[363] As taxes.
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[364] Visitors to Peking may often see the junkmen at T‘ung-chow
pouring water by the bucketful on to newly-arrived cargoes of Imperial
rice in order to make up the right weight and conceal the amount they
have filched on the way.
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[365] That is, with a false gloss on them.
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[366] In order to raise to nap and give an appearance of strength and
goodness.
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[367] Costermongers and others acquire certain rights to doorsteps or
snug corners in Chinese cities which are not usually infringed by
competitors in the same line of business. Chair-coolies,
carrying-coolies, ferrymen, &c., also claim whole districts as their
particular field of operations and are very jealous of any
interference. I know of a case in which the right of “scavengering” a
town had been in the same family for generations, and no one dreamt of
trying to take it out of their hands.
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[368] Chiefly alluding to small temples where some pious spirit may
have lighted a lamp or candle to the glory of his favourite P‘u-sa.
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[369] This is done either by making a figure of the person to be
injured and burning it in a slow fire, like the old practice of the
wax figure in English history; or by obtaining his nativity
characters, writing them out on a piece of paper and burning them in a
candle, muttering all the time whatsoever mischief it is hoped will
befall him.
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[370] Popularly known as the Chinese Pluto. The Indian Yama.
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[371] The celebrated “See-one’s-home Terrace.”
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[372] Regarded by the Chinese with intense disgust.
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[373] Father’s, mother’s, and wife’s families.
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[374] I know of few more pathetic passages throughout all the
exquisite imagery of the Divine Comedy than this in which the guilty
soul is supposed to look back to the home he has but lately left and
gaze in bitter anguish on his desolate hearth and broken household
gods. For once the gross tortures of Chinese Purgatory give place to
as refined and as dreadful a punishment as human ingenuity could well
devise.
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[375] A long pole tipped with a kind of birdlime is cautiously
inserted between the branches of a tree, and then suddenly dabbed on
to some unsuspecting sparrow.
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[376] If this is done in Winter or Spring the Spirits of the Hearth
and Threshold are liable to catch cold.
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[377] I presume because God sits with his face to the south.
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[378] Pious and wealthy people often give orders for an image of a
certain P‘u-sa to be made with an ounce or so of gold inside.
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[379] Primarily, because no living thing should be killed for food.
The ox and the dog are specified because of their kindly services to
man in tilling the earth and guarding his home.
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[380] The symbol of the Yin and the Yang, so ably and so poetically
explained by Mr. Alabaster in his pamphlet on the Doctrine of the
Ch‘i.
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[381] One being male and the other being female. This calls to mind
the extreme modesty of a celebrated French lady, who would not put
books by male and female authors on the same shelf.
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[382] The symbol on Buddha’s heart; more commonly known to the western
world as Thor’s Hammer.
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[383] Emblems of Imperial dignity.
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[384] Supposed to confer immortality.
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[385] Unfit for translation.
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[386] This is ingeniously expressed, as if mothers were the prime
movers in such unnatural acts.
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[387] On fête days at temples it is not uncommon to see cages full of
birds hawked about among the holiday-makers, that those who feel
twinges of conscience may purchase a sparrow or two and relieve
themselves from anxiety by the simple means of setting them at
liberty.
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[388] Bones are used in glazing porcelain, to give a higher finish.
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[389] The seven periods of seven days each which occur immediately
after a death and at which the departed shade is appeased with food
and offerings of various kinds.
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[390] To warm them.
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[391] When they are born again on earth.
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[392] Heart, lungs, spleen, liver, and kidneys.
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[393] Many millions of years.
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[394] The following recipe for this deadly poison is given in the
well-known Chinese work Instructions to Coroners:—“Take a quantity
of insects of all kinds and throw them into a vessel of any kind;
cover them up, and let a year pass away before you look at them again.
The insects will have killed and eaten each other, until there is only
one survivor, and this one is Ku.”
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[395] He who “turns the wheel;” a chakravartti raja.
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[396] The capital city of the Infernal Regions.
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[397] The ghosts of dead people are believed to be liable to death.
The ghost of a ghost is called chien.
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[398] On the “Three Systems.” See note 347, Appendix.
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[399] Women are considered in China to be far more revengeful than
men.
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[400] See Author’s Own Record (in Introduction), note 28.
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[401] While in Purgatory.
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[402] It was mentioned above that the rewards for virtue would be
continued to a man’s sons and grandsons.
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[403] That is, go to heaven.
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[404] Of meat, wine, &c.
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