The Chinese New Year, of the lunar calendar, was the greatest festival in the year for the Chinese people, compared with which every other festival seemed lacking in completeness of the holiday spirit. For five days the entire nation dressed in its best clothes, shut up shop, loafed, gambled, beat gongs, let off firecrackers, paid calls, and attended theatrical performances. It was the great day of good luck, when everybody looked forward to a better and more prosperous new year, when everybody had the pleasure of adding one year to his age and was ready with an auspicious luck - bringing word for his neighbors.

  The humblest maid had the right not to be scolded on New Year's Day, and strangest of all, even the hard-working women of China loafed and cracked melon seeds and refused to wash or cook a regular meal or even handle the kitchen knife. The justification for this idleness was that to chop meat on New Year's Day was to chop off good luck, and to wash anything was to wash away good luck, and to pour water down the sink was to pour away good luck. Red scrolls were pasted on every door containing the words: Luck, Happiness, Peace, Prosperity, Spring. For it was the festival of the return of spring, of life and growth and prosperity.

  And all around, in the home courtyards and in the streets, there was the sound of firecrackers, and the smell of sulfur was in the air. Fathers lost their dignity, grandfathers were more amiable than ever, and children blew whistles and wore masks and played with clay dolls. Country women, dressed in their best, would go three or four miles to a neighboring village to watch a theatrical show, and village dandies indulged in what flirtations they dared. It was the day of emancipation for women, emancipation from the drudgery of cooking and washing, and if the men were hungry, they could fry nienkao [hard New Year pudding], or make a bowl of noodles with prepared sauce, or go to the kitchen and steal cold cuts of chicken.

  I am ultramodern. No one can accuse me of being conservative. I am not only for the Gregorian calendar, but am even for the thirteen-month calendar, in which all months have exactly four weeks or twenty-eight days. In other words, I am very scientific in my viewpoint and very logical in my reasoning. It was this scientific pride which was badly wounded when I found my celebration of the official New Year a great failure, as anyone who pretended to celebrate it with any real feeling must have found out for himself.

  I didn't want the lunar New Year. But the lunar New Year came. It came on February 4.

  My big Scientific Mind told me not to keep the lunar New Year, and I promised him I wouldn't. For I heard rumblings of the lunar New Year's coming as far back as the beginning of January, when one morning I was given for breakfast a bowl of lapacho, which sharply reminded me it was the eighth day of the twelfth moon. A week after that, my servant came to borrow his extra month's pay, which was his due on the New Year's Eve. He got an afternoon's leave and showed me the package of new cloth which he was going to send to his wife. On February 1 and February 2, I had to give tips to the postman, the milkman, the expressman, the errand boys of book companies, etc. I felt all along what was coming.

  February 3 came. Still I said to myself, "I'm not going to keep the lunar New Year." That morning, my wife told me to change my underwear. I said, "What for?"

  "Chouma is going to wash your underwear today. She is not going to wash tomorrow, nor the day after tomorrow, nor the day after the day after tomorrow." Being human, I could not refuse.

  That was the beginning of my downfall. After breakfast, my family was going to the bank, for everyone was withdrawing money from it, which happened in spite of the fact that by ministerial orders the lunar New Year didn't exist. "Y. T. ." my wife said, "we are going to hire a car. You might come along and have a haircut." I didn't care for the haircut, but the car was a great temptation. I never liked monkeying about a bank, but I liked a car. I thought I could profitably go to the City God's Temple and see what I could get for the children. I knew there must be lanterns at this season, and I did want my youngest child to see what a rotating lantern was like.

  I should not have gone to the City God's Temple in the first place. Once there at this time of the year, you know what would happen. I found on my way home that I had not only rotating lanterns and rabbit lanterns and several packages of Chinese toys with me, but some twigs of plum blossoms, besides. After coming home I found that someone from my native place had presented me with a pot of narcissus, the narcissus which make my native place nationally famous, and which used to bloom so beautifully and gave out such subtle fragrance on New Year's Day in my childhood. I could not shut my eyes without the entire picture of my childhood coming back to me. Whenever I smelled the narcissus, my thoughts went back to the red scrolls, the New Year's Eve feast, the firecrackers, the red candles, and the Fukien oranges and the early morning calls and that black satin gown which I was allowed to wear once every year.

  At lunch, the smell of the narcissus made me think of one kind of Fukien nienkao, rice pudding made with turnips, which I used to have for the New Year in my childhood.

  "This year, no one has sent us any turnip pudding, " I said sadly.

  "It's because no one came from Amoy. Otherwise, they would have sent it, " said my wife.

  "I remember once I bought exactly the same kind of pudding in Cantonese shop on Wuchang Road. I think I can still find it."

  "No, you can't," challenged my wife.

  "Of course I can," I took up the challenge.

  By three o'clock in the afternoon I was already in a bus on my way home from North Szechuen Road with a big basket of nienkao weighing two pounds and a half.

  At five, we ate teh fried nienkao, and with the room filled with the subtle fragrance of narcissus, I felt terribly like a sinner. "I'm not going to celebrate New Year's Eve." I said resolutely:"I'm going to see the movies tonight."

  "How can you?" asked my wife. "We have invited Mr. to dinner this evening." It all looked pretty bad.

  At half past five, my youngest child appeared in her new red dress.

  "Who put on the new dress for her?" I rebuked, visibly shaken, but still gallant.

  "Huangma did." was the reply.

  By six o'clock, I found red candles burning brightly on the mantelpiece, their lapping flames casting at a satirical glow of triumph at my Scientific Consciousness. My Scientific Consciousness was, by the way, already very vague and low and unreal.

  "Who lighted the candles?" again I challenged.

  "Chouma did," was the reply.

  "Who bought the candles?" I demanded.

  "Why, you bought them yourself this morning."

  "Oh, did I?" It cannot have been my Scientific Consciousness that did it. It must have been the Other Consciousness.

  I thought I must have looked a little ridiculous. But there soon flared up the boom-bah of firecrackers in my neighborhood. One by one, those sounds sunk into my deep consciousness.

  I was not going to be beaten by them. Pulling out a dollar bill, I said to my boy:

  "Ah Ching, take this and buy me some heaven-and-earth firecrackers and some whip firecrackers, as loud as possible and as big as possible."

  So amidst the boom-bah of firecrackers, I sat down to the New Year's Eve dinner. And I felt very happy in spite of myself.