New Year's Eve in Peking
I
IT was New Year’s Eve — the eve of the real New Year’s Day, as the Chinese in their hearts all know. The government may send out proclamations ordering the year for political reasons to begin on January the first, the mayor may decorate the streets on that day, forbid all shops to open for a week or two weeks, and command the fairs and theatres to flourish; but the people bide their time and celebrate the day when they know, as their forefathers always have known, that the New Year begins.
On the eve of January the first, the main streets were hung with red lanterns. They swung lonely in the wind which blew down the frozen streets. They were ignored, and the streets were empty. They were incongruous messengers of joy decking the remnants of the tired old year.
A few shops put a few stalls in the fairgrounds, enough to keep the officials from their bank accounts. The actors’ association put on a benefit play for the famine sufferers. But all knew that all were waiting — waiting for the real beginning of the New Year, for the time when from far off in the skies and from deep in the ground would come the messages of the beginning of another year. And when the earth should spontaneously throw off her winter garment of dust and dead plants and ice, so spontaneously would the people don their new clothes, and wish each other a ‘Happy New Year — New Joy.’
And now in February the shops have for days been doing a thriving trade. The bazaars have blazed with toys and bright-colored cloths. The markets have been loaded with fresh-killed meat — great pink and white halfporkers, which, in the arms of shop assistants, have traveled through the streets in rickshaws, or, piled one on top of another, have been trundled in pushcarts to the meat counters. From the railings hang chickens and ducks by the hundred, and game — wild ducks and wild geese, bustards, and hares. On the tables are baskets of shrimps and prawns, and mussels and snails that still crawl sluggishly. Great tubs of water contain big fish and little fish, smooth fish and barbed fish, swimming in their cramped quarters, and eels slithering. The stands are piled high with vegetables and fruit, freshly scrubbed and arranged in patterns. They draw the eye with their green and magenta, orange and red. Spinach, cabbage, bamboo shoots, oranges, apples, pears, and persimmons.
The sidewalk peddlers have doubled in number. The streets are lined with pushcarts selling multicolored toys, selling round red lanterns and fishshaped lanterns of red and green and yellow, selling pyramids of white balls of brittle malt candy with which the speech of the kitchen god is sweetened when he goes to make his yearly report to the Heavenly Emperor, and which the people all delight to eat.
II
We were invited to ‘cross the year’ with some old Chinese friends. We were to dine with them, watch the worship of the ancestors, the worship of Heaven and Earth, and welcome the New Year.
We started out at about six in the evening, for dinner was to be early and the distance was long, from the far east of the Tatar city to the far west of the Chinese city. From the quiet side street where we lived we soon came to the street of small stores where the small householder shops. It is bordered on either side by food shops, some displaying the Mohammedan crescent, others a portion of pig, by grain shops with their bins open to the street, medicine shops with their rows of blue and white jars, some fabulously old, coffin shops with the huge gold-lacquered drums piled to the ceiling, restaurants where coolies make merry with a few coppers, and tea houses where they listen to the ballads of the singsong girl or the stories of the professional entertainer.
It is also the main street connecting numberless small residence streets, and on New Year’s Eve it was full of jostling people carrying home the lastminute purchases before the shops should quite close and the feasting begin; and of others doggedly trying, at this time of the annual settlement of financial affairs dictated by a custom older than memory, to collect as much as possible of the outstanding debts; and of others out to pay last old-year calls on near relatives before the doors of their homes were closed; and of others wandering just to see each other wander. They all carried red lanterns, and the red lanterns moving as the people moved formed a pattern of red light which stretched down the street as far as we could see. Each red light as it moved and bobbed was saying, ‘There are warmth and plenty just around the corner of the year.’
Out of the shifting scenes individual pictures detached themselves. A child walked solemnly, grave with the dignity of his great trust. He was carrying the red lantern, while his father walked patiently and understandingly behind. Farther down the street three urchins stood in a triangle, their red lanterns meeting in a pool of light. Their three faces were bowed over this pool. Surely their discussion could not be of any trivial matter. Two diminutive knights-errant, each with his lantern carried lance-like in front of him, marched with purpose down the middle of the street. An eager lad, the leash let loose at last, stepped from his front gateway and looked east and looked west. His gaze asked plainly, ‘ In which direction does adventure lie?’ His red lantern lighted his tense face.
