Dr. Harlan P. Beach says:
In China there are customs which are more important than
etiquette. I met a man who had been shaking from head to
feet “You have had chills and fever, haven’t you?” I said
sympathizingly. He came very near taking my head off, because
there is a special god who runs chills and fever, and if he
hears a man has chills and fever and is getting over it, he
will give him another shake. I had gone against their deadly
custom. Another incident of the same sort happened one day when
a doctor of divinity saw a cheap sedan chair and bought it. A
millionaire globe-trotter used it that day for sight-seeing,
and when he reached the missionary compound, he exclaimed, “I
have been outrageously treated by the heathen. The whole city
was out laughing at me. As soon as I appeared, every man rushed
out of his shop, and the streets were in an uproar.” The doctor
of divinity asked his native teacher for an explanation. Now,
a teacher is never supposed to smile from one day’s end to
another, but that dignified teacher, glass, goggles, and all,
doubled up with laughter when he saw the chair. “You really must
excuse me,” he said, “but that kind of a chair is used only in
funeral processions for the spirit of the dead to ride in.” It
was as tho a man should ride through our city sitting up in a
hearse.
(653)
=Custom Upheld=--See EXPERIENCE A HARD TEACHER.
=Customs, Oriental=--See GESTURES AND USE OF THE HANDS IN THE EAST.
=Customs, Value of=--See EXPERIENCE A HARD TEACHER.
=Cycles in Nature=--See INVISIBLE, THE, MADE VISIBLE.