Tales of a Chinese Grandmother. Frances Carpenter

'this unworthy servant of yours may be able to help you. He has killed men as easily as he cuts open a gourd. In battle the dead bodies left behind him are like ants in a hill. Why should he fear spirits? Why should his brave comrade, Hu Ching-te, be afraid? Let us both arm ourselves and let us stand by your door through the night to drive the spirits away.'

      "Chin and Hu took up their posts beside the palace door. All night they stood on guard, and not once was there a sound to disturb the sick Emperor. He slept the night through, and from that moment his illness began to grow less. Night after night Chin and Hu stood by the door, until at last the Emperor recovered. But although he was well again he still feared that the spirits might come back if no guard stood on watch. At the same time he was troubled about his faithful Chin Shu-pao and Hu Ching-te.

      "'The good generals must be weary,' Shih Ming said to his ministers. 'They need to rest. Call the court painters! Bid them paint likenesses of the brave Chin and Hu. Let the artists show them with armor and weapons so that they may be ready for the spirits! Then paste their pictures on the gates of the palace. We shall see if they will not be as powerful against the bad spirits as Chin and Hu themselves.'

      "It was done. The pictures were fixed upon the gates of the palace. Ha, the spirits must have thought the painted figures were really the mighty warriors themselves, for none came that night to disturb the peace inside the palace walls. " Grandmother Ling laughed as she thought of the good joke on the spirits who were so stupid as to be so easily fooled.

      The Ling family took every care to start the New Year with good luck. Besides the lucky red signs and the lucky dishes being prepared inside the family kitchen, they did not forget a single lucky custom. They were more than usually polite as they put up over the stove the new picture of the Kitchen God who, they thought, had returned from his visit to heaven. Knives and scissors and sharp tools were all put carefully away lest the New Year luck should be cut.

      Throughout the evening the courtyards were filled with the din of popping firecrackers. Ah Shung and Yu Lang were allowed to light some of the little red tubes of gunpowder themselves. They enjoyed the sound of their bursting. The Chinese all liked their noise because they believed it helped to frighten the spirits away.

      "It was in earliest times," the Old Old One had told the children, "that we found out that the bad spirits do not like sharp sounds. In the Western Mountain there was once a giant more than twice as tall as your father. He was so ugly to look upon that men fainted away when they saw him. At last they learned to drive him off by burning hollow stalks of bamboo, which made a crackling noise. Then someone or other thought of putting gunpowder inside hollow tubes made of paper. These first firecrackers made a much louder noise than burning bamboo. They frightened the ugly giant so badly that he never came back again.

      "Tomorrow morning we shall break the paper seals that Chang has pasted over the cracks of the gates, and we shall open our doors to fortune with lucky phrases. Every one of us must guard his tongue against saying the wrong words. You, my thoughtless small ones, must take special care what word you speak first when you wake in the morning. For if it is a lucky word, you will be lucky through all the New Year. But if it is unlucky, o-yo, there will be trouble."

      The boy and the girl trotted off with Wang Lai across the dark court to their own low house. The cold winter sky was dotted with stars, and the sound of popping firecrackers still came over the walls from the courtyards of neighboring houses. Ah Shung and Yu Lang exchanged their wadded day suits for their night garments of softer cloth. They climbed up on the heated brick floor of their bed, they arranged their hard little pillows of leather and wood, and they rolled themselves in their thick wadded comforters with sighs of content. They were tired with the excitement of the day's preparations. They wanted to go to sleep quickly so that the New Year would come soon. They could hardly wait for the gifts and the good things that the Old Man of the New Year would bring to them.

      As Wang Lai pulled the bed curtains that shut them away from the night air, they were saying over and over to themselves the word they meant to speak the first thing in the morning. They decided upon it because it was the very word for good luck. If they could just remember to say it first, they would be sure of a splendid New Year.

      "Fu. Fu. Fu-u-u..." Yu Lang whispered sleepily.

      "Fu. Fu. Fu-u-u-u..." Ah Shung echoed. And then all was still inside their bed curtains.

      VII

       THE PAINTED EYEBROW

      YU LANG was watching her grandmother dress. It was a day in the New Year holiday time, and there were to be important guests in the Court of Politeness. The old woman seemed to be taking more than ordinary care with her appearance, although Yu Lang could never remember a day when the Old Old One did not look as if she had stepped down from a scroll painting.

      Lao Lao was sitting in her carved wooden chair before a little table. She had placed herself near the wide latticed windows which filled half of the south side of her room. She wanted to get as much as possible of the light coming through the thin white paper that served instead of glass in the window frames. Upon the table before her was a mahogany box whose open lid stood upright and whose body was filled with little boxes and bottles of powder and paint, with combs and brushes and jars of "hair water."