Children, children everywhere, carrying red lanterns. It is the children’s night, the night to which they have been looking forward for months and days. It is the night when they are the equal of grown-ups, when they do not go to bed, when, dressed in their best, they join in all the family ceremonies, or at least until their eyes can hold open no longer. And this night is the children’s great night because it is the family’s great night. No harsh words must be spoken and no one must be crossed, for fear of spoiling his luck for the year. It is the one night on which the whole family must sit and eat together around one table. Behind these high walls and the closed gates the families are feasting — feasting on the much or the little that their destiny provides. Feasting, worshiping their ancestors and worshiping Heaven, courteously bidding the old year farewell and welcoming the new.
Firecrackers boom and bang all over the city. In a near-by court there is a machine-gun rattle as a long string of crackers is set off. There is the dull thud of a giant cracker, muffled by distance, compound walls, and the heavy air of the springlike night. The noise is continuous. It has been going on for many nights, and we know from experience that it will go on for many more. It is a bombardment of joy.
But there is another sound which weaves in and under and through the cannonading. If one listens carefully enough he can hear this sound like an insistent theme carried by ambitious piccolos. It is the sound of the housewives chopping, chopping, all over the city. They are chopping the mincemeat for the New Year’s dumplings; they are chopping the vegetables for the fragrant mixtures. After midnight no knife can be used, for the luck of the coming year must not be cut. And this chopping in the dark hours symbolizes to many a man and woman all that is most dear in the home. They speak of it in the hushed voice used for sacred things. And when this sound is mentioned there can be seen, in the face of a weathered man, the small lad tense in the New Year atmosphere, as, lifted out of himself, he watches the elders busying themselves in those halfforgotten yearly ceremonies — hanging the ancestral portraits, preparing the offerings, donning their best clothes. And always the mother is chopping, chopping the food that shall last them many days.
To the exile who has been in foreign lands, there is no thrill like the thrill with which he hears again for the first time the roar of the city, that volume of human sound which swells up at dusk and beats like the surf of a distant sea.
And if he hears it first at the New Year, enriched by this piccolo chopping, he knows that he is home again, and at the best of all times. It is the time of new clothes and new food, of making and receiving calls. It is the time when trained bears and monkeys perform in open squares, and minstrels dressed in gay masquerade stroll the streets. It is the time to put aside all care, to feel all joy. It is the time of endless talk.
III
But all is not equally well behind each wall. In one house we pass, the three daughters on the right and the son on the left are kneeling in white and sackcloth by the high-trestled coffin of their mother. By day they kneel, and by night they sleep on the ground of the court, which has been turned into a shrine. The walls of the high mat temple reflect the light of the candles constantly burning at either end of the coffin. They are watching and guarding their mother for the seven days until the funeral. The family had done their utmost to carry the sick woman ‘over the year.’ They had spent vast sums for ginseng, on which they had fed the semiconscious patient. But they had been unable to avert the bad luck of her passing a few days before the New Year.
Day before yesterday was the third day after the death — the day on which friends should come to show their sympathy and escort the family on the pilgrimage of the Receiving Third. But it was the New Year season, and only very good friends cared enough for them to encounter sorrow in these days. Therefore the procession, which, from the social standing of the family, should have been long, was, because of the season, very short — the procession of black-robed, red-draped monks walking two and two, of friends carrying bundles of burning incense, of the four hooded mourners leaning on the arms of friends, and of servants carrying lanterns. The rear was brought up by the great paper-money tower that will, when burned, supply the woman who has passed on with the necessary cash for her residence in the next world; by the paper cart which, translated by fire, her son will ask her to mount for her journeyings; and by the servants of clay and paper who will wait on her in this her new life.
We did not follow the procession to the square where the burning would take place, where, kneeling, the son would pour wine on to the ground and, as the flames licked up the offerings of house and cart and servants, invite his mother’s spirit to mount the chariot he had provided. But as we passed the house we thought of the family kneeling in sorrow while the rest of the world rejoiced, kneeling by the coffin of their mother in the court turned into a shrine.
We had now reached the streets of the well-to-do, and wondered what was happening behind the high walls. These streets were deserted. Here was no need to scurry about collecting or paying last-minute debts. Here the children played with the lanterns in their own courts, and here the mothers did not chop; the servants had long since finished and were also holidaying. Amid the booming of the firecrackers we whirled on to the home of our Chinese friends whom I had known for fifteen years — friends in whose births and deaths I had had a share, and now in whose family worship I was to take part.
