New Year’s day is everybody’s birthday in China; so there is a double reason for new clothes appearing everywhere. Even beggars and rag-pickers seemed to have them, or at least well washed and mended ones, and the populace presented such a sight of approximate cleanliness as it will not until another year rolls by and compels it to change again. A new kitchen god, gaudy on its thin paper, is put up during the first hours of the new year, with a little shrine, and firecrackers and incense welcome him. Firecrackers, indeed, were the most conspicuous part of the celebration. They boomed all night, close under our back walls and all over the city; even “Ha-li” was restless with the incessant uproar. This was partly in honor of the kitchen gods, but largely to frighten off the evil spirits lurking about to contaminate the new year at the start. Among the Chinese there was no attempt to sleep that night; even our _ama_ asked permission to go home, and said that she would sit up all night, eating meat dumplings from about two in the morning until daybreak—yet she is a woman of unusual common sense for China, with the utmost scorn for those who still bind their feet.
For the first five days of the new year women are supposed not to leave home or to enter that of another, though in Peking many disobey at least the first half of this ancient rule. The men, on the other hand, go out early and often, not only on the first but on the succeeding days, to call upon all their friends, particularly on the mother-in-law who reigns over each household, to give greetings, and incidentally to fill themselves beyond nature’s intention with meat dumplings. Our teacher was still weary from this ordeal when he again reported for duty. Rachel, however, was strictly enjoined by the _ama_ not to call on a neighbor at whose house she had attended a wedding during the winter; it would be even worse form than not to have a mother-in-law present to receive those who called upon us. As in France, New Year’s is the time for giving presents; no sooner had we distributed a dozen silver dollars in red envelopes among the servants than they despatched the _ama_ to get us presents,—food dainties for us adults, toys for “Ha-li.” Of all the celebration, however, perhaps the detail that looked strangest was to see the shops closed, long row after row of them blank-faced with board shutters where we had never seen them before. Drums and firecrackers sounded inside—some say that gambling goes on apace—whether to scare off devils or merely for the joy of making a noise; probably both motives existed, depending on the individual temperament. Foreigners sometimes accuse the Chinese of laziness because they take as much as a week’s rest at New Year’s, as if this were anything compared with our fifty-two and more holidays a year. Besides, even the shops are in few cases really closed; trust any Chinese merchant not to miss a possible stroke of business. There is almost always a peep-hole, if you know where to look for it, and one man inside who will make a special exception in favor of any one who finds it. Merchants can send their goods to the fairs, anyway; these spring up everywhere, especially in temple grounds, in and outside the city, where every one comes to burn joss-sticks by the bundle, until many a huge urn before the gods runs over with ashes. These are the gayest of markets, with peep-shows, acrobats, coolies, posing for the day as sword-swallowers, story-tellers, and musicians, with amateur and professional theatrical performances indoors and out, with every conceivable gambling device, men, women, and children crowded around them, with all manner of playthings for sale,—singing “diavolo” tops reaching almost the size of drums, pink bottles of _chianti_-shape which reward the blower with a peculiar noise, clusters of toy windmills on one handle that spin in chorus as the holder rides homeward in his rickshaw or his Peking cart, kites of every description, some fully man-size, of bird, beetle, airplane shape. There are no age-limits among the Chinese in the use of New Year’s toys; even solemn old men fly kites all over the city at this season, among the swirls of pigeons following their whistle-bearing leader about the cloudless heavens.