RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1961
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch

RASHKB and author

Vol. 1 (1961)

ISSN 1991-7295

121

on the male relatives, can be got round by omitting pregnant wives from the ceremony. There is also a belief that exhumation should not take place during the years on which fall the 51st, 61st, 71st and other such birthdays of the male head of the family.

In Chinese public cemeteries, the same principle of exhumation is practised. At the end of each year, the particular coffin section where burials have been taking place is closed and left untouched for five years. At the end of that time, an official notice of intention to clear graves is published, giving relatives six months in which to exhume remains privately and re-inter them in the urn section. Any remains not exhumed privately on the expiry of the period of notice are then exhumed by Government and the remains re-interred in an urn section. The cleared coffin section is then eventually used again for coffin burials.

Applying equally to urban and New Territories burials are the two important grave worshipping festivals of Ching Ming (105 days after the winter solstice, i.e. either 5th or 6th of April) and Chung Yeung (9th day of the 9th moon, i.e. in October). The first is the more important. The second was originally not a grave-worshipping festival at all, but an occasion for climbing to the top of a mountain to avoid evil spirits. Since so many graves are situated on hills, the practice of combining the hill climb with an opportunity of worshipping at graves has been developed.

Strict Cantonese belief also requires that, at ch'un she (#1), which falls annually about two weeks before the Ching Ming festival, relatives should pay their respects to persons who have died within the past year. This ceremony usually takes place at home and its participants are restricted to older persons.

At the Ching Ming and Chung Yeung festivals, it is customary for whole families to make an outing to their relatives' graves. There, offerings of pork, fruit and flowers are presented; incense and candles burnt; prayers offered; crackers let off. Minor repairs to the graves may be carried out and undergrowth cut back. Coffin graves in the New Territories may be marked with lime at the end and all types of graves usually have a piece of red paper and another piece of white paper underneath the red, tucked under a stone beside them. Exhumations will often be carried out at the Ching Ming festival. At the Tung Wah coffin repository, caskets of remains are opened and the bones spread out to air on sheets of paper.

Chinese believe that the spirit of a person leaves the body on death. In Hong Kong the general belief is that it descends into hell where the judge decides on the basis of the earthly merits of the deceased whether it may be allowed to return to earth by reincarnation as a child or, if very evil, as an animal. The main fear of the dead consists rather of the belief that to
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964
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J. W. HAYES

Of these various groups of fishermen the trawlers were by far the most important. As has been said above, the Peng Wo Tong was organised from among them and does not appear to have included the fishermen from the smaller Tanka craft. This group seems to have based itself on Peng Chau for at least fifty years, and in all probability for a much longer period, between the formation of the Tong in 1857 and the destructive typhoon of 18th September 1906 which is said to have hit them very hard as many boats were at sea during the sudden storm and were lost. They were tied to the island by their links with the shopkeepers and wholesale fish dealers, or laans as they are known locally,20 The trawlers caught all kinds of fish and salted them in brine21 pending a return to harbour. There was a comparative lull in their fishing season between the Tin Hau festival in the third moon and the end of the seventh moon, when they returned to Peng Chau, gave their boats and tackle a thorough overhaul, allowed themselves the luxury of a holiday on land, and participated in religious activities which included the inevitable season of Chinese opera. The opera performances lasted for about five weeks, by tradition overlapping the end of the third moon and the beginning of the fifth. There is no doubt that these trawlers and their crews added considerably to the bustle and prosperity of the island.

Besides the Tanka there were also Cantonese families who made their principal livelihood from fishing. I spoke to one old man of seventy-three (born 1891) whose whole life had been spent, as was his father's before him, "on the surface of the sea” ✯❀ as he put it. This family were Puntis from Tung Kwun and my informant said he was the fifth generation on Peng Chau. There is no doubt that they were land people, but they earned their living from the sea using small boats called and operating several stake nets at various points round the island's coast. They fished mostly by day in the waters round Peng Chau, to which they returned at night-fall. There were over twenty of these boats when my informant was a boy.

Beside the Cantonese fishermen, there were also some Hakkas with, at that period, as much interest in the sea as the land. The first ancestors of the CHUNG family came to Peng Chau at the beginning of the nineteenth century. An account of their
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r
SWATOW HORIZONTAL STICK PUPPETS

81

drama. This is a process which reminds of Java where the drama performed by actors Wayang Orang mimics the much earlier leather-shadow-play Wayang Kulit.

