LIFE IN THE EAST.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 237, 7 October 1933, Page 3 (Supplement)

LIFE IN THE EAST.

SPRING-CLEANING IN CHINA

DIFFERENT METHODS. (l'.y E. SI. WRIGIIT.) If is a serious business in England, it is doubly eo in China. Not only must the year's dirt and dust be swept out, but lurking, evil spirits must also be ejected. It is of paramount importance to begin the New Year, which falls in February, spiritually and physically clean. The gods will then look with favour on the people and a happy year will follow.

All Chinese house-cleaning is done annually before the New Year. The work is not, as arduous as ours because the people have not attained to such a degree of comfort, and more comfort means more work. The houses are barely and formally furnished with heavy, polished black wood chairs, hard and straight, a round, polished table, a few good vases, a pair of scrolls and perhaps a screen. There are no carpets t> beat, no curtains to wash, nor even windows to clean, for paper is pasted over the window spaces in winter, and it is striped off in the summer. There are very few cupboards to turn out because the Chinese "pawn" their summer clothes in winter and vice versa. The pawnshop keeper spring-cleans the clothes entrusted to his care by beating, sunning and airing them. The housewife sweeps down cobwebs heavy with the dust of months, for, she says, "This foreign fashion makec proper one time, one day; Chinese fashion makec proper one time, one year," i.e., your way is to make clean once a day; our way is to make clean once a year. Floors at this time are carefully cleaned and furniture polished up. The Chinese brush is like our English besom made of a bundle of twigs tied to a broom stick. The cloths used for dusting would make a British lijjusewifc squirm, they are so horribly dirty. The average Chinese woman has no conception of germs, and she occasionally perfunctorily sweeps the floors, but only the parts that arc seen, never attempting to remove dust from corners, underneath beds or behind boxes. Hence the importance of the spring clean.

When the house is clean on New Year's Day an important rile is performed. • The kitchen god who has lived with the family all the year, listening to quarrels, noting their unselfish acts, is burnt and goes up to heaven with tales of the family's doings. His mouth is smeared with sweet stuff in tho hope that he will repeat nothing unpleasant to tho heavenly cars. On that day every man, woman and child is seen in new clothes; whether they be borrowed matters not. Thus spring-cleaning in China simultaneously finishes.