might take their fill of pork in celebration of the festive season, but also to dispense handfuls of cash all round to better enable them to do so. New Year's eve, February 12th, was rendered odious to myself by reason of the incessant beating of gongs and the letting off of countless thousands of crackers, which lasted far into the night, and indeed into the dawn of the New Year—a form of amusement which appears to give inordinate pleasure to the Chinese. This carouse had an extraordinary effect upon the town the following day: every one was sleeping, every door was closed, and the street, which at all other times hummed with the clatter of many hundreds of wagging tongues, and was so inconveniently crowded with seething humanity as to cease to merit the name of thoroughfare at all, had assumed all of a sudden the appearance of a city of the dead.
A variety of tribes inhabit the country in the vicinity of, and to the north of, Tali Fu, and the commercial event of chief importance as far as the town is concerned—namely, the Yueh-kai, an annual fair held during the third
