A CHAPTER OF FOLKLORE 81 



She Hwang Ti. This general wanted to know how far the 

 palace E long was from his camp so that he might know 

 how long to make his tunnel. He did this by flying a 

 kite. At other times the kite was used in war to send 

 messages. 



According to Professor J. J. M. de Groot in his Les 

 Fetes Annuelles e Emoui the ascending of the hills and the 

 flying of kites was added to the festival of the ninth day of 

 the ninth month in the seventh century A.D. In this 

 century the literary examinations were reorganized and the 

 celebration of the kite flying took place after the results of 

 the examination were announced. 



The kite was imported to the west from China. Strutt 

 in his Sports and Pastimes of the People of England 

 savs that the earliest mention of the kite is found in a 

 French-English dictionary of the year 1690. The English 

 paper kite is an exact translation of the Chinese Chih-Yuan. 

 The German "fliegender Drache" and the French "cerf- 

 volant" suggest the Chinese origin. (See J. J. M. de Groot 

 Fetes Annuelles, p. 536). 



The work Hsu Po Wu Chi written in the middle of the 

 twelfth century A.D. suggests another origin of the kite and 

 its use. It says "At present people take advantage of the 

 wind to fly the kite. The kite flies upward tied to a string. 

 The small children gaze at it with mouth wide open and 

 thereby the fever in their bodies is dissipated." For all 

 these reasons kite-flying is popular, but especially because 

 it is good sport for young and old. The trip to the hills 

 fills the lungs with good air and no doubt enables the 

 denizens of the odoriferous streets of China to obtain a 

 new lease on life. After all, the ancients were not so very 

 far wrong in their practice, though we may consider their 

 theory puerile. Like many other practices backed up with 

 poor theories it worked and fitted into their general philo- 

 sophy of life. 