Hsiao Nan-ying

a famous hua-tan of Ch'aochow opera, who came to Hong Kong a year ago, complains that the Ch'aochow opera here is still using the stiff movements which were influenced by the shadow-puppet movements. She also tells of a typical Ch'aochow opera in which the peculiarities of the shadow-puppet-theatre are used to great effect. A movement can suddenly stop and the moment can be endlessly prolonged. For example: a boy and a girl move independently in a festival-crowd and when they by chance look at each other, they instantly fall in love and remain motionless in the position in which they caught each other's eye. And the Old Man of the Moon appears, takes imaginary strings from their eyes and binds them together. They remain like statues looking at each other until somebody cuts the imaginary strings, the spell is broken and they regain their liveliness. This technique is believed to be derived from the shadow-play.

The Wang Family

The most important puppeteer-family in Hong Kong is the family Wang who have been puppeteers for at least three generations. At the end of the Imperial era the grandfather Wang Pao-yuan was active as a puppeteer and opera-actor, and his son who accompanied him became the famous Wang Chiao-tsou, also called Wang Chiao Y. The name Chiao-tsou meaning “itinerant teacher" was given to him, because he was a well-known itinerant teacher and opera-actor and also a puppeteer. Weary of the Sino-Japanese war he took his family to Hong Kong in 1938, together with a trunk of puppets. He immediately started to teach Ch'aochow opera and founded the Hsin-shun-hsiang puppet-troupe (The title means 'to prosper anew in Hong Kong'). His own family being very large, it was easy for him to give puppet-performances. Having for long performed himself in the leading role of hua-tan (character of a high-class beauty) he was a major force in the upsurge of Ch'aochow opera in Hong Kong in the last thirty years.

When Wang Chiao-tsou arrived here he found three established Ch'aochow puppet-groups. Hsin-t'ien-ts'ai gave up its puppets to become an opera troupe in 1962. Lao-yuan-cheng
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593
QINGMING FESTIVAL IN CENTRAL CHINA

61

I have chosen to work on data from central China, southern Hubei and northern Hunan, the marshy and hilly areas around the Dongting Lake water system in the middle Yangzi valley. I have chosen so primarily because I have a personal academic interest in that region, and again because it seems to be a kind of heartland of 'rice China'. This study draws on data from local gazetteers, fang zhi, and from the compilations of fang zhi materials contained in the great 18th century ‘encyclopaedia’ Gujin tushu jicheng.

2. Some Frameworks

Qingming is the name for one of the twenty-four periods of the Chinese solar calendar, each being fifteen days long. Approximately, it starts on the 5th of April and lasts until about the 20th of the same month. The name means 'Clear Brightness'; this term may correspond to prevalent climatic conditions for this time of the year in some parts of the vast country, but it does not translate well the meteorological facts of the season in the stretch of country surrounding the big Dongting Lake in the central Yangzi valley, which were more on the dull side. According to one chronicle, the period was noted for 'much strong wind and heavy showers'.

The agricultural activities in this rice producing part of China followed the landmarks set by the twenty-four solar period calendar. Thus the Qingming period marked the beginning of the sowing of rice, and it seems as if this was a widespread traditional pattern in the Dongting basin. Generally rice was sown toward the end of April in special small plots, in the literature often known as seed beds or 'nurseries'. Although this practice may have been normal, there was certainly a great deal of variation, even within this limited region of China. Some chroniclers give us dates in the second moon; She ri and Hua zhao are mentioned in places like Wuling, Gongan, and Chongyang, a period of the lunar calendar which corresponds roughly to March, as the time for the beginning of sowing. The Spring Equinox, or rather the solar period of Chunfen, is also mentioned in a record from Hanyang. It seems reasonable to say that, given a variation of a few weeks in accordance with local circumstances, rice was sown in late March and throughout April. As a period of ritual
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978
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GÖRAN AIJMER

connection between the rice growth cycle, the agricultural activities and the grave ancestors, a connection suggested already by the information from Wuchang and Chongyang, quoted above, that grave worship was conducted on She ri.

