A SHADOW-SHOW.
"The other day we passed the Temple of Kwan-Yin, the goddess of mercy. The Hong-Kong people think an immense deal of her, and her temple is in such a pretty place, with many trees round it. She is a Buddhist divinity. A number of beggars were outside begging, and they nearly always get something here. Very many Chinese beggars are blind, and there are also lepers in China. Barriers were put up to keep visitors, who were not wanted, such as evil spirits, from going in. People say that evil spirits only care to go through a straight way, and never trouble to go anywhere in a crooked direction. Over the doorway were some characters, which father's teacher has written out for me. They were, being read from right to left, backwards: 'Teën How Kov Meaou,' and signify, 'The Ancient Temple of the Queen of Heaven.' Tien-How is the goddess of sailors, and often called 'The Queen of Heaven.' To the right was a doctor's shop, where prescriptions were sold to the priests; and to the left an old priest was selling little tapers which the worshippers were to burn. We looked in for a few moments, and saw people kneeling down and asking the goddess to cure their sick friends. She was seated at the end of the temple, behind an altar, on which were bronze vases, candles, and lighted sticks of incense. A gong was outside, and on the walls of the temple were different representations of acts of mercy that the goddess was supposed to have performed. On the roof were dragons. The dragon is the Chinese god of rain.
"Leonard says I am to tell you that some of the Celestials thought once that he was going to beat them because he carried a walking-stick. Chinamen, excepting policemen and mandarins, are only allowed to carry them when they grow old.
"We saw a very strange sort of show the other day, called a shadow-show. A man, inside a kind of Punch and Judy house, made, with the help of a lantern, all sorts of figures, or rather, shadows, appear on the top of the Punch and Judy. It looked so strange, but Leonard said he thought the people looking at it were stranger still, what with the hats they wore and the funny way they did their hair. He declared one woman had horns. I never saw such pretty lanterns as the Chinese have. Father says that on the fifteenth day of their first month (which is not always the same, as their New Year's Day, like our Easter, is a movable feast regulated by the moon) there is a feast of lanterns, when all people, both on land and on the water, hang up most beautiful lamps, some being made to look like animals, balls of fire, or even like Kwan-Yin herself holding a child.
"Is it not strange New Year's Day next year will be on the twenty-ninth of January, and in 1882 on February eighteenth?
"I seem to have ever so much more to tell you, but I am too tired now to write it. I am glad you liked mother's pictures that I sent last time. I could only write that one short letter in Formosa. We are going on to Macao (it is pronounced Macow) the day after to-morrow, then we stay at Canton, and then come back here. It will be so dreadful when that time comes, but I try not to think about it. Dear mother does sometimes, I can see. We all went to the Cathedral on Sunday.
"I hope I shall soon have a long letter from you.
"Believe me, dear Lily,
"Always your affectionate friend,
"Sybil Graham.
"Hong-Kong, December, 1880."
