CHAPTER XXIX.

CONTINUATION OF MANNERS AND CUSTOMS.

The Feast of Lanterns.-Two Hundred Million Lanterns lit up at once.-Festival in the Eighth Moon.-Watching for the Figure of the Hare in the Moon.-General Holiday at the Beginning of the Year.-The Chinese Compass points to the South.-The Chinese mourn in White.-Chinese Mandarin Soldiers carry Beads and Fans.-Chinese Old Men fly Kites.-The Chinese receive their Guests with their Hats on.-Festival to Departed Relations.

Never

WHEN you visit China you must accommodate yourselves to the customs of the people. The saying," when at Rome you must do as Rome does," should, in some measure, be acted on everywhere, always avoiding doing evil anywhere. adopt bad principles nor bad practices, but in other things, looking around you with good humour, quarrel with none about their prejudices. Let Americans speak of land, fat hogs, dollars, and presidents' speeches-Italians talk of statues and paintings, Naples, Florence, and Rome-Frenchmen boast of" La Grande Nation," while Englishmen shout out " Liberty," and sing "Britannia

FEAST OF LANTERNS.

281

rules the waves." If you use a knife and fork at your meals, let the people of China use their chopsticks without laughing at them; and while you can eat roast-beef at Dover, allow your neighbours at Calais to enjoy their fricasseed frogs. Climate, circumstances, and customs require you to accommodate yourselves to your position. You would hardly wear the same clothing at Copenhagen as at Calcutta, or speak the same language at Constantinople as at Canada.

At Paris, do all à la mode, if you please;

What is done at Canton must be à la Chinese.

Among the Chinese feasts, none are equal to the Feast of Lanterns, held on the fifteenth day of the first moon, in brilliance and splendour. This is not a spectacle confined to a few towns and villages, but a general illumination that breaks out, at once, through every province, city, town, and village in China. All that taste and ingenuity can effect are displayed on the occasion, and lanterns of the most glowing colours and fanciful forms are seen in every direction. Could the eye take in the whole empire, it would see at a glance not less than two hundred million lanterns. No imagination can realize the scene, and certainly no pen or tongue can describe

it.

Some of the lanterns are very large and others very small. Some are formed of glass, horn, mica, or pearl-shell, and others of paper, cotton, or silk,