9. Willow Twigs.

In Wuling people inserted willow twigs over their doors and also carried willow twigs in their hair. There was a term for this custom: neng pixie 'ability to punish evil'. The same convention was observed in other places in the Dongting area, like Taoyuan,80 Hanzhou,81 Jingshan,82 Chongyang, where it was called 'nun lo'83 'tender willow', and Yingshan.84 It seems as if the twigs were protective and their function was to guard the house, or doorways, and the individuals living behind them. It is hard to say against what willow provided protection. It is interesting, though, to note that willow twigs were used in Jiangling on the full moon day of the first moon when, again, they were inserted above the doors.85

10. Strolling in the Wilderness and Treading on the Green.

Several chroniclers report that Qingming was an occasion for strolls and wanderings away from built-up areas. These excursions may well be seen in connection with the visits to the graves, the latter being situated outside the villages. Such ramblings in the countryside are recorded from the prefecture Changde (around Wuling),86 Hanzhou,87 Chongyang,88 and Wuchang.89 From the latter two places it is also reported that men and women 'tread on the green', ta qing, in connection with their strolls in the 'wilderness'. The latter term seems to be a name for strolling and eating al fresco. Earlier I have interpreted this practice as a feature which stresses periphery as contrasted with centre, the latter being emphasized, for instance, at Duanwu. It is interesting to note that the chronicler of Changde says that there were no such customs in that area as ta qing or qui qian 'swinging'. Swinging is reported as part of the Lantern Festival in Zhongxiang,91 Swings are referred to in a Liang dynasty calendar, Jingchu suishi ji,92 in connection with the Cold Food festival. Ta qing was part of the Flower Dawn celebrations in Zhongxiang,93 in this area generally observed on the second full moon of the lunar year. It is probable that a number of notions were expressed in such

90

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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987
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T 

52 

tent with the motive of maximizing the market, ranging, as it does from the local Chinese literati to domestic servants of European residents, and even to "country youths", presumably from the recently acquired "New Territories". 

The principal contents of English Made Easy comprise Mok Man Cheung's “unique system” for enabling non-English speakers to pronounce the English alphabet, numbers, words, phrases, and sentences, plus an anthology of "model letters". Fascinating insights into the quality of the social life of upwardly mobile Chinese at the turn of the century are provided by the selection of materials for these sections of the book. 

Several of the categories of objects and phenomena, invented by Mok Man Cheung to organize his work, offer evidence about the ambivalence of this sort of person at this time in the face of influences from both East and West. In his list of words referring to "Objects of Nature", for example, the earliest words on the list (“Sky”, “Earth”, “Sun”, “Moon”, “Wind”, “Clouds”, “Rain”, etc.) may have been chosen for their compatibility with such traditional Chinese concepts as "Feng Shui”1 and with other widespread beliefs. "Spirits”, “Gods”, “Ghost”, and “Devil” are all included. The later entries seem to concentrate more on practical and modern realities, such as “reclamation ground”, “rough sea”, “typhoon”, “drizzle” [sic], “low-tide”, “flood”, and, to conclude happily, "calm-sea". In his suggested vocabulary for "Time and Seasons", he includes "Intercalary moon”, “Full moon Festival”, "Dragon Boat Festival" and "Winter Solstice" as well as “Christmas day", the days of the week and months of the year by Western reckoning, and a battery of non-culture-specific temporal terms. Mok Man Cheung's list of "Persons and their Occupations" begins, perhaps because it was politic to do so in 1905, with "Emperor", "Empress", "Crown Prince", and proceeds to deal with “Mandarin” and “General”, leading on to such occupations as “Maidservant” and “Captain”, before referring to "Governor", "Policemen" (juxtaposed with “Thief”) and "Student". It would not be uncharacteristic of Chinese style if the precise order in which these “Persons and Occupations” are presented is meant to be significant. Even if this is not the case,
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x
85

of tun fu ceremonies which, collectively, were said to be the largest of their kind ever held in Hong Kong.*

After referring to the Chinese almanac, Tung Sing, believed by some to be the world's oldest, continuous publication, an auspicious day, the 7th day of the Second Moon in the Year of the Rabbit, was selected for holding the main tun fu ceremony. The Author was invited. Thirty-six committee representatives attended with some of the larger of the 26 villages taking part having two representatives. Previously, other smaller tun fu ceremonies for individual villages at Pat Heung had been held, the first at the time of Lap Chun. This festival marks the advent of spring in the Chinese solar calendar, when winter ends, the earth awakens and there is a spirit of renewal in the air. In 1999, the year this tun fu festival was held, Lap Chun fell on February 4. Each village taking part in the Pat Heung ceremony displays at least one tun fu pot which each holds one split-bamboo talisman. Such a practice is not uncommon as, in the dawn of Chinese history, charms were frequently carved on bamboo. At Pat Heung, in 1999, some villages had three and some even as many as eight pots.

