Periodical feasting may be regarded as another form of amusement by which the Chinese seek to relieve the monotony of life.  They have never reserved one day in seven for absolute rest, though of late years Chinese merchants connected with foreign trade have to some extent fallen in with the observance of Sunday.  Quite a number of days during the year are set apart as public holidays, but no one is obliged to keep them as such, unless he likes, with one important exception.  The festival of the New Year cannot be ignored by any one.  For about ten days before this date, and twenty days after it, the public offices are closed and no business is transacted, the seal of each official is handed over for safe keeping to the official’s wife, a fact which helps to dispose of the libel that women in China are the down-trodden creatures they are often represented to be.  All debts have to be paid and accounts squared by midnight on the last day of the old year.  A few nights previously, offerings of an excessively sticky sweetmeat are made to the Spirit of the Hearth, one of whose functions is that of an accusing angel.  The Spirit is then on the point of starting for his annual visit to heaven, and lest any of the disclosures he might make should entail unpleasant consequences, it is adjudged best that he shall be rendered incapable of making any disclosures at all.  The unwary god finds his lips tightly glued together, and is unable to utter a single word.  Meanwhile, fire-crackers are being everywhere let off on a colossal scale, the object being to frighten away the evil spirits which have collected during the past twelve months, and to begin the year afresh.  The day itself is devoted to calling, in one’s best clothes, on relatives, friends and official superiors, for all of whom it is customary to leave a present.  The relatives and friends receive “wet” gifts, such as fruit or cakes; officials also receive wet gifts, but underneath the top layer will be found something “dry,” in the shape of silver or bank-notes.  Everybody salutes everybody with the conventional saying, “New joy, new joy; get rich, get rich!” Yet here again, as in all things Chinese, we find a striking exception to this good-natured rule.  No one says “Get rich, get rich!” to the undertaker.

A high authority (on other matters) has recently stated that the Chinese calendar “begins just when the Emperor chooses to say it shall.  He is like the captain of a ship, who says of the hour, ‘Make it so,’ and it is so.”  The truth is that New Year’s Day is determined by the Astronomical Board, according to fixed rules, just as Easter is determined; and it may fall on any day between the 21st of January and the 20th of February, but neither before the former date nor after the latter date, in spite even of the most threatening orders from the Palace.  This book will indeed have been written in vain if the reader lays it down without having realized that no such wanton interference on the part of their rulers would be tolerated by the Chinese people.  But we are wandering away from merry-making and festivity.