Governor of Hong Kong Speaks of China - (Another Version)

Author: [British] Henry Arthur Black, translated by Yu Jingxian
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: The way Chinese people arrange marriages by parents, to some extent, resembles the marriage customs of Irish farmers. The family of the young man usually sends a matchmaker to the girl's home to propose and negotiate. Throughout the negotiation process, both sides strictly adhere to etiquette. However, there is an unconstrained and unable obstacle that is not legally restricted, which is that the groom and bride cannot share the same surname. Only Henan Province is an exception, where the prohibition against intermarriage between people with the same surname is often ignored. As long as we consider that among 400 million Chinese people, there are only over 100 surnames, we can understand the strictness of this restriction. Perhaps there are 4 million people with the surname Wang in China, but none of them can marry any of the 4 million women with the same surname. Since marriage is a major event in a Chinese woman's life, as long as her family can afford it, she will do her best to make the wedding as grand and luxurious as possible. The night before she leaves her ancestral home, her dowry and gifts are sent to the new home. Several years ago, a wealthy gentleman in Guangzhou used 700 laborers to form a long line to transport the dowry for his daughter's wedding. Some of the gifts were outwardly magnificent and extremely valuable. The next day, the groom arrived with a wedding procession of 200 people to fetch the bride. Some rode high-slung horses, others formed a military-style procession with guns, some carried trays of candies and dried fruits, and several children were dressed as auspicious fairies. The wedding procession was led by familiar red lanterns and a band. A 30-foot-long dragon led the way, with boys using wooden poles to support its legs and body, leaping and dancing to keep it lively and spirited. The bride sat in a finely carved and decorated sedan chair, carried through the procession. The chair was red, with blue feathers of the kingfisher carefully pasted on it, making it colorful and eye-catching. Upon arriving at the new home, the bride encountered customary rituals. First, she was carried across the threshold, with a small fire placed on it to prevent any evil from entering the home. Carrying the bride over the threshold of the new home is also a common practice among the Highlanders of Scotland. When Princess Louise, the Duchess of Argyll, got married, she entered Inveraray Castle in the same way. According to custom, the bride must use the firewood from her dowry to start a fire and cook rice with the groom's family's rice on the second day of the wedding. It is said that according to tradition, the bride's dowry should include everything needed for a newlywed couple's life. Recently, at a wedding ceremony in Macau, the bride panicked and discovered that her dowry did not include firewood. Her kind-hearted mother-in-law offered to give her some, but the proud bride refused. She called her mother and received instructions to take two bolts of silk fabric from her dowry, each worth about 40 yuan. She then cooked a meal with the silk fabric. Later, her father visited, and she told him about this. Her father replied, "Dear daughter, you did the right thing; you saved your father's face." Upon returning home, he immediately sent 100 laborers to deliver firewood, so much that the groom's home couldn't even store it. Sometimes, there is also a "making a fool of the bride" ceremony at weddings, but in well-mannered families, such behavior rarely occurs. Below is a description of what happened when one of our friends had her new home "made a fool of" the day after her wedding. That day, when we arrived, the ladies had just finished dinner, while the gentlemen were still seated in the dining room. During dinner, the bride had already served each guest a drink, a ritual that her mother-in-law had already performed the previous night. At that moment, the bride entered the room, wearing a magnificent and beautiful red phoenix robe adorned with various long ribbon-like decorations and a large collar made of gold and red mesh fabric. She wore a phoenix crown, with a pearl mask fastened on both sides of her face, and her expression seemed playful and smiling. However, the previous night she had appeared shy and timid, with her eyes downcast. Therefore, seeing her radiant and completely different today, we felt truly relieved. After the gentlemen entered, the "making a fool of the bride" ceremony began. The guests came up with various riddles for the bride to solve, and she skillfully answered two or three of them. They then presented a complex Japanese riddle, but the mother-in-law stepped in and said that such a difficult riddle was not suitable for the bride to solve. When the groom entered, the gentlemen present asked the groom and bride to walk around the room together. The newlyweds complied, and the gentlemen then asked them to repeat it. Someone suggested that the bride should move the pearl mask hanging over her face to the sides of her cheeks so that everyone present could see her face. After the bride did so, some poetic and artistic performances began. One gentleman in the family stood near the bride to judge whether she could answer the questions correctly. The guests asked the bride to ask her husband to hold her hand and inquire about the benefits of marrying her. The bride was also required to walk around the room, greet the gentlemen present and serve them tea, and bow to one or two relatives or close family members, though one or two people might also bow to her, which certainly involves issues of seniority. Of course, some of the comments about the bride would undoubtedly make any young lady feel embarrassed and uncomfortable, but these comments were in Chinese, so we did not understand them. The purpose of the "making a fool of the bride" custom is to test the bride's temperament, character, and wit. P15-19