Page:Chinese Life in the Tibetan Foothills.djvu/204

 and a funeral, and every seventh day is observed by the women as a time for weeping till seven times is reached, and the mourning in many cases ended.

The first and fifteenth are the recognized days for worship in the temple and in the home. The seventh moon of each year is the most idolatrous of the twelve, when the spirits of the family ancestors are supposed to return and share the feast of meat and wine. The pagoda of each city, which is said to be built in the shape of a Chinese pencil and intended to govern the literary welfare of the city, has, as far as I have seen, always got an odd number of storeys. The Chinese are not without their superstitious dread of the foreigner. I have been asked many times if I could see three feet into the ground; and the call, Yang jên tao pao (洋人盜寶), indicates that they believe that our eyes have wondrous powers of finding treasure which they believe lies hidden in the earth. It is quite a common thing to meet a man on the road who will put his nose in his sleeve while passing lest he should smell the foreigner. The smell of the ink of a foreign book is unlucky in the house. The small print of foreign books will injure their eyes, foreigners' tea will bewitch them, etc. We shall now look at a few of the things to be avoided in classified order.

Superstitions connected with the first day of the year. On that day no one in the family may mention the words demon, tiger, cat, snake, monkey, suicide, blood, wounds, short-lived, death, sickness, son died, daughters departed, speechless, lost money; also the following with a play on the double meaning of the words: tuan lu, short road, suicide; tuan t‘su, to sever head from body; pu tsai, lost, also meaning dead; pu hao, not good, also meaning to be sick, etc.

On this first day the brooms of the house are carefully hidden for fear they may be used and sweep away the family inheritance. The scales for weighing vegetables are also hidden as the marks and figures make it resemble a snake. For any member of the household to have dishevelled hair on that day is very unlucky, as that is said to be how demons look, and is a bad omen for the New Year. The breaking of