Peiping China, Lunar New Year

This is not a case of stubborn clinging to old habits: the roots of the matter strike into deeper soil. The old calendar, having been used by man since time immemorial, follows the seasons, the times for planting the "good earth" that provides man with his food.

It is true to form that Peiping, with the innate polished courtesy of its citizenry, should bow affably and even low to the Gregorian New Year, but that the feasting, account settling, shop holidays, and all that sets the human heart in rhythm with the foremost holiday of the year should take place on the Lunar New Year.

Then winter is about to surrender its icy grip on the land. Farmers and city dwellers joyfully greet the first promises of spring- time warmth that soon will once more stir life into growing things.

In the Western World, there is the quaint idea that on the first of the year one "turns over a new leaf." In Peiping "one casts off the old" with a rat-a-tat-tat of firecrackers, and looks into the coming year full of hope. Those who have been sorrow-ridden must completely change their feelings if they are to find real happiness that year.

During the half-month celebration of the Lunar New Year, tens of thousands attend the temple fairs and bazaars which are centers of prayer, of animated bargaining at stalls, and of entertainment in the lavish variety that the Old Capital provides. Time is not the nerve-wracking, carefully treasured thing it is in the West. Therefore, in Peiping preparations, or the first stages of the celebration, begin on the eighth day of the Twelfth Moon, fully three weeks before the Lunar New Year.

On the night of the seventh day, a sweet pudding, consisting of many kinds of rice, beans, dates, chestnuts, and liberally garnished with red sugar, white sugar, melon seeds, pine nuts. and so on , is cooked. The simplest dish, however, must contain no less than eight ingredients. On the eve of the twenty-third, Tsao Wang Yeh, the Kitchen God, ascends to Heaven to report on the doings of the family for the year to the Jade Emperor.

The family offers the deity huge pieces of molasses candy, so that. when he is about to make his report, he is unable to extricate his teeth from the jaw-locking mass. Hay and a bowl of water are offered on the stove to the Kitchen God's horse, which squats with neatly folded legs on the paper picture of the deity.

When the ceremony, including the offering of a miniature paper ladder to facilitate Tsao Wang Yehs celestial climb, has been duly performed, the paper picture of the god and other paper objects are burned and so sent up to Heaven.

The Kitchen God is speeded on his journey with the following admonition: "Tsao Wang Yeh, when you go up to Heaven, favorable words say many; unfavorable…”