The head of the family is a picturesque old man who under the Manchu dynasty was a high official. He owed his rapid rise to the fact that, as a fledgling magistrate, he had been in charge of the district of Huai Lai at the time of the Boxer trouble, and had had the great good fortune of being the first one able to offer a set table and official clothes and a sedan chair to the Empress Dowager after her flight from Peking and the avenging allies. Now he has retired and lives, patriarchal, among his wives and his children, his sons and their wives and their children.
Through the now practically deserted streets we trundled to our host’s gate. We entered, and the door was barred behind us. After nightfall only the family and their guests are allowed to enter.
IV
It is a typical Chinese upper-middleclass home. We went through court after court, and were ushered into the old man’s room on the left of the common room of the main building. I was all eyes, for the common room — the centre of the family life — was as I had never seen it before. I had, however, to curb my curiosity and pay my respects to the old gentleman, who had been ill and was still resting in bed. Had he not been ill, he would have met us in the guest court, a courtesy performed by his sons and his wives.
I sat on the edge of the old man’s bed and talked with him about New Years of the past, and about his third wife who had been my friend, and whose children swarmed around us, and who was of all his wives the one he loved the best. Her portrait was hanging with the other ancestors on the wall of the common room, for she had died many years ago. Her sister, his fourth wife, and the concubine bustled in and out supervising preparations, or perched on the bed or a chair for a chat.
Times were not what they had been, costumes were not what they once were. ‘Look at this blue silk coat and short black jacket that I am putting on — the costume of the Republic. Compare it with the blue embroidered robe I wore under the Manchu dynasty, and then compare that with the sweeping red robes of the Ming dynasty, with the wide sleeves and crossed neck line, in the pictures of my ancestor hanging in the next room. With each change of dynasty the clothes become less interesting.’ And he told his concubine to show me the buttons he had worn on his official hats, the buttons of the different ranks he had held under the Manchu dynasty.
The servants announced the New Year’s dinner, the one meal of the year when there must be a round table, when the family must sit in an unbroken circle and eat all at one time. The table was laid in the common room in front of the ancestors. We, as the guests, took the place of honor immediately opposite the door and under the ancestors who hung on the wall, and the grown daughter sat next to me. It is a local Peking custom that grown unmarried daughters take precedence of all other members of the family. Then came the old man, with his wife to the left and the concubine in the lower place on his right. On our right was the eldest son, and by him his wife; then the next son and his wife, until the table tailed off into the children of school age, two boys and two girls, the youngest of whom sat next to the concubine. Thus the circle was complete. The granddaughter, too young to sit at table, hovered in the background in her amah’s arms.
We ate and we drank well. Dishes from Ssu-chuan, the old man’s home, dishes from Kiangsu, the home of his wives, dishes from Peking, where they all now lived, we ate. We had the sticky New Year cake, the nien kao, whose name, by a play on words, wished us a ‘High New Year.’ We had dates to bring sweetness to the coming year. We had curds to bring prosperity — again a play on words, symbolizing a round year of happiness. After dinner we returned to the other room and played games, and the family came and went till we suddenly realized that all were in their ceremonial robes. The time for the annual ancestor worship had come.
V
While the old gentleman finished his toilet, I stepped int o the common room. The common room is the centre of the home — the centre room of the main house, which always faces south. This house is always a little larger than the other houses and its roof is higher than any other. As usual, this main house was divided into three rooms. To the left of the common room was the old gentleman’s room, where we had been sitting, to the right his wife’s. The concubine had quarters in a room on the side of the court.
This common room where we had feasted and were now to worship had been turned into a shrine. The dining table and all signs of our meal had been taken away. The offerings had been brought in. I looked in detail at what I had but glimpsed before. On the wall in the centre, immediately opposite the door, was hung a long scroll crowded with men and women in Manchu costumes at the bottom and Ming costumes at the top — a procession of ancestors. All but one man, as the wife proudly pointed out, were in official robes. ‘And he was a very successful merchant, a wealthy man,’ said she. To show how authentic was this galaxy of ancestors, she pointed to a man who was blind in one eye and had been so painted. To the left of this were hung pictures of the old gentleman’s grandfather and grandmother, and to the right his father and mother.
