Every Chinese kitchen keeps a god in a niche above the stove, and once a year he climbs to Heaven to tell on the household. Werner's Myths & Legends of China (published 1922) introduces him plainly: "Tsao Chün is a Taoist invention," worshipped in some sixty million homes and "also called 'the God of the Stove.'" His shrine is humble — "a little niche in the brick cooking-range", its palace often full of smoke — but his office is grave. He "makes an annual report to the Supreme Being" on the family's conduct, gone four to seven days while he delivers it, and to soften what he says the household will "regale him with honey, so that only sweet words," if any, may pass his lips aloft.

The record also keeps how the worship began. A Taoist priest, Li Shao-chün, claimed to have won from the Kitchen-god both exemption from age and freedom from hunger, and drew the Emperor Hsiao Wu-ti (140-86 B.C.) of the Han dynasty into making "the first time that a sacrifice had been officially offered" to this new deity. When the priest later fell from favour he forged a script and had it "swallowed by an ox", to be found in the beast's stomach as a marvel; but the Emperor recognized his handwriting, and he "was forthwith put to death." The god outlived the fraud that had launched him.

Only the Chinese witness is wired to served text; an Indian authority the record files beside it waits unread. What manner of household god is at once guardian and informer — fed honey each year precisely so that he will speak sweetly of the family to Heaven?