, but not empty; for from many of them there issued the most infernal clatter that ever stunned human ears. I looked into one, my curiosity getting the better of my manners, and there I saw a number of respectable middle-aged bourgeois sitting in a circle, and each with a clapper, gong, cymbals, or drum, beating for dear life with the gravest of faces. This was exorcising devils, and, if devils have ears, ought to be a successful plan. The streets are full of people paying complimentary visits to their friends, a ceremony which is nowhere so universally observed as in China. Outside the Chien Mên, one of the gates leading from the Tartar into the Chinese city, is a small yellow-tiled Imperial temple to Kwan-Ti, the god of war. This is crowded with worshippers on New Year’s Day. High and low flock to pay their respects and draw their lot for the year. Outside the temple were a couple of priests doing a brisk trade in tracts and joss-sticks. Armed with a bundle of the latter, which are whisked about in flames, to the great peril of European beards, the devout advance and perform the ko̔to̔u before the altar with three kneelings and nine knockings of the head. They then draw nearer to the altar, and from a sort of cup which stands upon it draw at random a slip of bamboo with certain characters upon it. This is exchanged according to its inscription for a piece of paper which is handed to the votary for a few cash by an attendant priest, and which contains his fortune for the year. The people who took part in this ceremony were excessively devout in their demeanour; there was no symptom of levity or indifference; they were imploring the protection of a divine being for the coming year, with superstition if not with piety. The richer worshippers were making offerings of pigs and sheep as sacrifice.
I don’t recollect whether I ever mentioned to you the Liu Li Chang, a street of booksellers and curiosity shops, and one of my favourite lounges here. It is one of the lions of the New Year. A very amusing fair is held there. It is perfectly thronged with people, and a very gay scene. Toys and artificial flowers are the best things sold; some of the former are capital. Lifelike models of insects, tiny beasts and birds, tops, kites of all shapes, and above all some little figures of European soldiers and sailors—caricatures of the late war—that were irresistibly comic. One man was selling a capital toy—two little figures, jointed, and so contrived that by pulling a horsehair which is not seen they begin to fight and go through every motion of desperate wrestling. There were some jugglers, but rather a low lot. One man was having bricks smashed on his head—a somewhat alarming performance, for which, however, he seemed none the worse. Then there was a combat between sword and spear, after the manner of Savile House in old days, which ended in sword getting a kick in the stomach and a poke in the ribs, which well earned a sixpence. A peep-show represented views taken in China and Europe, of which the exhibitor was as ignorant as his audience: he described St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Bay of Naples as places of repute in the Lew Chew Islands; and I really should be ashamed to tell you what was painted on the reverse of the view of St. Paul’s. A temple of the Chinese Æsculapius in one corner of the fair was crowded with visitors, who were pressing round the stall of a venerable gentleman whose stock-in-trade was a bushel or two of teeth and a picture representing the treatment of every variety of disease in diagrams. The teeth he had extracted were mostly sound! Fortune-tellers were casting up chances, and wise men reading destinies in all the courts, which were piled high with votive tablets from grateful patients. As to the walls, the tablets on them were three deep. The crowd were uniformly civil to us, but oh, the garlic of them! It was high jinks for the beggars, who were more than usually offensive and pertinacious, especially the women with sick babies, who would insist on wishing one a Happy New Year in every key. It’s no use being pitiful, for if you give to one you will have a tail of a hundred at your heels.