In the West Street of a certain Chinese city a man kept a cake shop. The shopkeeper began to notice that very early every morning two chubby children used to bring some cash to buy cakes. What further surprised him was that every night he found some sheets of yellow paper money (such as is offered to idols) at the bottom of the till. Nobody put the paper money into the box, but every night, as surely as he counted over his gains, there was the yellow paper lying at the bottom. Sometimes he wondered whether this paper money had to do with the boys who came to buy cakes in the morning. But let him watch ever so closely, he never saw them put anything into his till. They brought him good luck, however, for more people came to buy his cakes every day, and he made plenty of pennies. But the cake man could not give up wondering about the paper money, and, at last, he made up his mind that the children certainly had to do with the mystery. Nobody knew where the pair of chubby-cheeked boys came from, or where they went to, and they were not quite like ordinary boys, there was something distinguished in their look and ways. One day the shopkeeper could restrain his curiosity no longer, so he waited until the boys left the shop, and then he followed them along the pavement, carefully keeping at a distance and noticing where they went. After walking along the West Street for a little distance, they turned up a narrow lane; their pursuer quickened his pace and followed them along the lane, and out into another street, and yet another, until they disappeared round the corner of a small temple. A minute later the inquisitive man followed them. Inside the temple were two images of chubby-faced child idols. The secret was out! The boys were no ordinary children, but idol spirits which had taken to frisking about the city. The secret was out, but the boys came no more to the cake shop. There was no more paper money lying at the bottom of the till at night, and, for some reason, fewer people went to buy cakes, so that the prying shopkeeper’s business fell off from that day. That, at least, is the legend. It would not be easy to tell one hundredth part of the superstitions of a country which has followed heathen ways for so long as China has done. It may be said that no one can be born, reared, taught, married; no one can study, farm land, keep a shop, work or govern; no one can be doctored or nursed, die or be buried, without numberless superstitious customs, which entangle the lives of the Chinese people as the meshes of a spider’s web entangle a fly.