On the first of the eighth month it is customary to collect some dew and use it for moistening a little ink.[151] This ink is devoted to the purpose of making little dots or marks on children's foreheads, and this, it is supposed, will preserve them from sickness.
On the mid-autumn festival[152] of the fifteenth of the eighth month reverence is paid to the ruler of the night. Offerings of cake, wine and fruit are made to the full moon and then consumed by the worshippers.[153] The occasion is one of family gatherings and festal mirth.
On the Ch'ung Yang festival of the ninth day of the ninth month it used to be the custom in many parts of China to eat specially-prepared flour-cakes called kao[154] and to drink wine made of the chrysanthemum.
The cakes are still made and eaten in Weihaiwei, but the chrysanthemum wine appears to be obsolete.[155] On this day it is customary for young men (especially those of the lettered classes) to climb to the top (têng kao) of one of the hills of their neighbourhood. The advantages are two in number: it will lead to the promotion of those who are engaged in climbing the steep slopes of an official career, and it will free them for the ensuing year from all danger of sickness. This is equivalent to the tsou pai ping of the women on the fifteenth of the first month.
On the first day of the tenth month the family tombs are visited, and the same ceremonies observed as at the Ch'ing-Ming festival. This is one of the three days in the year that are regarded as specially sacred to the souls of the departed (Kuei Chieh or Festivals of Souls or Spirits): the Ch'ing-Ming (movable) in or about the third month, and the fixed festivals of the fifteenth of the seventh and the first of the tenth months. Similarly there are three festivals specially provided for the living (Jên Chieh or Festivals of Men), and these are marked by feasting and merriment; they are the New Year festival, the fifth of the fifth and the fifteenth of the eighth months. The former list does not, however, exhaust the occasions on which reverence is paid to ancestors. At the winter solstice,[156] for instance, ancestral sacrifices are offered in the family temples; and at the New Year, as we have seen, the living do not forget, in the midst of their own pleasures, the sacred duties owed to the souls of the dead.
On the eighth of the twelfth month it is customary for matrons to regale their families with a concoction made of grain, vegetables and water called La-pa-chou, which means "gruel for the eighth of the sacrificial month." Children are made to partake of an unsavoury cake made of buckwheat, hare's blood, sulphur, cinnabar and tea-leaves. This, it is believed, will protect young people from smallpox—a somewhat prevalent disease among the native children of Weihaiwei.
In the evening of the twenty-third of the twelfth month an important family ceremony takes place known as tz'ŭ tsao or sung tsao—"Taking farewell of the Hearth-god." The hearth-god or kitchen-god (tsao shên) is a Taoist divinity who is supposed to dwell near the kitchen fireplace of every family,[157] and whose business it is to watch the doings of every member of the family from day to day with a view to reporting them in detail at the close of the year to the Taoist Supreme Deity. In order to make his annual report he is supposed to leave the kitchen on the twenty-third of the last month of the year, and ascend to heaven. Before he goes, obeisance is made to him by the family, and he is presented with small round sugared cakes called t'ang kua and lumps of no mi, a glutinous rice. The object of providing the god with these dainties is to make his lips stick together so that he will be unable to open his mouth and make his report. The family is thus saved from any inconvenient results arising from an enumeration of its misdeeds. Needless to say, the matter is not regarded very seriously in most households, and the ceremonies are chiefly kept up as a source of amusement for children, who receive their full share of the sticky cakes. After a sojourn of a week in heaven the hearth-god returns to his own fireside on New Year's Eve.