A Ghost’s Meal.
At length, the platform is well laden with food, which remains exposed in the sun and wind for several hours, during which time a great noise is kept up with gongs and other musical instruments, partly, I suppose, like a dinner bell to call the ghosts, and partly to amuse the men and boys who gather in an interested crowd around the platform.
Late in the afternoon the head men begin to distribute the Feast. The baskets of food are carefully lowered; the cakes are broken up, and the pieces, with the oranges and other fruits, are flung hither and thither among the crowd, who scramble merrily after them, sometimes half a dozen rushing after the same fragment, and now and then a man trying to clamber up the poles to secure a portion before it falls. When the stage is cleared the crowd disperses, and the Ghosts’ Feast is ended.
In this region the people are very poor, but in a large and rich community this festivity would be kept with splendor even, and with much cost.
Last year, a part of the wooden frame-work fell, and one man was injured. I think this may make the old ground seem unlucky to the Chinese, and lead them to seek a new place for this year’s Feast.
Let us hope that they will do so, for to have a set of the most wicked and unhappy ghosts asked to dinner under one’s windows, is not, after all, so amusing as it is noisy and sadly foolish.