On the side walls were hung the pictures of his three wives who had died. The first of them, the daughter of a great statesman, was the pride of the family, mentioned on all occasions of face. The third, my friend, centred in herself the love of the family, and especially that of the old man. Her memory still brings pain to his eyes, and compared to her his other wives are mere homely friends. For her sake he does not drink the blandy chu of which he had been very, very fond, and which she ceaselessly begged him to leave alone. For her sake he eats no meat, and has built a small Buddhist temple near his library where he burns incense twice a day and writes out endless Buddhist sutras. The second wife, the forgotten one, the one of whom none speak, she too was hanging on the wall and worshiped.
A long narrow table stretched across the end of the room; on it were the tablets of the ancestors to three generations. These tablets were flanked and surrounded by piled-up offerings of cakes and wine and fruit. In front of the long table was a square one on which were more offerings and incense pots. Both tables were hung with red embroidered silk, and the chairs were covered with it. In front of the tables was spread a small red rug, and behind that a larger rug of ordinary buff.
We stood in the doorway watching, and as I watched I realized that we were in a temple. Just when the common room became a temple, or how the change came about, I did not know.
I knew only that the room which was the common room, which had been the feasting room for a happy New Year family, was now a shrine, a temple. Pictures had been hung, tablets and offerings arranged on the tables, red hangings draped. But the change was deeper than that. It was as though these people whose descendants had gathered to do them homage, whose presence had been invoked, had come, and these their descendants knew it. The family stood in calm dignity, respectful and aware in the presence of their ancestors who, living on the other side, had come to visit them.
VI
The old gentleman was not well, therefore the two elder sons became the officiating priests for the evening. One at each end of the long table, they held up to the ancestors the bowls of rice and the bowls of wine handed to them by the menservants. Thirteen times they were given bowls of rice and thirteen times they were given bowls of wine, for there were thirteen generations of ancestors to be worshiped. Thirteen times they held the bowls above their heads and placed them on the long table, where thirteen pairs of chopsticks were lying. With dignity they stood, with grace they raised their arms and lowered them. The incense was lighted and held aloft and placed in the burners. Helped by his sons, the old man now stood in front of the red rug facing the shrine. Silently the four sons ranged themselves behind him in the order of their birth. Then, as the wheat bends before a wind, so they sank to the ground as their father sank, and rose up as he rose, and sank and rose in the three-and-nine kowtow ceremony. I felt my throat tighten. Surely we were in the presence of unseen beings.
More incense, and the wife knelt on the red carpet with the two daughtersin-law behind her. Then the concubine, and with her the four young daughters. Then last of all the little granddaughter, who had to be held on the mat by her mother; her little head, twisted around to see the queer beings in the doorway, was pressed three times to the mat by her mother’s hand. The menservants and the maidservants, in a circle, bowed to the dead and to the living. The children gathered and knelt to their father, his wife, and his concubine. Then these two, one on his left and one on his right, knelt to the old man. Graciously he bent over them and said, ‘Get up, my dears, you need not bow to me.’
These were the first words spoken. It was over. With reverence and with dignity, space and time had been annihilated. There was no barrier between the dead and the living, between the seen and the unseen. Great thoughts had come and dwelt among us. The house of the soul had been cleansed, and reverence had lodged with us for a time.
It was not a worship of gods. It was not propitiation of powerful beings, supplication for unfulfilled desires, nor yet the awe given to supernatural majesty. It was the veneration given to members of the family who had been graciously invited to attend the annual reunion, and who as graciously accepted. It was the same veneration that is given to elder members of the family by the younger, but in a more marked degree, for these members of the family are older still, and have been away for a time — and now live elsewhere. It is an ancient rite practised in Chinese homes without reference to creed or religion. It is as logically inevitable to the Chinese as the efforts toward Heaven wore to the Victorians.
At midnight an altar would be placed in the court and the god of the hearth welcomed back to watch over the family another year. They begged me to stay to see this ceremony also. But my thoughts had soared and I felt I could not face the hours of desultory conversation, nor yet of games and the participation in the firing of crackers. We left them to their night-long vigil and bowled home through the empty streets, silent now but for the impersonal boom and crack of the fireworks.