Duties for the person(s) performing tun fu ceremonies start well before the due date. He has to decide how many pots are required. Where will they be placed? Why should they be placed here and not there? How many talismans will be put in each pot and which gods will be summoned. Which magical forces will be brought to bear to protect the fung shui? What supplications will be written on the split bamboo talismans? Although the main rules that priests or masters follow may be similar there will be differences in detail, which can be pronounced, as the reader will see later.

The main ceremony, which the Author attended, was held in Sheung Tsuen (Village), in Pat Heung District, on March 24, 1999, where obviously a great deal of planning and preparation had been necessary before the big day. Here, alongside a 150 or so year-old, small-leaf, Chinese banyan tree, a matshed, approximately 9-metres long by 6-metres deep by 10-metres high, had been erected. For a religious ceremony to take place near a tree, with wood being one of the Chinese Five Elements, is quite natural. The banyan after all, with its trailing roots, gives the impression of multiplication, and from there the move to 'fertility' and the extended Chinese family is but a small
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the sacred and the secular.

Sacred time can be separated into liturgical and non-liturgical. Liturgical dates are those linked to the lunar calendar such as Yu Lan Hui, the Chinese All-Soul's Day, celebrated on the 15th of the seventh lunar month [best known as the Hungry Ghosts Festival] and the anniversaries of the gods and immortals; whilst the non-liturgical are fixed dates marking the seasonal changes. Only two such non-liturgical dates are still observed - the grave sweeping at Qing Ming, usually on the 5th of April, 106 days after the Winter Solstice, and the Winter Solstice itself. Secular dates are national state holidays.

Humans accept the depth and space of time as a natural aspect of our daily lives. To people the world over a day, depending upon the culture, consists of the period between noon and noon, midnight and midnight, or from dawn to dawn. The lunar month has been a common time-marker since time immemorial, with the Chinese lunar calendar being based on the full moon on the 15th day of the month and the new moon, on the first. To many Chinese, as indeed to a number of other agricultural civilisations, time did not stretch back into eternity but came round again and again, it was cyclical, and again like other civilisations a zodiac evolved.

Before the days of the cheap watch or clock, time to the average Chinese man-in-the-street was simply the year, which is the interval between each spring equinox, the month and the forenoon, afternoon and evening of the day. Chinese peasants were able to avoid the bourgeois vice of clock-watching. However, certain times were rigid; for example, the times of the opening and closing of the city gates; these were usually regulated by dawn and dusk, and for watchmen who walked the dark streets who knew from experience reasonably accurately when to call out the hour. For the majority of Chinese another important aspect of time is the lunar date of birth and death, as no marriage could be arranged without the exchange of time and date of birth of the potential bride and bridegroom.

However, to the Daoist time never stops and no state can be retained. Change is the only constant. Everything is continually changing but for each action there is a reaction so that the cosmic balance remains the same.
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Chinese lives have long been regulated by two separate calendars, the lunar and the solar. To agrarian peasants the accuracy of the combined calendars is of vital importance having long had a religious as well as a practical function. Chinese geomancers use their skills of prediction melding the religious and practical so that time and what in the west would be regarded as astrology are intermingled. Lunar calendars cannot predict the seasons any more than the solar calendar can predict the full and new moons.

All Chinese religious festivals follow the lunar calendar which changes from year to year, complicated by whether a particular lunar month has twenty-nine or thirty days. Festivals play a major rôle in people's lives breaking up the monotony of life. There were, and still are, three major annual festivals: San Jie, known colloquially as guo jie literally as 'passing the joint', consisting of guo nian, the festival of seeing the old year out and the new year in; guo duanwu, the Dragon Boat Festival on the Double Fifth; and guo zhongqiu, the Autumn Festival, on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month. The great majority of festivals in China have been and still are determined by the waxing and waning of the moon.

