The Chinese at Fiddler’s Creek, numbering over two thousand, are most enthusiastic in doing honor to the Mongolian new year. Open house in the business establishments is the order of the day while the continuous discharge of crackers and the consumption of Chinese brandy is said to be some thing fabulous. Scarcely a porker or foul, outside the Chinese Camp, is to be had for love or money ; a Mongolian, well acquainted with the facts, states that purchases in the shape of pigs alone have been made at Fiddler’s Creek within the last fortnight to the amount of £1000.
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Yesterday was the opening day of the Chinese new year, but it passed off very quietly, the grand festivities and fireworks exhibition being reserved till the next new moon. The joss houses were all lighted up, however, and the usual new year’s offer ings of pastilles, etc., were made to the images of Buddha in the different temples, while the moral precepts of the bouses, lamas, and charamen were read out to the devotees by the officiating high priest. As an example of the superstition of the Celestials with regard to ” luck” may be men tioned the fact that Ah Soon, who was to have been charged at the City Court on Monday with deserting his family, through the efforts of his country men obtained the boon of a postponement of his case until to-day, as he believed that if obliged to attend a court of law on New Year’s Day he would inevitably be involved in litigation during the whole ensuing year. Many Europeans could plead guilty to a somewhat similar superstition, though the doctrine of the observance of omens does not, as with the Chinese, form an article of faith.
Fiddlers Creek was renamed Percydale in 1873 and was formerly called Grantsvale
