Historic China, and Other Sketches (Paperback)

Excerpt: ...of food prized among the Chinese for their delicacy or rarity, perhaps both; and so to all appearance are the baskets of choice oranges, &c., sent for instance by a District Magistrate with compliments of the season to His Excellency the Provincial Judge. But the Magistrate and the Judge know better, for beneath that smiling fruit lie concealed certain bank-notes or shoes of silver of unimpeachable touch, which form a unit in the sum of that functionary's income, and enable him in his turn to ingratiate himself with the all-powerful Viceroy, while he lays by from year to year a comfortable provision against the time when sickness or old age may compel him to resign both the duties and privileges of government. To "all between the four seas," patrician and plebeian alike, the New Year is a period of much intensity. On the 23rd or 24th of the preceding moon it is the duty of every family to bid farewell to the Spirit of the Hearth, and to return thanks for the protection vouchsafed during the past year to each member of the household. The Spirit is about to make his annual journey to heaven, and lest aught 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. With this view, quantities of a very sticky sweetmeat are prepared and presented as it were in sacrifice, on eating which the unwary god finds his lips tightly glued together, and himself unable to utter a single syllable. Beans are also offered as fodder for the horse on which he is supposed to ride. On the last day of the old year he returns and is regaled to his heart's content on brown sugar and vegetables. This is the time par excellence for cracker-firing, though, as everybody knows, these abominations begin some days previously. Every one, however, may not be aware that the object of letting off these crackers is to rid the place of all the evil spirits that may have collected...