Until 1911 an annual Imperial Lunar or ‘Dynastic' Calendar, known as the Yellow Calendar, the determination of which was a royal prerogative, was precisely calculated following meticulous observations by Chinese astronomers in order that imperial ritual sacrifices could be carried out and confirmation obtained for political action. This legitimised the emperor's power to rule and his claim to the Mandate of Heaven. The one stationary star of the Heavens was the Pole Star around which all other stars seem to circulate. The Pole Star was recognised as the linchpin of the heavens. Chinese emperors were cosmic figures, the equivalent on Earth of the Pole Star, with their every move regulated in conjunction with astrology. The calendar divided the year into twelve months; the new moon fell predictably on the first of each lunar month and the full moon on the fifteenth. A similar popular Calendar, known as the Farmers' Almanac, costing coppers, was and still is widely circulated amongst the masses. This enabled, and still enables, the population, mainly the peasants and petty merchants, to be informed when specific actions or functions can be performed as well as taboos warning them against carrying out daily activities which would be counter to the feng shui, such as on a certain
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g
25

EARTH GOD WINE AND THE MEETING OF THE FLUTTERING BUTTERFLIES LOCAL CUSTOMS OF EARLY SPRING IN LATE IMPERIAL CENTRAL CHINA

GÖRAN AIJMER

As spring was approaching in the lake lands of Southern Hubei and Northern Hunan, people became increasingly involved in the new agricultural season. Once snow and frosts were part of the past, the new season for rice began. In the first place the irrigated seedbeds were prepared to receive the sowing of the grain, and later to see the sprouting of the first thick green carpet of the young shoots. Irrigation systems had to be looked over and repaired in anticipation of the period when the large paddy fields were to be set under water.

After the celebration of the Lantern Festival as the finale of the New Year season, on the fifteenth of the first moon of the lunar year, there was a bit of a ritual slack season. The advantage of this for people was that there was then a period of uninterrupted time necessary for the urgent agricultural spring tasks. What followed after New Year was a string of smaller seasonal events, somewhat more modest than the big cardinal festivals. Even so these celebrations were certainly of some importance - at least they provided a few short but joyful breaks in days otherwise filled with heavy loads of work. In this essay I shall examine two relatively minor festive events which were celebrated in the early spring, in the second lunary of the year or around that time.

We must remember that Chinese reckoning of time in Imperial days was structured by two main and different annual calendars. One was based on the phases of the moon and comprised twelve lunaries. The other took account of the annual behaviour of the sun and contained twenty-four solar phases. The lunar dates varied in terms of the sun calendar, but it was the latter which gave the pragmatic landmarks in terms of seasonal weather and rural tasks for the countryman, whereas various celebrations of agricultural achievements and social events were held in accordance with the moon year. The lunar New Year could fall any time from the twenty-first of January to the nineteenth of February, Gregorian reckoning, and thus varied a great deal from year to year in

I have dealt with these elsewhere: Aijmer 1964; 1968; 1979; 1991; 2002.
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its relationship to the relatively stable solar year, which could deviate from the true astronomical cycle only by three days. This discrepancy between the two cycles brought the advantage that what people carried out practically, in accordance with the reckoning of the sun's passage through a zodiac, could be celebrated after the practical event, and then the moon calendar offered the opportunity. Feasting did not interfere with work. But this was not always so. Some important festivals were tied to the position of the sun. The existence of two calendars also offered the possibility of double celebrations - each feast emphasizing one of two different aspects of some phenomenon. By such a separation in time, equal weight and dignity could be given to notions that did not easily tally inside one singular ritual frame.

In solar terms, the period of 'Establishment of Spring' set in on (approximately) the fifth of February. There was a great festival at that time, which was really part of the long New Year duration, but also connoted with expectations for the coming agricultural year.2 The spring season in central China lasted through the periods of 'Rain Water,' 'Arousal from Hibernation,' 'Vernal Equinox,' 'Clear and Bright,' 'Grain Rains' and up to ‘Establishment of Summer' on the fifth of May. In terms of the varying lunar calendar, spring would correspond roughly with the period from the middle of the first moon up to the beginning of the fourth lunary.

What were the festive concerns of people in the Lake Dongting area in the early part of the long Chinese spring? One prominent feature was a continuing divination about coming crops and the weather upon which these were dependent. Already New Year was a great period for forecasting and these predictions were continued in the course of the spring. We can find some glimpses of such activities in our sources. But there were also some more prominent days which saw a lot of ritual activities.

One day in early spring was of special importance. According to the official almanac it fell on the fifth wu day that followed Li Chun.  is the fifth of a set of twelve 'Earthly Branches' that in combination with twelve 'Celestial Stems' formed a system for calculating time and days. Li Chun is the mentioned solar period

2

Aijmer 2002: Ch. XV.
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could also be a day for worshipping at the graves—a spring practice spread over several possible days. There is likely to have been a link of association between the She and the dead—in a way similar to what can still be discerned in some southern parts of China today. The offerings on this day were sometimes made in a grand style with cavalcades and officiants engaging the spirits. It was an occasion for feasting, drinking and games.

