Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1877 — Fire-Crackers and Joss-Sticks. [ARTICLE]

Fire-Crackers and Joss-Sticks.

These two articles have more connection in the mind of a Cantonese than they have among people in this country. Here, the first is associated chiefly with the noise and license of Fourth of July, when boys have the annual privilege of firing them off; and the second is known for the convenience they afford in lighting cigars. But among the Chinese, firecrackers and fire-works are used in worshiping the gods, and to drive off evil and hungry spirits which may be prowling about the house; while joss-sticks are lighted to invite genial influences from the gods by pleasing them with the smoke of fragrant incense. The names for fire-crackers, hiangpao, and pao chun, mean sonorous cracklings, and crackling bamboos; the latter term is given from their resemblance in sjze to the little twigs of that plant. There is a proverb among the people, “ One explosion of fireworks does away with the old year,” which is explained by the following legend: “LiMan lived in the hills, and the house of his neighbor, old Chung, was continually infested with elves. Man sent him every morning and evening to a hall to burn bamboo sticks, whose crackling alarmed them so that they let him sleep in quiet till morning. On this account people have since used fire-works to terrify the spirits, so that no malicious ones may mar the harmony of the coming New Year; crackers are also let off whenever an enterprise, as a voyage or a journey, is undertaken—not so much to get good luck to attend it, as to drive away all evil from hindering it.”

Fire-crackers are made of coarse bamboo paper rolled around a little gunpowder and a match of paper as a fuse to fire it. They are always covered with red paper, because that, is the color of joy among the Chinese, and are exploded on every festive or important occasion. The bride steps into her gay sedan, and gets out to enter her husband’s house, amid their crackling; and when they both first bow before the ancestral, tablet, it warns malicious spirits to retire far away. The sailor burns them as he weighs anchor, and invokes favorable winds. The annual offerings at the ancestral tomb are presented amid their crackling, and its inmates left in repose for the coming year with the same salute. The public courts are closed and the official seal put away during the new year holidays under the same auspices; while in each household the god of the kitchen is thus dismissed on his journey to report on the conduct of its members to Bhangli, the Supreme Ruler. But the demand for this miniature artillery is greatest on New Year’s Eve, when the! whole empire resounds with its deafening noise amid the lanes And streets of the cities. In Canton City, their consumption is so great that the streets are red with the fragments which the farmers sweep up to use as manure. The consumption of fire crackers among the Chinese aa may readily be inferred, is enormous, for they enter into all their religious acts, and many of the customs of daily life. The export is more than 2,000 tons annually, of which perhaps 1,500 tons come to this country. How could American boys get through Fourth of July without them? Joss sticks derive their name from the effort of the Canton shopkeeper to describe to his foreign customer the incense sticks often seen burning on the counter. He knew that idols of every kind were called joss by the Portuguese at Macao, (derived from, their word dies or God and corrupted in bis mouth to joss) and so he summarily called incense sticks, God's sticks, as the phrase most likely to be understood. On the same principle, he calls a temple a joss house; tne Sabbath a joss day; foreign'or native priests, joss man; and worship of any kind, joss pidgin. All these words he supposed to be good English, and therefore they will be clearly understood by the foreigner. Incense sticks are usually made of needle-like slips of bamboo which are covered with a Composition ot sawdust and clay in fine powder. The best kind are made

of sandal, garoo, or other fragrant woods reduced to powder; the cheaper and common sorts are of fir, cedar, juni per, etc. On the altar before every idol an open jar or vase of bronze, crockery or iron, contains incense sticks in one form or other constantly burning. Another way of making them is to mix the dust with glutinous water and clay, and roll the composition into a quill-shaped strip, uniform in size throughout. It is sometimes ten or twelve feet long, and is then coiled into if sort of conical roll supported by wire; it burns so regularly that it is marked off into certain distances to indicate the hour ot day; and in fact one name for this Kind means “ time incense,” from its double use as a time-keeper and an offering to the gods. It is only this kind which is exported for the convenience of segar smokers, but the native manufacturer probably supposes that his foreign customers burns them for tlie same purpose that he docs. Incense sticks are also made of powdered artemisia mixed with clay, and burned to drive away musquitoes, which the smoke does effectually.— B. Wells Williams, in N. Y. Observer.