The next notable festival of the year is a movable feast known as the "Awakening of the Torpid Insects," generally held early in the second month. In many villages it is customary to rise before dawn and cook a kind of dumpling, which as it "rises" is supposed to assist Nature in her work of awakening the sluggish or dormant vitality of animals and of vegetation. The presiding deity of this festival is, naturally enough, the Sun, and it is to him that the dumplings are offered. Similar offerings are made by the Emperor himself in his capacity of High Priest. It is believed that if on the evening of this day children wash their faces in a kind of soup made from a certain shrub (Lycium chinense)[137] they will never be ill and never grow old. This reminds us of the old English belief that young people will preserve their youthful beauty indefinitely by going into the fields before breakfast on the first of May and washing their faces in May dew.[138]
On the eighth of the second month it is thought that by observing the direction of the wind it is possible to foretell whether the ensuing weather will be favourable or otherwise to the crops. If the wind comes from the south-east there will be a good rainfall; if it comes from the north-west there will be a drought.
The fifteenth of the second month is known as Hua Chao, "the morning of flowers,"—for it is supposed to be the flowers' birthday.[139]
The festival of Cold Food (Han Shih)—so called because it was once customary to partake of no hot provisions on this day and to light no fire—occurs on the eve of the Ch'ing-Ming festival. The Chinese in Weihaiwei have no clear idea why cold food was compulsory on this occasion, but the custom is undoubtedly connected with the ancient rite, once prevalent in many parts of the world, of kindling "new fire" once a year. The Chinese Han Shih would thus represent an intervening day between the extinction of the old fire and the lighting of the new. The custom seems to be connected with sun-worship. "The solar rite of the New Fire," says Dr. Tylor, "adopted by the Roman Church as a paschal ceremony, may still be witnessed in Europe, with its solemn curfew on Easter Eve and the ceremonial striking of the new holy fire."[140] Another writer observes that "formerly throughout England the house-fires were allowed to go out on Easter Sunday, after which the chimney and fireplace were completely cleaned and the fire once more lighted."[141] It is curious to note that similar observances took place even on the American continent. "In Peru, as in Mexico," says a writer on the religious systems of ancient America,[142] "there was a solemn religious ceremony of renewing at stated periods, by special generation, the fire used in the temples and even in the households.... It is one of the oldest rites of the human race, and it has survived under all religions alike down to the other day, when perhaps it received its death-blow from the lucifer match."
The Ch'ing-Ming or "Pure and Bright" festival is as carefully observed at Weihaiwei as elsewhere throughout China. It is a movable feast generally occurring early in the third Chinese month.[143] Edible delicacies of various kinds are diligently prepared in every household and taken to the family graveyard to be sacrificially offered to the ancestral spirits. At this season, and at the corresponding festival held on the first day of the tenth month, all the members of the family who can attend prostrate themselves on the ground in front of their ancestors' graves.[144] These observances are known as shang fên—"going up to the tombs."[145] This is one of the occasions on which family reunions take place. It is a holiday season and there is plenty of jollity and feasting; but the sacrifices and the "sweeping of tombs" are regarded as sacred duties, the omission of which through negligence would show a discreditable lack of filial piety and might entail misfortune on the present and future generations of the family. The virtues of obedience and submission to authority are also emphasised at this season in the village schools, where the pupils formally salute their teachers. An old custom sometimes observed at this time is the wearing of willow-leaves on the head. This is supposed to produce good weather for agriculture. This practice is not so common in Weihaiwei as in Shansi and some parts of Chihli and Honan, where in seasons of drought—only too common in those parts—men and boys go about for many days wearing on their heads wreaths made of fresh willow-branches. The willow is a tree that loves water and the banks of rivers, and willow-wreaths are therefore regarded as rain-charms.[146]
In the third month comes the festival of Corn-rain (Ku Yü). This is the appropriate time for obtaining written charms as antidotes against snakes and grubs and venomous or destructive reptiles and insects in general.
The so-called Dragon Festival[147] is held on the fifth day of the fifth month. This is the occasion on which the well-known dragon-boat races take place at Canton and elsewhere in south China. According to tradition, the festival was inaugurated in memory of a high-minded statesman and poet named Ch'ü Yüan of the Ch'ü State (south of the Yangtse) who was driven to commit suicide in the fourth century B.C. It is with the simulated object of recovering his body that the dragon-boats—so named from their length and peculiar shape—annually dash through the waters of the southern rivers. But there are no boat-races of this kind at Weihaiwei. Little cakes called tsung-tzŭ—made of rice or millet with a morsel of fruit or sweetmeat inside—are eaten by the people; but there seems to be no local knowledge of the fact that these cakes were originally intended as sacrifices to Ch'ü Yüan and ought to be thrown into flowing water as offerings to his spirit.