NO. 4 RELIGION IN SZECHUAN PROVINCE — GRAHAM 45 



the entire year in which every day is either a festival, a birthday of 

 a god, or a lucky or an unlucky day/ Grainger enumerates i6 calendar 

 fetes.' A writer in the West China Missionary News of November, 

 1926, describes seven, and states that on all of them there are family 

 reunions and ancestral worship.' In the following list of calendar 

 festivals, only those that seem of greatest importance are included. In 

 all of them the ancestral ceremonies have a prominent part. 



On New Year's Day all business is discontinued, the best clothing is 

 worn, social calls are made, and in the homes there is feasting and 

 worship of the housegods. The ancestors are commemorated. Some 

 go to the temples and worship the deities there. 



The Feast of Lanterns is on the fifteenth of the first moon. At night 

 there are many lights and illuminations. In the homes there are 

 feasts and ceremonies. 



Between the tenth and the twentieth of the third lunar month is the 

 Ch'in Min festival, when people visit the graves and remember their 

 dead. Paper money is burnt, food is offered to the dead, the graves 

 are repaired, and the living do obeisance to the spirits of the departed 

 ancestors. 



On the fifth day of the fifth moon is Tuan Yang, often called the 

 Dragon Boat Festival. This day commemorates Ch'ioh Uen, an ancient 

 hero who drowned himself because the emperor would not heed his 

 good advice. The festival has practically become a great social holiday 

 when many thousands gather on the banks of the rivers to watch 

 groups of men in dragon-boats chase ducks that have been released in 

 the water by the spectators. 



The fifteenth day of the seventh moon might be called the festival 

 of the orphan spirits. Much paper money is burnt to the dead 

 ancestors. The spirits who have no filial descendants have been re- 

 leased from hades. Much spirit money is burnt for their use, after 

 which floating lights are placed on the streams to entice the spirits 

 away. 



The Mid-autumn or Chong Ch'iu Festival is on the fifteenth day of 

 the eighth moon. Probably in some parts of China this is the harvest 

 festival, but in Szechuan there are crojis all the year, so that at least 

 in some parts of China this seems to be little more than a day to have 

 a good time. 



In the eleventh moon there is the feast of the winter solstice, with 

 special offerings to the dead. 



* Dore, Henry S. D., Chinese Superstitions, 1915-1922, Vol. V, pp. 565-616. 

 'Grainger, Adam, Studies in Chinese Life, 1921, pp. 49-56. 

 •\¥est China Missionary News. November, 1926. pp. 5-12. 



