"WALKING BOATS" AT THE FIRST-FULL-MOON FESTIVAL (see p. [184]).
It will be noticed that the Mang-Shên, being a spirit, behaves in a precisely contrary manner to ordinary mankind, and his garments indicate exactly the opposite of what they would indicate if they were worn by a living man. Thus he wears heavy clothes in hot weather, light ones in cold weather; and as red is among men the colour that denotes joy and prosperity and white betokens grief and mourning, so the Mang-Shên wears red to indicate death and white to indicate life and health. Thus it is that naughty children who take delight in doing the opposite of what they are told to do are sometimes by their long-suffering parents called "little Mang-Shên" or "T'ai Sui."
The Lantern Festival[132] is assigned to the fifteenth day of the first month. As the Chinese year is strictly determined by lunations, this means of course that the festival occurs at the time of the first full moon of the year. Coloured-paper lanterns are hung at the doors of houses and shops and are also carried in procession. Above the doors of the houses are often hung fir-branches, betokening prosperity and especially longevity.[133] The family eat little round cakes of glutinous rice which, being supposed to represent the full moon,[134] may be called moon-cakes. There is no doubt that in remote times the fifteenth of the first and the fifteenth of the eighth months were devoted to moon-worship. A curious custom observed at the Lantern Festival is called the tsou pai ping—"the expulsion of disease." In some localities this merely consists in a procession of villagers across the neighbouring bridges, the procession returning home by a route other than that by which they set out. The popular notion obviously is that sickness is caused by invisible beings of a malignant nature who on the occasion of this festival can be driven across the local streams and so expelled from the village.[135] In other localities the expulsion of disease is on this occasion performed only by women, who do not necessarily cross bridges but simply walk out into the fields and back by a different route. Male villagers perform a similar ceremony on the ninth of the ninth month.
So far as Weihaiwei is concerned the Feast of Lanterns may be regarded as pre-eminently the holiday season for children. During several days before and after the fifteenth of the first month bands of young village boys dress up in strange garments and go about by day and night acting queer little plays, partly in dumb-show and partly in speech, dance and song. Some of them wear the terrifying masks of wild beasts, such as lions, a few assume the white beards of old men, and many are attired in girls' clothing. The children perform their parts with great vivacity, and go through their masquerades, dances and chorus-singing in a manner that would do credit to the juvenile performers at a provincial English pantomime. They are, indeed, taught their parts and trained by their elders for some weeks before the festival. Every group of villages keeps a stock of masks, false beards, clothes and other "properties," and there are always adults who take pleasure in teaching the little ones the songs and dances which they themselves learned as children in bygone days. In daytime the dressed-up children take a prominent part in processions to the local temples. On such occasions many of them are perched on high stilts, which they manage with great skill. At night they carry large lighted Chinese lanterns and march amid music and song through the streets of their native village, or from one village to another, stopping occasionally in front of a prominent villager's house to act their little play or perform a lantern-dance.[136]
MASQUERADERS AT FESTIVAL OF FIRST FULL MOON.
GROUP OF VILLAGERS WATCHING FIRST-FULL-MOON MASQUERADERS.
No European who has seen a lantern-dance in a Shantung village can fail to be delighted. The graceful movements of the children, their young voices ringing clear in the frosty air, the astonishing dexterity with which they manipulate the swinging lanterns, the weird effect of rapidly-interchanging light and shadow as the gleaming paper moons thread the bewildering mazes of a complicated country-dance,—all these things combine to please the eye and charm the ear. Not the least interesting part of the proceedings is the obvious pleasure taken by the crowds of adult spectators in the performances of their little ones: for the Chinese are devoted to children.