31

There was another festivity in the second lunar month of the year which was called Hua Zhao or 'Flower Dawn,' which occurred on the full moon day, the fifteenth of the moon. The festival is mentioned in chronicles from Tongshan, Baling,32 Yingshan,33 Zhongxiang,34 and Gong'an.35 If the sky was clear on this day in Baling, then the cotton plants would have a good harvest.36 In Gong'an there were similarly good prospects for cotton if there was a clear full moon on this night.37

The Flower Dawn as a social event is not extensively described, but we learn that in Zhongxiang there were outdoor activities in the open country outside the town, and so there were presumably also picnics. It is said that gentry and commoners ta qing—‘trod on the greenness’—and they dou bai cao ‘gathered one hundred grasses.’

Ta qing is a name for a spring outing, and the designation for this festive picnic is in the wider Chinese world associated with various dates, like the eighth day of the first moon, the second day of the second moon and the third day of the third moon. It is also generally held to be among the customs of Qing Ming in early April, even signifying grave visits. In this present corpus of ethnography we find mention of ‘treading on the greenness’ at the Flower Dawn. Dou bai cao was a game in which people armed themselves with stalks of grass. From each of a pair of stalks was pressed a drop of liquid and the two drops were

31 古今圖書集成,1888.VI,1223:風俗考2a.

32 古今圖書集成,1888.VI,1166:風俗考4a.

33 古今圖書集成,1888.VI,1142:風俗考2a.

34 古今圖書集成,1888.VI,1193:風俗考3b.

35 古今圖書集成,1888.VI,1223:風俗考2a.

36 古今圖書集成,1888.VI,1193:風俗考3b.

37 古今圖書集成,1888.VI,1120:風俗考6ab.
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brought into contact. The stalk which in this way drew up the drop of the other was declared the winning party. Perhaps this was an élitist thing to do and we have no description from the central lake land to improve our knowledge. At least the name suggests games in the open under festive conditions. Another designation used for this day was, in Tongshan, pu die hui 'the meeting of the fluttering butterflies.'38

撲蝶會

A note from Yingshan claims that Hua Zhao was a day when young women got their ears pierced. It was also a day when girls who had reached the age of twelve, thirteen or more, started allowing their hair to grow long. In the same place, this day of Flower Dawn was also an occasion for sending presents to a (future?) bride's home, and to arrange- or confirm-betrothals (na bian). Alternatively, it was a day for wen ming or 'to ask names.' This was a preliminary ceremony leading to a likely engagement to be married, generally implying a comparison of the two candidates in terms of the combinations of celestial signs going with their respective birthdays. The Flower Dawn was generally regarded as an auspicious day for this.39 We can see that this festival was marked by femininity-girls were coming of age, passing into womanhood by starting using jewellery and letting their hair grow long. Female reproduction is also stressed in the arrangements for coming marriages. Also, full moon days were generally associated with femininity.

Turning to Zhongxiang we find that the full moon day of the second lunary was an occasion for the flying of paper kites (feng yuan) and this custom implied some games-but we are not informed as to the rules of these. There is the possibility that these competitions were in terms of appearance and beauty.40

The flying of paper kites in southern China was not only a children's pastime, but was done in a ceremonial way in certain seasons and on specific days. In Fujian Province, around the city of Fuzhou it was an activity associated with the autumnal Chong Yang festival on the ninth day of the ninth moon. In a different context I have suggested

38 古今圖書集成.1888.VI,1166:風俗考4a.

39 古今圖書集成.1888.VI,1142:風俗考2a.

40 Hodous 1974: 190-92; Bredon & Mitrophanow 1927: 430-35.

41 Aijmer 1991.
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in brief that kite flying may have been an iconic expression for the reaching of Heaven. People strove on that day for affinity with what was celestial by climbing hills and mountains. The upwards direction was a characteristic feature of this festival associated with the male cosmic principle of yang. So here in Zhongxiang people were also devoted kite flyers, but on the fifteenth day of the second lunary, a day followed by a full moon night, which like all full moons had female implications. Furthermore, it was a day associated with betrothals, awakening of flowers and also the re-appearance of butterflies.

