But China New Year is the great time in every Chinese city, and this account of China New Year in Wuchang, the capital of Hupeh Province, is so much the best I have ever heard, that I must borrow it from the North China Daily News of February 20th, 1891:
"It requires a good conscience to get any sleep on Old Year Night in a Chinese city; the whole population watches the Old Year out. Ask them what they do all the time, they will say they enjoy themselves; again ask them how, they will tell you that they sit and chat all night long. No doubt the opium-pipe and game of chance help away the time. Certainly, firing crackers seems to be a large part of the watch-night service. From dark to dawn and everywhere they bang, bang, bang on the startled air of night, being intended as a sort of greeting to the New Year. All the first half of the night hurry and scurry fill the streets; the city gates are left open, so that belated creditors may not be hampered in the collection of their debts. Then towards midnight the last door is shut, and the last lucky inscription pasted up. This is a very important phase of the New Year. Every house in the empire that can afford it buys antithetical inscriptions for the two lintels of the door, and for the various other places of prominence on the walls. The vocabulary of polite ornament is ransacked, and the five happinesses, the points of the compass, rains, snows, winds, sunshine, country and home, wealth and longevity, are woven into the garlands of elegant phrases in every possible combination. On the doors themselves are pasted new pictures of the 'Door-Gods', who once in the fabled past delivered their monarch from the nightly visits of wandering bogeys, and whose pictures have been found ever since sufficient for a similar purpose throughout the empire. Across the windows are pasted strips of paper—'Chieh, the Supreme Duke, is here; bad spirits, get you gone,' for Chieh in his day, some two thousand years ago, gained great power over spirits, and to-day, though they have wit enough to read characters, they have not wit to know that they are being taken in, and therefore sneak away abashed when they find their old controller is within. Over the door-front is fixed a little mirror, so that any foul fiend who wants to enter, seeing his own ugly face reflected, will think another is there before him, and will fear the consequences of poaching. The 'door of wealth' is then closed, and the transactions of the year are ended. The door will in due time be opened once more with great ceremony, and with proper precautions to ensure that wealth shall flow in.
"As the night passes on, the guests refresh themselves with the food cooked in preparation; for cooking must not go on during the first day or so of the year. A banquet is prepared, and with the first glimmer of the dawn the head of the household goes out beneath the sky, and, spreading a carpet and offering viands, bows down with head to the ground towards the direction of the spirit of happiness. This spirit is changeable; he alters his direction every year, and the high authorities of Peking kindly act as his mouthpiece, giving notice beforehand to the people in which direction to bow. This year the dawn of the year saw many a pigtailed head bowed to the south-west; then followed the worship of ancestors by the whole household; while crackers and incense completed the welcome. At the same time the high officials, from the Viceroy downwards, assemble within the red and yellow walls of the Emperor's Temple. Great heaps of reeds are stacked through the neglected courts, which have been hastily weeded, and as the mandarins approach the whole scene is made ruddy with huge bonfires. The great chair of State—somewhat rickety and of simple local manufacture—acts as deputy for the Emperor, all the officials k`otow in unison, and then for a moment squat in the peculiar fashion observed in the actual presence of their sovereign. The temples of Confucius and the god of war are also visited for similar brief acts of reverence.
"By this time the day has well dawned, and shortly the round of calls begins. Everybody dons his best attire; and the number of buttons of gold on the top of juvenile or rarely respectable heads is marvellous. Most careful must everybody be to utter no word of ill-omen; tiger, death, devil, etc., etc., are all tabooed. For once in the year the foreigner may go on the streets with a fair prospect of not being greeted by the ordinary affectionate terms of abuse; for should any unfortunate youngster in his wonder call out 'foreign devil,' summary chastisement is sure to teach him that the luck of the family is not to be sacrificed even for the pleasure of baiting an outside stranger. The streets are filled with all the world paying calls; the world's wife does not venture out these first few days. And the work-worn city keeps its sabbaths for the whole year all in a fortnight."
PLAY AT A DINNER PARTY IN A GUILDHALL.
By Mrs. Archibald Little.
AUDIENCE AT A PLAY IN A GUILDHALL.