Everything Becomes Cheap Before It, For Shopkeepers Are Anxious
To Realize Ready Money At Any Loss, For It Is Imperative
That all
accounts be closed by the last day of the old year, on pain of a man
being disgraced,
Losing all hope of getting credit, and of having his
name written up on his door as a defaulter. It appears also that debts
which are not settled by the New Year's Eve cannot thereafter be
recovered, though it is lawful for a creditor who has vainly hunted a
debtor throughout that last night to pursue him for the first hours
after daybreak, provided he still carries a lantern!
The festival lasts a fortnight, and is a succession of feasts and
theatrical entertainments, everybody's object being to cast care and
work to the winds. Even the official seals of the mandarins are
formally and with much rejoicing sealed up and laid aside for one
month. On the 20th day of the 12th month houses and temples are
thoroughly washed and cleaned, rich and poor decorate with
cloth-of-gold, silk embroideries, artificial and real flowers, banners,
scrolls, lucky characters, illuminated strips of paper, and bunches of
gilt-paper flowers, and even the poorest coolie contrives to greet the
festival with some natural blossom. There is no rest either by night
or day, joss-sticks burn incessantly, and lamps before the ancestral
tablets, gongs are beaten, gingalls fire incessantly, and great
crackers like cartridges fastened together in rows are let off at
intervals before every door to frighten away evil spirits; there are
family banquets of wearisome length, feasts to the household gods,
offerings in the temples, processions in the street by torch and
lantern light, presents are given to the living, and offerings to the
dead, the poor are feasted, and the general din is heightened by
messengers perambulating the streets with gongs, calling them to the
different banquets.
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