[264] Many candidates, successful or otherwise, have their verses and essays printed, and circulate them among an admiring circle of friends.
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[265] Accurately described in Tylor’s Primitive Culture, Vol. I., p. 75:—“Each player throws out a hand, and the sum of all the fingers shown has to be called, the successful caller scoring a point; practically each calls the total before he sees his adversary’s hand.” The insertion of the word “simultaneously” after “called” would improve this description. This game is so noisy that the Hong-kong authorities have forbidden it, except within certain authorised limits, between the hours of 11 p.m. and 6 a.m.—Ordinance No. 2 of 1872.
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[266] This delicate stroke is of itself sufficient to prove the truth of the oft-quoted Chinese saying, that all between the Four Seas are brothers.
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[267] The “substitution” theory by which disembodied spirits are enabled to find their way back to the world of mortals. A very interesting and important example of this belief occurs in a later story ([No. CVII.][)], for which place I reserve further comments.
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[268] Such is the dominant belief regarding the due selection of an auspicious site, whether for a house or grave; and with this superstition deeply ingrained in the minds of the people, it is easy to understand the hold on the public mind possessed by the pseudo-scientific professors of Fêng-Shui, or the geomantic art.
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[269] The bridegroom leads off the procession, and the bride follows shortly afterwards in an elaborately-gilt sedan-chair, closed in on all sides so that the occupant cannot be seen.
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[270] Here again we have the common Chinese belief that fate is fate only within certain limits, and is always liable to be altered at the will of heaven.
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[271] This is another curious phase of Chinese superstition, namely, that each individual is so constituted by nature as to be able to absorb only a given quantity of good fortune and no more, any superfluity of luck doing actual harm to the person on whom it falls.
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[272] The word here used is fan, generally translated “barbarian.”
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[273] The disciples of Shâkyamuni Buddha. Same as Arhans.
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