Perhaps it is in this 'awakening' aspect of spring that we might find a clue to the flying of kites at Flower Dawn. In the second moon two categories of beings woke up after hibernating all through the winter—insects and dragons. We are on loose ground here. In Tongshan the solar day and period of ‘Arousal from Hibernation' was a time for forecasting the seasonal weather. Jing Zhi is, however, not only a name for the solar period corresponding to the fifth to the twentieth of March, and often also for the first day of that duration; it is at times used as a name for the second day of the second moon. That particular day is sometimes and in some places also known as 'the dragon raises his head'.43 This designation does not occur in our present corpus ethnography, nor have we found any explicit references to dragons in the material. Even so, it could be that the notion of risin-striving upwards—referring to flowers and insects, and perhaps also dragons, was alive in this area. At least in the magistracy of Zhongxiang the idea was dramatized in the rising kites. This is nothing more than a suggestion.

of

The second moon in the year was one inspired by spring and the release of vernal generative forces. There were two festive celebrations at this time which were both connected with the theme of growth and remuneration, and there were many concerns about the coming agricultural season. It was a time for the plowing of the fallow fields and the sowing of rice in the seedbeds was soon to follow. It was also a period when farmers wished for rain and there was customary divination, both about weather and coming crops, the latter of course dependant on the former. The two festivals which have been described

42 Bredon & Mitrophanow 1927: 176; Tun 1987: 25.

43 Bodde 1975: 56. 252; see also ch’ü 1972: 31.
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the divinity of these chthonic domains. That underworld was also the universe of the dead in their graves. In a sense the altar, or shrine, of the She (She Ji) may have been intuited as a symbolic epitome of the collective of graves, but this would then have been a synthesis of death and the dead with a difference. In grave worship it was explicitly dead individuals who were addressed, and possibly also a multitude of such individuals, all of whom were discursively brought together by a grammar of agnatic kinship. It may be significant that, as in Yuanjiang, the recently dead should be worshipped at their graves before the She Day—when they were still 'uncollectivized' individuals. Perhaps they were incorporated into the She and the common ground of the vicinage on this very day. In a social landscape filled with localized lineage communities, it may be that the dead of an area or a neighbourhood were always former members of a particular localized lineage. But that may not always have been true.

We might hypothesize that the She was a manifestation of the collectivity of the dead in an area, an aggregation of 'death force' without discrimination in terms of agnatic kinship. The She brought his worshippers the blessings of the vegetative power of the underground and its inhabitants for the coming crops, for the production of rice and the reproduction of society. This train of thought would also account for the political component, the She being the centripetal energy in a demarcated space—in contrast to ancestors and their cults which were articulated in idioms of time, to enhance various particularized claims of specific kinship communities. The She was, like the Imperial administration, for everyone and, in the final analysis, the Emperor was the mediator of the blessings of the underground for his Imperial realm.

About the same time, and in the same annual phase of spring and vernal tasks in the agricultural cycle, people in the Dongting area also celebrated the Flower Dawn. This was a festival of certain female presuppositions, being connected with the full moon. People observed the awakening Nature, the re-emergence of butterflies and other insects and the sprouting vegetation. They sought out areas outside of towns and villages for outings with picnics and games. On occasion, this seasonal striving upwards from the ground in the direction of Heaven, was made symbolically explicit by the flying of paper kites. The day was one on which initiatives were taken to betroth young women and,

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to a state of the earth. The same paradox is also apparent in the celebration of the other seasonal festival, the Flower Dawn with its emphasis on an upward yang direction. The latter festival was observed according to the lunar calendar, and so relating to the main yin manifestation in Heaven, the moon. To intensify this sense of femininity it was celebrated under the full moon of the second lunary. The second moon, being of an even number, also has female associations.

The Flower Dawn day highlighted the awakening Nature and the end of the cold season's hibernation. It celebrated arousal and the drawing out of life from the underground in an upward direction. It was a day to be spent in the open with picnics in 'the wilderness', away from built-up areas. This was in contrast to the centripetal She celebrations, which were focused on one particular, centrally located altar. Flower Dawn was a day of contesting games, food, and kite flying. Female sexuality was one main theme of the festival, people following old conventions as to the coming of age of young women, their betrothals, and coming marriages.

