If north-east, flee it, man and brute.
Charles Rogers in Social Life in Scotland
The Chinese New Year
THE anniversary of the New Year in China follows the variations of a lunar year, falling in early February or toward the end of January; the rejoicings are continued with great spirit for a week or more.
On the last day of the old year, accounts are settled, debts cancelled, and books carefully balanced in every mercantile establishment from the largest merchants or bankers, down to the itinerant venders of cooked food and vegetable-mongers. In every house the swanpaun, or calculating machine, is in use. This nation does not write down figures, but reckons with surprising rapidity and accuracy by the aid of a small frame of wood crossed with wires like columns and small balls strung on them for counters.
It is considered disgraceful, and almost equivalent to an act of bankruptcy, if all accounts are not settled the last day of the old year; consequently it frequently happens that articles of ornament or curiosity can be purchased at low rates in the last week of the year from the desire of merchants to sacrifice their stock rather than go without ready money. In all courts the official seals are locked in strong-boxes, till the holiday is at an end.
On the last day of the old year is observed the ancient custom of surrounding the furnace. A feast is spread in great form before males in one room, females in another; underneath the table exactly in the centre is placed a brazier filled with lighted wood or charcoal; fireworks are discharged, gilt paper burned, and the feast eaten, the younger sons serving the head of the house. After the repast there is more burning of gilt paper, and the ashes are divided, while still smouldering, into twelve heaps, which are anxiously watched. The twelve heaps are each allotted to a month, and it is believed that from the length of time it takes each heap to die completely out, can be predicted the changes of rain or drought which will be of benefit to the crops or the reverse.
The first celebration of the New Year is the offering to heaven and earth. A table in the principal entrance is spread with a bucket of rice, five or ten bowls of different vegetables (no meats) ten cups of tea, ten cups of wine, two large red candles, and three sticks of common incense or one large stick of a more fragrant kind. In the wooden bucket holding the rice are stuck flowers or bits of fragrant cedar, and ten pairs of chopsticks. On the sticks are laid mock money only used at this season; to one of the sticks is suspended by a red string an almanac of the coming year; and near the centre of the table is always displayed a bowl of oranges. Then after a display of fireworks each member of the family approaches and performs homage by a ceremony of triple bowings. This is succeeded by ceremonies of veneration to ancestors and tokens of respect and reverence to living ancestors or relatives—but to the living neither incense, nor candle nor mock money is offered,—not even food except the omnipresent loose skinned orange whose colloquial name is the same as the term for "fortunate."
On New Year's Day, the houses are decorated with inscriptions which are hung at either side of the door, on the pillars or frames, and in the interior of the houses; some are suspended from long poles attached to the outside of the house. The color of the paper indicates whether during the preceding year the inmates of the house have lost a relative and if so the degree of the relation of the dead person to those within. Those who are not in mourning use a brilliant crimson paper; in many cases the word happiness is repeated innumerable times; on some are more ambitious mottoes:—"May I be so learned as to bear in my memory the substance of three millions of volumes," "May I know the affairs of the whole universe for six thousand years," "I will cheat no man." The monasteries declare "Our lives are pure" and the nunneries "We are grandmothers in heart."