The Chinese are great lovers of festivals, and one of their principal entertainments of this kind is celebrated during the eighth moon. From sunset and the rising of the moon till midnight, every one walks about with his relatives and friends in the streets, public places, and gardens. In the preceding days they send to each other tarts and cakes, called yua-pini, that is, cakes of the moon; they are round and flat, and made to resemble that luminary. These cakes are eaten by moonlight—the wealthy to the sound of melodious music, and the poor to the din of drums, gongs, and other noisy instruments. The engraving represents a dealer in confectionary of this kind; the cakes are flat, and the hares, which are one of the chief of their ornaments, are either sitting on their haunches, or lying down eating. One of the cakes in the upper row is adorned with peacock’s feathers, between which is placed a figure of the moon, on which is the representation of a hare pounding rice. [Illustration] Fruit is sold by hawkers, and men who sit at a table in the open air. The picture shows the way in which fruit is hawked in baskets, suspended from the ends of a bamboo, which is borne on one shoulder. The baskets of this trader are stocked with various kinds of fruit. The melons, one of which is seen in the picture, are water-melons; there are besides grapes, white and red figs, and peaches. This latter fruit the Chinese regard as the emblem of immortality. In the abode of Hien Gien, which is their paradise, they imagine a peach-tree, the fruit of which secures all those who eat of it from death. [Illustration] The other Chinese fruits are apricots, cherries, lemons, and oranges, which are grown in the gardens of the country people; they also eat the young shoots of the fragrant ash, the flowers of the yulong, and the soft shoots of the juicy-bamboo. The leaf which the itinerant fruit-seller holds, is that of the “_nelumbriem_,” an aquatic plant, the canes of which sometimes grow large enough for an umbrella. The engraving represents a retail dealer in fruit, sitting at his stall, in the shade of an ample umbrella made of rushes. [Illustration] The middle classes of the Chinese live upon pork, venison, and shark-fins. Horse-flesh is eaten by the Tartars, and sold in the markets with beef. Cats, too, are a favourite dish, and dogs are the crowning delicacy of the cookery-book. The Chinese towns swarm with hawkers of all sorts, and among the most numerous are the flower-sellers. They carry their flowers about in two flat baskets, suspended like a pair of scales from the two ends of a bamboo. The flowers common to China are, many of them, now common with us. The plant for which they have the strongest liking is the peony, which they call “_moutein_.” It is also called the “king of flowers,” and “pe-lean-king,” which means one hundred ounces of gold on account of its beauty, and of the enormous price given for it by the curious. [Illustration]