Page:Twentieth Century Impressions of Hongkong, Shanghai, and other Treaty Ports of China.djvu/315

 of Hongkong.

ROM the cradle onwards the Chinese are surrounded by social customs and religious observances so interwoven as to be almost indistinguishable. When a child is born the ceremony of bathing the baby lakes place on the third day. According to Chinese reckoning, this may be after a lapse of anything from twenty-five to forty-nine hours, for any portion of a day counts as a day which the child has seen. Age is reckoned in the same way. Thus, a child born on December 31st would be two years of age on the following day, for he would have lived in two years. The method of calculation is similar to that followed in regard to English race-horses.

The bathing is followed on the twelfth day by another ceremony, but the most important of these early functions is that which takes place one Chinese moon, or lunar month, from the date of birth. The infant is then considered to have attained a position in the family, and becomes recognised as a permanent member; a child dying before that age is scarcely given a name. The full-moon festival is one of great rejoicing, especially in the case of an eldest male child. Friends send presents to the parents for the child, and the parents, in return, invite their friends to a feast or dinner, and introduce to them the new member of the family. It must be borne in mind that this remark applies more especially to male children, for, although nowadays in Hongkong and some of the larger coast ports a female child usually receives some recognition, in the interior of China little notice is taken of girls, except occasionally when the firstborn is a female. It may here be mentioned that the practice of binding the feet of girls, in accordance with a distorted notion of beauty, is gradually dying out, the Empress of China having expressed her strong disapproval of the custom.

  A Chinaman may have five names or more. One name is given to him in childhood by the father; another by his teacher when he is old enough to go to school; a third he adopts for the convenience of his friends when he arrives at manhood; and a fourth at marriage. This last is the name by which he is registered in the ancestral hall, or temple devoted to ancestral worship. Should he become an officer in the employment of the Government he will receive an official name, which may be one of the names by which he has been known formerly, or may be a new name altogether. In China a business is generally carried on under a name different from that of the proprietor, but in Hongkong this custom is falling into desuetude, and not infrequently now a man employs his own name in the designation of his premises.

Girls generally have only two names — one a maiden name, or "milk-name," as it may be more literally rendered from the Chinese ; the other a school name. Upon her marriage a girl places the surname of her husband before her own, so that, to anglicise an illustration, if a Miss Adam married a Mr. Smith, she would become Mrs. Smith-Adam. Children receive the father's surname, or, more properly speaking, the surname of the father's family or clan. In all Chinese names the surname is written first, and is followed by the individual names, as in an alphabetical directory. A similar arrangement is followed in addressing letters — the province is written first, followed by the town, street, and number or name of the house, and, last of all, the surname and name of the individual.   A small ceremony characterises the first entrance of a Chinese boy of the upper and middle classes to school. It begins with a form of religious worship, viz., the worship of Confucius and Wun Chang, the god of literature. A "school fee" is paid to the teacher who imparts the first lesson to the pupil, a dinner is generally given to celebrate the event, and the child receives his "school name."

Formerly the aim of all study was the passing of State examinations, in which a 