The new woman in the New China, borne to market on a wheelbarrow
along a modern tree-lined road; modern umbrellas in background
used as a protection from the sun. A beggar crouches at the
roadside.
]
In August the Chinese resort to the graveyards and burn paper money and
tin- and gold-foil models at the graves of their ancestors. It is a
pretty sight at night to see thousands of these little fires lighting
up the vast fields of the dead like a plain of stars through which
the living spirits move. The ceremonies sometimes include the Greek
custom of pouring out a libation of wine, and as this is the custom
especially in the western provinces, it may indicate a former communion
with old Greece. Long before the Christian era Greece had possibly
acquired veneration for graves from older China. Demosthenes cried out
to the Athenians in B. C. 354 as a climax to his arguments: “Will ye
sacrifice your sepulchres to the Persian?” A mortuary custom in the
southwest provinces, also similar to the Greek, is to place a coin
in the mouth, to pay for ferriage of the spirit. The round coin, made
of jade, and sometimes banded with pure gold, is an exact copy of the
copper cash, with a square hole in the center. These tomb jades acquire
a stained appearance as compared with the delightful glisten of jades
kept in the light.
Foreigners with cinematograph lanterns are now going into the interior
of China with interpreters to manage part of their shows, and are doing
well, as the Chinese delight in the moving pictures. It is necessary to
apply to the provincial governor for a passport, and to register at the
consulate at the nearest treaty port. Both French and American films
are used.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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