FORGOT to ask you, father," Leonard said, about a week later—for during that time he and his sister had been otherwise engaged, and had therefore not come to hear anything more about the Chinese and their strange doings—"I forgot to ask you if Celestial boys wore pig-tails too. I have never, I believe, seen a picture of a Chinese boy."
"Some have pig-tails, but some parents allow just a tuft of hair to grow on a boy's head until he is eight or ten years old, and shave the rest. Sometimes he wears the tuft longer; and I have also seen girls wearing it on one or both sides of their heads."
"Father, will you tell us something now about the children?" Sybil then asked.
"I know little babies of three days old often have their wrists tied with red cotton cord, to which a charm is hung, which is, I suppose, to bring it prosperity or drive away from it evil spirits. At a month old its head is shaved for the first time, when, if its mother does not shave it, a hair-dresser has to wear red in which to do it. A boy is shaved before the ancestral tablet, but a girl before an image of the goddess of children called 'Mother,' and thank-offerings are on this day presented to the goddess."
"What does the ancestral tablet mean?"
"It consists of a piece of wood or stone, which is meant to represent the dead. As I told you, one of the spirits of a dead man is supposed to enter the tablet, and the more this is worshipped the happier the spirit is supposed to be. On this tablet are names and inscriptions, which sometimes represent several ancestors. After a certain time (I think the fifth generation) the tablet is no longer worshipped, as by that time the spirit is supposed to have passed into another body."
"Thank you. I understand that now," Sybil said. "Does anything else happen on the grand shaving day?"
"Presents of painted ducks' eggs, cakes, and other things are sent to the baby, and when it is four months old 'Mother' is thanked again, and prayed to make the child grow fast, sleep well, and be good-tempered." Sybil and Leonard laughed. "On this day the child also sits for the first time in a chair, when his grandmother, his mother's mother, who has to give him a great many presents, sends him some soft kind of sugar-candy, which is put upon the chair, and when this has stuck the baby is put upon it, and I suppose his clothes then stick to it also."
"What a fashion to learn to sit in a chair!" Leonard said. "And what's done on his first birthday?"
"Another thank-offering is presented to 'Mother,' more presents come, and the baby has to sit in front of a number of things, such as ink, pens, scales, pencils, tools, books, fruit, gold, or anything the parents like to arrange before him, and whatever he catches hold of first will show them what his future character or occupation is likely to be.