In Chinese ba" indicates the eight; in Tibetan gu' signifies the ninth; and in all probability the feast may' last from the evening of the eighth till the morning of the ninth, thus covering both the Chinese and Tibetan dates. No explanation whatever ts) offered with these two dates and the only definite fact known is that an enormous feast takes place somewhere between them which can only' adequately be described as a mess of pottage" "Year by year the children along the border look forward to this day as 'a-ba-fan' as something quite 'The assortment of things inti' would dismay a French chet. One little Chinese girl, as she was Yearning her lesson to-day, tried to tell me all that was "intil-there was carrot and turnip and cabbage, and bean-curd, and pork "and beans, vermicelli and rice, leeks and onions and slices of ginger' and powdered red Peppers and salt and fermented rice and wild pepper and soy beans and numerous other things which have ho equivalent in the English language. madness' of this peculiar dish; there surely: must be a certain amount pork and not too much red Pepper: and a certain amount of rice and not too much corn; and a certain amount of onions and! not too much leeks: and a certain amount of ginger and not too much vermicelli; otherwise the younger members of' the family' might spend the evening and the morning gasping for breath, 'Alter years of la-ba-fan' there Is probably a very definite arrangement in the order of the ingredients especially with regard to the wild pep~ per grown in West Szechuan. This stuff Is atrociously pungent and a little foos a long way! One peculiarity about this twelve-eight-rice is that some of it is put in a separate pot and kept for a future occasion and Some of its offered as a Thanks Offering to the spirits for mercies. and blessings received and enjoyed. There also this idea behind the Tibetan feast.
The Ingredients In the ninth-night-pottage, as the Tibetans name the festival, they one belter than the Chinese. If held on the ninth of the moon they put in nine ingredients; if held on the 19th the mess carries 19 ingredients: and it held on the 20th the pot contains 29 ingredients. As the Tibetans have not the same wide choice of foodstuffs as the Chinese, their hash is usually made up of numerous cereals, such as, barley, flour, wheat, rice, corn buck= wheat, peas, beans, and turnips, potatoes, and of course a chunk yak beef with a good supply of red hot Chinese chillies, an ingredient of which the Tibetans are exceedingly fond.
Tuden tells me this ninth-night-pottage is enjoyed by the lamas and Grabas in all the lamaseries throughout Sikang when something like this takes place: As a rule the drabas are as poor as church mice but each
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.