[VOL IV] CEREMONY OF ” MEETING THE SPRING “

CEREMONY OF “MEETING THE SPRING”

Cover Image: Ceremony of “Meeting the Spring” Traditional Chinese Spring Festival / China / Drawn by T. Allom Engraved by S.Bradshaw – ALAMY Image ID:2X55ND1

*Traditional Chinese Spring Festival customs are typically celebrated to welcome the Chinese New Year and the arrival of the spring season. These rituals are full of symbolism and blessings, deeply rooted in cultural traditions.

“Come, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness, come,
And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud,
While music wakes around, veil’d in a shower
Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend.”

THOMSON.

NATIONAL amusements amongst the Chinese are generally associated with pretended sanctity, or rather actual superstition; and every cardinal event in earthly affairs is referred in their stolid creed, to some revolution of the heavenly bodies—some phenomenon in the firmament—some periodic change in the great government of the universe. Little acquainted with the real forms of the planetary orbits, they pay much attention to the solar and lunar motions, and are zealous in their celebration of festivities in honour of both. When the sun is in the fifteenth of Aquarius, and when the second February moon appears, it is the custom to form a procession, and go forth to meet the coming spring. Before, however, the festal day arrives, the more pious portion of the idolaters visit the various temples of Fo, or of Tao, or the Hall of Confucius, or those fane dedicated to eminent men of times passed by.

Those less infected with superstitious enthusiasm, take advantage of the prevailing idleness, and pay periodical visits to their friends and relations in distant provinces, or make parties of pleasure to favourite places of recreation. A third class, however, uniting the extremes of riot and religion, devote their leisure to the joyous celebration of the approaching season. A decade of days is appropriated to the ceremonies specified, and distinguished by the object of worship on each day respectively. The fowl, dog, pig, sheep, ox, horse, man, grain, hemp, and pea, are the natural products that constitute the subject of procession and veneration successively. Two of the ten days are held in greater reverence than the rest; these are the festivals of man and of the buffalo. On the latter occasion, a procession, formed at a concerted place of rendezvous, advances to some rural temple, where it is received by the chief magistrate of the district, who offers an accustomed sacrifice, and prostrates himself before the rude emblems of the season, borne by the procession-men. All the mummers are decorated with ribands or garlands; some are supplied with instruments of music, such as drums, gongs, horns; others carry banners, lanterns, or representations of pine-apples, and fruits of larger growth.

Boys, dressed like satyrs or fauns, and seated on rustic altars, or on the branches of trees, are carried along in litters; on other stages are arranged little maids, dressed like Flora, supporting the camellia, as figurative of the tea-plant, the usefulness of the leaf and the beauty of the blossom being meant to express the distinguishing characters of the softer sex. Above all these litters, and standards, and lanterns, rises a huge buffalo, or water-ox, made of clay, and borne by a number of able-bodied worshippers, dressed in spring colours. It is not unusual to have a hundred tables, or litters, in a procession, each sustaining a number of boys or girls, an effigy of the water-ox, or of the human face divine. Arriving at the door of an appointed temple, the che-foo, who had been in waiting there from the preceding day, advances to welcome them, in his capacity of Priest of Spring. He is pro tempore the highest officer in the district, exacting obedience from the viceroy, should they meet, during his ten days’ sovereignty.

Gorgeously attired, and shaded beneath an umbrella of state, enriched with embroidery, he delivers a discourse upon the praises of spring, and recommends the cause of husbandry; after which he strikes the figure of the water-ox three times with a whip, as the commencement of the labours of the plough. This is the signal for general action; the multitude now proceed to stone the buffalo, from which, as it tumbles to pieces, numbers of little images fall out, for which a general scramble takes place. Proceeding to the various public offices, the cortège halts in front of each, and there makes a noisy demonstration, in return for the images, or medals, so generously thrown amongst them by the authorities.

The ceremony observed on “Man-day,” when an image of the human form is carried about in triumph, is in all respects identical. Government supply the litter-carriers, and the litter-men, (Tae-Suey) and the effigy which is worshipped as “the Deity of the Year,” in allusion to the cycle of sixty years employed by the Chinese, in their chronological computations. There is a festival observed at Palermo, and called “The Triumph of St. Rosalia,” which in its extravagance and arrangements very much resembles “Meeting the Spring,” but differs altogether in its objects. However, the festival of Apis, in ancient Egypt, resembles the Chinese feast in every respect.

（*Vide “Shores and Islands of the Mediterranean,” p. 48.）