On the Inst day of the year everybody is very busy, especially during the night. Shop customers, buying sweets, oukes, peanuts, water melon seeds, ete,, crowd to' the counters great throngs. Tram cars, full of passengers, travel about until the day breaks. Although the Chinese recreation places are still open, no one goes to them except the debtors who are hiding from their creditors and hope to escape from trouble. The majority of the Chinese do not got to bed that nigh and the sound of crackers, "bing bang, bing bang" is heard' every where through the whole night.
On the fourth day of the New Year—known as the birthday of the God of Richey—every Chinese shop or family will buy a kind of fish called "The Ingot" in the daytime, The Ingot fish is a sacrifice to the God and set free afterward. During the night, the Chinese do Joss pidgin to welcome the appeartance of the God of Riches in their homes (but he never appears) in the hope that they may become mil-Hionaires during the year. Crackers are fired constantly; and the Degears, carrying clay idols, which fare supposed to represent the God of Riches, visit from house to house begging for money and making good business for themselves.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.