Preparations for the Chinese New Year began on the twenty-third of the twelfth moon with the burning of the kitchen god still to be found in nearly every home. Some of our neighbors, especially those whom lack of a courtyard drove out into the _hutung_ for this ceremony, did it half furtively, as if they were pretending, at least when foreigners looked on, that this was only an ordinary wad of waste-paper. But we knew that before he was torn down incense had been burned before the flimsy, smoke-dulled god, with a little straw or _kaoliang_ for the horse that is shown waiting for him, and even our neighbors admitted that they stuck a bit of something sweet on his lips before sending him to heaven, by the fire route, to report on the actions of the family during the year. A little opium serves this purpose still better, or best of all is to dip the whole half-penny lithograph in native wine just before the burning, that the god may be too drowsy or too drunk to tell the truth when he reaches headquarters.
Mei Lan-fang, most famous of Chinese actors, who, like his father and grandfather before him, plays only female parts ]
In the vast compound of the Altar of Heaven ]
Over the wall from our house, boats plied on the moat separating us from the Chinese City ]
Just outside the Tartar Wall of Peking the night-soil of the city, brought in wheelbarrows, is dried for use as fertilizer ]
It is a seven-day journey to the Chinese heaven and back, so that people have a little respite from the irksome surveillance of the god of the kitchen. During that week there was a furor of house-cleaning, as the Chinese misunderstand the term; the well-to-do renewed their paper windows; those who could afford it went so far as to have the wooden parts freshly painted. Especially on the last day of the year much shaving, washing, and bathing went on; the baths outside the southern gates of the Tartar City were crowded as they never are at ordinary times, when a two-to-ten copper bath once a month is considered ample. All that last day, too, the _chop-a-chop_ of food, especially of meat dumplings, being prepared for the many guests of the following days, when such work would be taboo, sounded from every house that was not a poor man’s home indeed. Faded old scraps of paper came down everywhere and bright new ones went up, particularly those long upright red slips opposite each door, bearing the four familiar characters for _K’ai men chien hsi_—“Open door see happiness.” Some of these were put up by the householders themselves, some by poor neighbors who hoped for a slight remembrance from the inmates. One saw them all over China for months afterward. The most miserable little hovels far outside the walls put up new paper gods that made brilliant splashes on doors and mud façades. Perhaps the saddest thing about the Chinese New Year is that all debts are expected to be paid before it breaks, which was particularly hard on what is still recognized abroad as the Chinese Government, months in arrears with every one except its Tuchuns and high employees of special influence. Two men at least I saw next day wandering about with a lantern, a pretense that it is still night and dunning still permissible.