Free God's Chinese Son by Jonathan Spence

hungry ghosts are delivered from their anguish by the inter­cession of the Buddha, in rites first practiced eleven hundred years before. These ceremonies are hardly over when bowls of rice are prepared for all the Buddhist and Taoist monks and nuns and for any beggars in the town, who on seven-ten shall not go hungry. 2
    At the double-nine, all worship again at ancestral graves, and picnic— if they can—in the hills, to remember the reclusive sage Fei Changfang, who once saved a disciple's life by urging him to flee to the hills with his young family since death was coming to his home. The disciple followed his advice, keeping his spirits up with chrysanthemum wine, and upon return found all his chickens and farm animals dead in the yard—taken as substitutes, said Fei, since death could not find the humans he was seeking.
    A few days later, as the ninth month ends, the Fire God has his festival: for three full days, street by street, people implore his protection, for fire is the worst enemy, one that has leveled towns and villages so many times. For three days lamps blaze all night in streets festooned with streamers, and the residents and shop owners in the wealthier roads stage plays to serve as the "Fire God's Requiem." Sometimes of course, as happened in the Dragon Boat races, such ceremonies reverse themselves—in one village near Canton, which celebrated the festival in 1835 with five days and night of plays accompanied by fireworks, the flaming devices set the tents and chests of theatrical clothes on fire, forcing the terrified audience to run for their lives, trampling ten or more in the melee. Just one year later, in a village outside Canton, another crowded theater caught on fire, and this time two hundred men and women were killed in the terrified stampede. 3 The festival year ends with the celebration of the winter sol­stice and its promise of lengthening days, and the visit of the kitchen god, who must be fed and welcomed if his favors are to be granted in the new year.
    In Hua, where heat and hunger, dampness and diseases are never far away, these festivals take on a special urgency. The people of Hua, according to their own early historian, are the kind who will summon a doctor if they have a slight illness, but if their sickness is severe they turn to the spirits. At New Year's time, before the dawn, they bathe in scented water as the festival begins, and amidst the sound of firecrackers and the drinking of spring wine they weigh the rainfall day by day for twelve days straight, to gauge the coming year's prospects. Similarly, they chart the wind's direction, wishing for a cold north wind that will reverse itself and lead to a warm spring, and praying to avoid a southern wind that brings bad luck. Men and women crowd together as they pray before clay figures of water buffalo and their celestial drover; they stage plays in the street to entertain the spirits, scatter pulse and grain on the ground to bring a fertile year, and eat cakes of plain flour and vegetables to keep them free of smallpox. After the first full moon, they welcome the Yellow Emperor by hanging chains of garlic on their doors to ward off evil forces, and cook large round pancakes of sticky rice on which they place a needle and thread, which they say will help them patch the heavens. 5
    In the fourth month, too, they gather to share a ritual meal, in this case the flavored liquid in which the Buddha's image has been washed outside the temple gate, and then eat sweet rice cakes cooked with a hundred herbs. Some say this will cure delirium. 6 At the summer solstice, they cook and eat dog meat, to keep away malaria, and at the coming of winter they share a broth of meat, peaches, and mustard greens, to keep any other sicknesses away. Even more careful than the procedure followed in the first month is the charting of the rains and wind at the end of the sixth month, on the day they call the Dragon's Measure. "Heavy rain on this day," goes