Kiating is spending $20,000 on the Fire God Festival. This is the event of the year and great and elaborate preparations are made for it. The streets are gaily de corated and all kinds of artistic lamps are lighted up at night. A theatre, with stalls, booths, and side shows, occupies a large playground in a corner of the city. People say that 30,000 visitors have come from the surrounding country to attend the show, The streets are, indeed, densely packed and, whatever may be going on in any other part of China, Kiating at least is in a very happy holiday mood. The historic play, the fan-tactic dresses, the weird music, the falsetto voices, the well-dressed ladies, the indifferent children, the busy vendors, the white-clad_students, the grey-dressed soldiers, are for the meantime all occupied with this yearly festival.
The clash between north and south, the war between Chang and Wu, the strife between Lin and Yang, are things which have their time and place. At present Kiating and the surrounding country are going to see the Fire God Festival to an end. On the 13th they have some' preliminary performances. The old god is thoroughly cleaned up, painted and decorated, and carried by eight! bearers to pay his respects to the! occupants of the 24 other temples in the city. Next day the 24 other idols politely return the call. On the first day a great procession is formed, the chief feature of which is a large number of children artistically mounted on bamboo! palanquins; they are supposed to represent things ancient and modern, heavenly and earthly, real and unreal. The procession is ae-} companied by bands, idols, incense carriers and beggars of every description carrying all manner of instruments. With 24 temples, dians and districts represented, the procession is of some considerable length. All these things cost money, time, and talent, and this has been unstintedly given to make the Fire God Festival a great success, A Marerrauistie Agr.
In ancient times no doubt this! festival was purely idolatrous in its origin and beginning. At present it is not entirely so. The local merchants and shopkeepers and not the priests finance and arrange this yearly show. If the business people spend $20,000 on the festival they certainly get more than that qut of it. The Chinese around here have a phrase which means, in our language, "killing two birds with one stone." The Fire God festival is practically
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.