There are many idols connected with these religions, and everywhere you may see people going to the temples to burn incense and paper money, and to offer gifts of food. They do not go regularly, as people go to church in Christian lands, but on idols’ birthdays or when they themselves are in trouble.
Year by year more of the people turn from their own religions to the peace and happiness of serving God. In Our Lord Jesus Christ they find forgiveness of sins, and for the first time strength to follow all that is good in the teaching of their own ancient Sages.
CHAPTER IX
FESTIVALS
Chinese life, which for many children is dull and full of work, has its red-letter days. No description of the little folk of the Middle Kingdom would be complete without an account of some of the festivals, which add so much to the happiness of the year.
How the boys and girls look forward to New Year’s day! The houses are swept and tidied the night before. Inscriptions on bright red paper are pasted on the door-posts and lintels of each home. What a banging of guns and crackers there is, in the early morning, after the ancestors have been worshipped. The pavement is littered with red and white paper, wherever fireworks have been let off. A little later, the streets are full of people going to call on their friends, and say “I congratulate you, I congratulate you,” for this is the way in which the Chinese wish each other a Happy New Year.
The children are dressed in new clothes, their queues and little plaits of hair being tied with fresh red cord. They have new shoes and new hats and a handful of cash to rattle in their pockets. The babies are as gay as humming-birds, in bright coloured jackets and trousers, pussy-faced shoes, silver bangles, and wonderful embroidered crowns and collars.
The shops are closed, everyone is either resting or holiday-making. The streets are lined with gambling-boards. One hears the clatter of bamboo lot-sticks and the rattle of dice everywhere as one passes along. Boys and girls make for the cake man’s tray. They buy candy and fruit and toys; they jump and dance and play, and enjoy life hugely. The holidays continue for two weeks. There are plays and feasts in the evenings, and plenty of crackers are fired. The children wish that the fun might go on for ever. On the fifteenth of the month the holidays are closed by the festival of lanterns.
For several days before this feast the streets have been gay with beautiful lanterns of many shapes and sizes. Some are made of glass, with flowers and birds of paper pasted over them, or painted in bright colours. Some are made of crinkled paper, round like melons, or jar-shaped; others resemble fishes, lions, castles, rabbits, lotus flowers, white and red, tigers, dragons. They are all colours—red, green, white, blue, pink, yellow, purple. The kind which the little boys like best are ‘throwing-ball lanterns,’ which are made by pasting bits of different coloured paper on a frame of thin bamboo. Inside there is a tiny clay dish, filled with fat, into which a wick is stuck. When the evening is dark enough, out come the boys. They light their lanterns. Some have big tiger and fish lanterns, which move on wooden wheels, the fire shining through their eyes and bodies. Some prance along in a row, each with a bit of a long dragon on his shoulder. The first boy carries the head, and the last one has the tail. The dragon bobs and twists as they thread the crowded street. Some whirl their ‘ball lanterns’ round and round, by means of a string tied to the top. The wicks keep alight because the lump of fat does not run out of the socket as oil would do. The bright colours gleam as the light shines out, and the lanterns whirl flashing through the dark.
Then there is the spring festival, when troops of people go out of the east gate of the city to see the mandarins worship at an altar to the Earth God, which has the figure of a buffalo standing beside it. People throw things at the buffalo; whoever hits it is sure that he will have a prosperous year.