Page:The Tourist's California by Wood, Ruth Kedzie.djvu/138

 110 THE TOURIST'S CALIFORNIA the Chinese calendar, there are booths, banners, fire-crackers, lanterns, incense, processions, visits, feasts at midnight. For three days business may go to the dragons. Every one pays his debts at this season, or suffers disgrace. Every one puts on his best clothes and spends as much as he can. The joss-houses belong to different societies who become the idols' patrons. There is a joss for sickness, war, good luck. Some gods will accept only sacrifices of meat and wines, others are vege- tarians. Service is never held en masse. Wor- shippers come as their need impels them. Before the altar they toss the fateful bamboo slips. As they fall, so lies their luck. The five bearded images of the Lung Gong tem- ple no longer sit in their tinselled embroideries. New figures have taken the place of those which burned, and there are new lacquer bowls and sculptured ebonies. The " Queen of Heaven," too, holds her court in a newly decked temple. Perchance a funeral procession may pass as you descend the joss-house steps. The priests and hired female mourners follow in white robes the body laid on a high bier. Imitation paper money is strewn in the street, and paper prayers which should " fly up " fall ignominiously down, to be trampled and muddied in the gutter until swept into a street cleaner's pan. On Good Lady Day and Hero Days there is end-