CHAPTER VIII

_THE END OF THE YEAR_

The holidays begin ten days before the end of the year, so that everybody may have time to prepare for this great solemnity. For in China there are no legal holidays, and busy people only get a rest during the three great feasts of the Dragon, the Moon, and the change of the Year. There are five days holiday during each of the first two feasts, and thirty days during the last.

It is on these dates that bills usually fall due, and when they must be paid.

The last feast that we have spoken about includes several religious ceremonies. These consist in offering banquets to each one of the gods in thanksgiving for the good things he has accorded during the year that has passed. On the twenty-fourth day of the twelfth moon a touching ceremony is performed in the richest and the poorest houses alike. It is that of the adieu addressed to the household god and the reception given to the new-comer. It appears that this god only holds his tutelary office during one year, and has then to make place for a successor.

The altar of this god is always placed in the kitchen; candles are lighted before him every day, and incense is burned. At night a night-lamp, which is called the fire of long life, burns before his altar.

On the evening of the twenty-fourth, a grand dinner, with cakes of the most varied descriptions, and fruits of every sort, is spread out before this altar for the guests to partake of.

After having poured out the wine of libation and let off the crackers, without which no fête is complete in China, oats and corn are thrown on the roof of the house for the horses of the god to feed upon, and it is at that moment that he is supposed to take his departure.

The table is then cleared, and a fresh repast is laid out before the altar for the refreshment and welcome of the new-comer. His name is at once inscribed in the place of that of his predecessor, or it is the images of himself and his wife that are placed in the stead of those of the gods of the previous year.

This is our Christmas Day, after a fashion. It is this day that the children look forward to, in the expectation of fruits and sweets.

Preserves are made of the dishes that are left over from these two repasts, and these sometimes last over the whole of the first month of the new year. The richer a family is, the more of these preserves will it make. Parties and fêtes follow each other in unbroken succession.

On the last day a large pot of rice is put out of doors. The rice is garnished with cypress leaves, on which imitation ingots of gold and silver are placed. These are in paper, which is covered with lettering, meaning long life, honour, health, happiness, and so on, cut out in red paper. On the rice are heaped various kinds of fruit, symbolic of prosperity.

This rice remains standing on a table in the open air until midnight. It is called the “rice of the old year.” At midnight it is replaced by another pot of rice, garnished in the same way. This is the rice of the new year, and it is allowed to stand in position for two or three days. A lucky day is then chosen in the calendar, and on this day the rice is removed and eaten.

It is unnecessary to say that the same sacrifices take place every day before the tablets of the ancestors, who are never or on any occasion forgotten.

Formerly a number of superstitious customs were observed. According to an old handbook of hygiene, a man had to lie down secretly by the side of the family well on the New Year’s Eve, holding in his hand a flowering branch of the pepper tree, and, when midnight struck, to throw this branch into the well, if the family wanted to have pure and microbeless water to drink during the ensuing year.

Under the reign of the dynasty of the Han family, a procession of one hundred and twenty children, aged from ten to twelve years, and dressed in grey clothes with red hats, used to march through the streets, each child being armed with a drum, with the beating of which he was supposed to drive away all evil spirits.

This procession was much more imposing under the Shungs in the sixth century. The military took part in it, dressed in bright uniforms, and carrying gilt lances and the banners of the dragon. These marched at the head of the procession, all more or less hideously masked. Meanwhile, out in the country the farmers used to form a torchlight procession, with torches stuck in the end of long bamboos, and went running through all their fields, begging the gods for a good rice-harvest and an abundance of silkworms. In some provinces children used to run about the streets, saying that they had their stock of intelligence for sale, and, of course, found none to buy of them. All these things have now been done away with. Only the religious ceremonies, of which I have spoken above, remain in force to-day, as well as the vigils for seeing the new year in. I do not speak of certain eccentric customs, which only form exceptions to the general habit. Thus, for instance, the poets will sometimes place their works on an altar in their house and make sacrifices before them. Others melt their gold and pour it into water, predicting the future from the curious shapes of the metal as it cools.

There is a literary piece by Han-Wong-Koung, an adieu to the God of Wretchedness, which is very much read in China during the feast of the end of the year. It is too long to be quoted here, but can be read by all with great satisfaction. It gives excellent advice to the poor, and teaches them how to fight against the demon of poverty. Some read it to learn how to remain happy, others how to console themselves for their wretchedness and how to get out of it.