With the Empress Dowager of China by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Cixi, Empress dowager of China, 1835-1908, Empresses -- China -- Biography, China -- Court and courtiers
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2026-04-08T20:38:11+00:00

XVIII

The Festival of the Harvest Moon—Work on the Portrait

We think the Chinese so unemotional, so little given to pleasure or amusement; but there are more popular festivals in China, indulged in by all classes of people, than in any country in the world, except perhaps Japan. The people, from the highest to the lowest, enter into these celebrations with whole-souled earnestness and real enjoyment, and all the popular festivals, as well as the religious ceremonies, are celebrated in the Palace with apparently the same zest as among the people.

The Mid-Autumn Festival, popularly known as the Festival of the Harvest Moon, which is at its full at the time of the celebration, was, of course, observed with due ceremony at the Palace. For these festivals there are always representations at the Palace Theater, and one of the plays on such days is the dramatization of the Legend of the Festival. The legend of the Harvest Moon is this: One day an Emperor received the visit of a fairy. When she left she gave the Emperor an herb, saying, should he eat it, he would be endowed with Immortality. The Emperor was called out, soon after the fairy’s visit, and forgot the gift for a time, and the herb lay upon his table. During his absence from the Throne-room, a young handmaiden entered and, seeing the root on the table, with childish curiosity, tasted it, and, finding it good, ate the whole of it. When the Emperor again thought of his precious gift from the fairy, he hastened back to the Throne-room, to remove it from the table where he had left it. What was his horror to find it gone! Learning that the little handmaid was the only person who had been in the Throne-room, he called her up to find out what she had done with it. When he found she had eaten it, he ordered her killed, that he might thus again obtain the herb. Before the eunuchs could accomplish their task, the charm began to work, and she felt the wings of Immortality; and borne up by them, she flew to the skies and took refuge in the Moon, where she still lives with the pet white rabbit she had in her arms at the time she flew away from the earth. She is now an Immortal, and in the Moon she compounds the Elixir of Immortality. The rabbit, also, shares her immortality, and ever watches at the lunar threshold.

The drama, with this little maiden as heroine, was played by Her Majesty’s actors on the day of the Moon Festival, and the finale of the plays that day was one of the most beautiful spectacular tableaux I have ever seen. The Chinese obtain most artistic effects in their illuminations, and by the most simple means. The stage represented a lake covered with luminous lotus, with the full moon floating above. Throned on a gigantic lotus flower in the center of the lake sat an immense, golden Buddha,

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