In most civilized countries the flying of kites is one of the pastimes of the youths and may be indulged in at any time of the year when the weather is favourable. It is essentially an amusement for the younger section of the community and is certainly not restricted to any special season, except, perhaps, that more kite-flying takes place in the warmer months, specially during summer, because it is then that the open air is more inviting than in winter.
In China, where, traditionally, almost everything is done differently from anywhere else in the world, kite-flying, not only is the sport of grown men, as much or more than *t is of boys, but, at least in northern and central China, is strictly confined to one period in the year, and that a comparatively short one. No northern Chinese would dream of fying a kite except in the early spring, from some time after the end of the New Year holidays of the old lunar calendar till about the middle of spring. Just why this is the case ihe writer has never been able to find out, but he well remembers being laughed to scorn, when, as a lad living in the far interior of China, he asked the gatekeeper to buy him a kite in the summer time.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.