Fans are made of palm leaves,
silk, paper, bamboo, feathers, and other things. There is a great variety of fans: feather
fans, folding fans, and screen fans; and the latter are of a variety of shapes: round,
octagonal, hexagonal or poly-gonal. They are used to cool one's body in the summer, to
blow up the wooden or charcoal fire in the earthen ware furnaces; old torn-down-looking
seamstresses put it on the top of their hair to serve as a hat; it also does duty as a
sunshade; it is used to drive the mosquitoes out of the mosquito net; to fan the restless
baby to sleep, etc.
