On the third day after birth, the child was washed for the first time. Friends and relatives were invited to take part and they brought presents to the child. Immediately after the washing, the ceremony of binding the wrists took place, which in some cases consisted of the tying of one or more ancient cash to each wrist by means of a red cotton cord while with others only a loose red string was put around each wrist. When the child was a month old, the mother and child left her room for the first time and the ceremony of naming the baby and shaving its head took place. All the relatives and friends were invited and they were expected to take dinner with the child, and, which was more important, to take presents.

"The presumption is that a Chinese child is born with the same general disposition as children in other countries. This may perhaps be the case; but either from the treatment it receives from parents or nurses, or because of the disposition it inherits, its nature soon becomes changed, and it develops certain characteristics peculiar to the Chinese child. It becomes t'ao ch'i. That almost means mischievous; it almost means troublesome—a little tartar—but it means, exactly t'ao ch'i. In this respect almost every Chinese child is a little tyrant. Father, mother, uncles, aunts, and grandparents are all made to do his bidding. In case any of them seems to be recalcitrant, the little dear lies down on his baby back on the dusty ground and kicks and screams until the refractory parent or nurse has repented and succumbed, when he gets up and good-naturedly goes on with his play and allows them to go about their business. The child is t'ao ch'i."[80]

The baby in China has its toys to play with and it also has its Mother Goose rhymes and Headland states that he collected more than six hundred of such rhymes.[81] A few will be sufficient to give here to show their resemblance to our own. The following is as popular in China as "Jack and Jill" is here:

"He climbed up the candle-stick,

The little mousey brown,

To steal and eat tallow,

And he couldn't get down.

He called for his grandma,

But his grandma was in town,

So he doubled up into a wheel,