It was a government employee who gave rise to the festival in the fourth century, B.C. He was the honest Chu Yuan, an official who tried to persuade the Chinese Emperor to correct the corruption of his court; when his pleas were ignored, he drowned himself by leaping into the Nih Loh River. A group of sympathetic villagers rowed out to the site and cast silk-wrapped dumplings into the water, hoping to attract his wandering spirit, or in another version of the legend, to lure the fish away and protect his body from their attack. The bow man of today’s Dragon Boats preserves the tradition by casting rice cakes or dumplings wrapped with bamboo leaves from his craft. The principles of cleanliness exemplified by Chu Yuan are practiced a few days in advance of the races, when every family cleans house and sets off firecrackers to stampede lurking cockroaches into panicky flight. The races themselves exercise a purifying influence, for most of the rowers are thoroughly drenched by the splashing paddles. The Mid-Autumn Festival, celebrated on the 15th day of the Eighth Moon, belongs entirely to women, and is marked by them in the privacy of the home. The feminine principle in nature is in the ascendant and the moon, which is considered a female deity, is at the apogee. A table is set in the courtyard, and the moon is offered gifts of tea, food, burning incense and the seed of the water calthrop. The service takes place at night, illuminated by lanterns and moonlight, and includes a prayer to the honored satellite, who is also quizzed about the matrimonial prospects of her devotees. Fruit and moon cakes are essential to the feast that follows, and as always, firecrackers are exploded. Wealthier households may set up a midnight moon-viewing party, with a banquet and a group of blind musicians singing an ode to the moon. These blind musicians, numbering about 100 in all, have their own colony at the west end of Hong Kong Island and earn about $12 for a party booking. Recorders and lutes are their usual instruments, giving their music a quaint Elizabethan flavor. Ancestral graves are visited for the second time each year on the ninth day of the Ninth Moon; summer weeds and grass are cleared away and sacrifices of money and clothing are offered to keep the deceased wealthy and warm through the coming winter. The date coincides with that of the Cheung Yung Festival, when it is said to be lucky to climb to a high place. Burial urns rest fairly high on the hillsides, so it is easy to combine both celebrations and top them off with a picnic in the open.