The latter point is somewhat puzzling. The period for betrothals of young people, and also marriages, started generally at, or after, the Chong Yang festival on the ninth day of the ninth moon, the culmination of the wedding season being on New Year's Day and around that time. This autumnal period was the social season that followed after the harvest of rice when the fields were left fallow and the life force of Nature withdrew into the ground.49

It seems then as if the Flower Dawn was a spring alternative for the celebration of relations of affinity. Both She Day and Flower Dawn appeared in a period of the year that saw a seasonal near-balance of the cosmic forces of yin and yang—complete at the Spring Equinox.50 Yin had now started to wane and yang was growing into dominance. In the world of death, the deceased in their yin guise in the graves were growing in ritual importance, while the dead in their yang semblance, as celestial phenomena and manifest in the form of ancestral tablets, were coming out of focus. These two festivals each explored one dimension of Nature's seasonal balance:

49 The autumnal equinox gave towards the end of the year.
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both. The She Day sought abundance in terms of rice from chthonic generative forces, while Flower Dawn solicited wealth in terms of human proliferation from the celestial yang forces of the season. Early spring was a ritual season of releasing life by way of offerings, engagements for marriage and games of contest which, taken together, brought new life to both local communities and domestic groups. Together the two festivals sought a general enjoyment of double blessings.

REFERENCES

AUMER, GORAN. 1964. The Dragon Boat Festival in the Hunan and Hupeh Plains: A Study in the Ceremonialism of the Transplantation of Rice. Stockholm: Statens etnografiska museum.

AUMER, Goran. 1968. A Structural Approach to Chinese Ancestor Worship. Bijdragen tot de taal-, land-, en volkenkunde 124: 91-98.

AUMER, GORAN. 1979. Ancestors in the Spring: The Qingming Festival in Central China. Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 19: 59-82

Aumer, Goran. 1991. Chongyang and the Ceremonial Calendar in Central China. In H.R. Baker and S. Feuchtwang (eds.), An Old State in New Settings: Studies in the Social Anthropology of China in Memory of Maurice Freedman. Oxford: JASO.

Aumer, Goran. 2002 (In print). New Year Celebrations in Central China in Late Imperial Times. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press.

AUMER, GORAN and VIRGIL K.Y. Ho. 1999. Cantonese Society in a Time of Change. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press.

BODDE, DERK. 1975. Festivals in Classical China: New Year and other Annual Observations during the Han Dynasty 206 B.C.-A.D. 220. Princeton: Princeton University Press and The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

BREDON, JULIET & IGOR MITROPHANOW, 1972 (1927). The Moon Year: A Record of Chinese Customs and Festivals. Taipei: Ch'eng Wen Publishing Company.

CHAVANNES, EDOUARD, 1969 (1910). Le dieu du sol dans la Chine antique. Appendice à Le T'ai Chan: Essai de monographie d'un culte chinois. Farnborough: Gregg International Publishers.

Ch'u T'ung-tsu, 1972, Han Social Structure. Edited by Jack L. Dull. Seattle & London: University of Washington Press
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because of this specific claim.

Several points of interest should be underscored in this account. Although Ch'ea had stopped the rituals of ancestral veneration at home and during the festival seasons, he continued to live in accordance to other accepted norms, including "cleaning the graves" of his ancestors. Apparently wanting to be with people and to share his message, Ch'ëa had obviously worked through the ethics of which traditional practices did not hinder his Christian life and so developed means of approach to others through them. Kot was very specific about the themes Ch'ea spoke about, some which he might have heard from Ho and Legge in Hong Kong in the spring of 1856. What Kot remembered were themes on "the bounty of God in creation and providence," the latter an issue expressed in Legge's sermons and most likely in Ho's elegant Chinese homilies, as well as elaborations on the nature of the soul, why people should not worship idols, and "the propitiation made by Jesus Christ for the sins of men." In spite of the disbelief of many listeners in the cemetery after Ch'ea mentioned that he had the “divine books" in his possession, Kot kept note of where he lived and made it a point to visit him nearly a month later.

Certainly the fact that Kot waited a full month before attempting to visit Ch'ea suggests that he did not feel very comfortable or highly motivated to do so. Apparently Kot had begun questioning his village neighbours about many of the issues Ch'ea had raised, and so a greater curiosity about Ch'ea's actual "domestic arrangements" prodded Kot to see if this local preacher lived by what he taught. Once he found Ch'ea's home, Kot was invited in and saw, perhaps to his surprise, that "there was in his house neither Koon Yum (Guanyin, the famous Chinese female Boddhisatva), nor Kwan Ty (Guandì, the spirit guardian, often the image placed on doors as a protector of homes), neither ancestral tablets, nor incense pot." Willingly receiving Christian literature from Ch'ea at that time, Kot returned to his village only to find his neighbours still taking Ch'ea "to be mad." After intermittent reading of the books and later repeated visits by Ch'ëa (in "my house three or four times"), Kot began to join Ch'ea in "worship[ping] God" and "convers[ing]

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