was looking very sweet and gracious and held out her tiny hand to me on my entrance. I bowed low over it and kissed it, and wished her from the bottom of my heart “ten thousand” years of happiness and all kinds of “felicitous omens.” I then started to move out, but she told me to remain in the room at one side and watch the Princesses and Ladies as they came in. Each made the prostrations before her and presented a jade ruyie , which she received with due ceremony—the same ceremony as for the Emperor’s and Empress Dowager’s Birthday!
But these winter days were not all given up to the Theater and festivals. There were some days of sadder import. Days of mourning were often celebrated at the Palace. The anniversary of the deaths of some Emperor or Ancestor was of frequent occurrence. It seemed to me they celebrated the anniversary of the death of every Emperor of the Dynasty! On these days there would be sacrifices at the ancestral tablets and religious ceremonies early in the mornings. The Empress Dowager and the whole Court would wear mourning for the day and there was never any sort of amusement. White, which is full mourning, is not worn on these anniversaries after the third, but violet and blue (second mourning) is put on. The flowers worn in the coiffure were also in violet, white or blue, the mourning colors. One night at dinner the young Empress, who acts as Mistress of Ceremonies in the Palace, told me the following was a day of mourning. She asked me if I would wear one of the mourning colors, as it was the anniversary of the death of the Emperor Tung-Chih (the Empress Dowager’s son).
The next day I put on a black dress, our mourning, and wore violet flowers in my hair. When we entered, Her Majesty was sacrificing at the small shrine in her sitting-room. She was dressed in dark violet, heavily trimmed with black, and had not a flower of any kind in her hair—only a few pearls. She looked very sad and was more earnest and reverent at the sacrifice than usual, but when she had finished her sacrifice, she bade us “Good morning” and inquired after our health, with her usual