The Greatest Event in Life

Soon we had finished the book of moral tales and moved into Teacher’s favorite intermediate book: Chinese Customs and Traditions. The lessons in this book were essays on different aspects of Chinese life and culture. They covered topics like Chinese New Year, Tomb-sweeping Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, Eating, Kung-fu, Houses, Friendships, Filial Piety, Funerals, Temple Festivals, Family Relationships, and of course, “The Greatest Event in Life: Marriage”. Teacher promised us that by the time we finished this book, our thinking and concepts would be partially Chinese. We spent at least nine months going through all the lessons. One of the lessons that took us the longest to finish to Teacher’s satisfaction was the unit on marriage. I have translated it here in its entirety. The pictures show the text and illustrations.

The Greatest Event in Life

Chinese people call marriage the greatest event in life. Because the Chinese have such a strong concept of family ties, they believe that ruling one’s family is the basis of a stable society and a peaceful world. The ancient Chinese continually told their scholars that if they wanted to govern the country, they must first rule their homes well. For this reason, the Chinese do not merely consider a marriage to be the union between a man and a woman, but also they see marriage as the foundation of society. It is a solemn matter that cannot be accomplished lightly.

In traditional Chinese marriage, one did not choose one’s own partner; instead, the heads of the households made the decisions, and marriages were accomplished through the introductions of a matchmaker. According to ancient records, there were six steps to a marriage. The first step was called “presenting betrothal gifts.” In this step, the man’s family presented the woman’s family with a small gift (a wild goose) to express their wish to negotiate a marriage. The second step was called “asking the names.” In this step, the man’s family asked for a clear accounting of the woman’s names and relations, so that they could cast the horoscopes. The third step was “divining the luck”. In this step the man’s family divined the good or bad fortune of the marriage and then brought gifts to the woman’s family to report the good news. The fourth step was “presenting betrothal gifts”, and this was the same as an engagement. Of course, in this stage, a larger gift was given. The fifth step was called “selecting the date,” and in this stage the most auspicious day for the wedding was determined, and the consent of the woman’s family was sought for that date. The sixth step was called “escorting the bride,” and that was the wedding ceremony. These six steps are called the “six rites.”

Nowadays the rites are much simpler. People choose their own spouses, but they still ask for their parents’ permission. Then they set the wedding date and send invitations to their friends and relatives, inviting them to the wedding ceremony and the wedding feast. Now the most popular wedding ceremonies are simple and elegant. Some people are married in churches, and others get married in civil ceremonies at court; still others are married in group weddings.

Old style weddings had another step called “joking in the bridal chamber.” Within the first three days after the wedding, anyone—male, female, old, and young—was allowed to make jokes with the bride and bridegroom. The goal of this custom was to allow the bride and groom, who had never met before the wedding, to get to know each other in a light, relaxed atmosphere. This custom still exists today in a limited fashion.

The textbook essay is wrong in saying that the six rites are no longer used. While the first gift is no longer a wild goose and the matchmakers are usually elderly friends or relatives, the six rites live on today, especially among working class, farming, and illiterate social groups. There are regional variations and rituals for each step, but I would say that the six rites continue to be used even today among many of my Chinese relatives and friends. The last wedding we attended that used these customs was on April 26, 2007, in New York City among friends from a group of Chinese expatriates from Fuzhou. Last month, a cousin of the 2007 groom went through the same six steps for his own wedding just before Chinese New Year. The going bride price in the Fuzhou restaurant-owning community is $36,000 (US dollars). I am used to the idea of bride prices and trousseaus now, but when the time came for my Chinese wedding I would not allow my father to ask for money from Joshua’s family. The depths of my little American soul were horrified at the idea of being bought or sold. Eventually, I sat in on some negotiations concerning marriages for my husband’s siblings because I was the eldest daughter-in-law. Then, I began to understand more of the traditional Chinese concepts of marriage, and I was better able to understand what my teacher had been talking about.

A Country Wedding

Lynne, Teresa and friends with bride and groom in the front yard of Biying's home

Family members and friends with bride and groom in front of Biying's home

What seemed like a lifetime’s worth of adventures in Hong Kong and China had only taken ten days, and we still had two weeks before the end of winter break. So we attended a church training with materials in English and Chinese. We were again encouraged by how much we could understand, and we were even able to pick out a few errors in the translation from English into Chinese. The training lasted a week; everyone who was attending the bilingual sessions moved into a church meeting center in downtown Taipei. Fortunately, Lynne and I were more accustomed to crowded living conditions because the students were crammed six to a bedroom with people sleeping on the living room floors of the apartments, as well. Showers were scheduled at 3 minute intervals during all break times, and if you missed your minutes, you had to wait for the next day. By that time, we had found a laundromat, so we skipped doing laundry for a week and did several huge loads of washing at the end. It was more than worth the expense.

One of our housemates had to return to her home in a remote rural district of southern Taiwan for her brother’s wedding, and she decided to take as many of us as wanted to go. In the end, five of our housemates went along for the fun. We had to arrive a few days early because our friend needed to help prepare for the wedding. We took the train from Taipei to the southern city of Tainan. Then we transferred to a provincial bus from Tainan to the town of Madou. Madou was very small to our eyes, but it was a veritable metropolis compared to our final destination. In Madou, we changed from the comparatively modern, provincial bus to the shaky rattletrap that passed for local public transportation. The roads got narrower and bumpier, and we finally got off in the middle of rice paddies and fields. We lugged our suitcases and walked along a gravel track for another twenty minutes before arriving in a village of fewer than twenty houses. This was our housemate Biying’s hometown.

There was a Tudigong temple, a country general store, and houses among the rice paddies. The people across the street from Biying’s home owned a pig farm. It was noisy and smelly, but their house was very modern. Biying’s family lived in a Japanese-style wooden home. When you walked in the door, you stood in the sunken living room that was paved with concrete. There were regular chairs in this room. Steps went up to a waist-high level walkway around the living room, which was covered with tatami mats, and each wall off this corridor was a sliding door to a bedroom. There were no beds. Everyone grabbed a quilt and a pillow at night and rolled up in a spot on the tatami floor. There was a very strict rule of no shoes on the tatamis. The kitchen and bathroom were at the back of the house on another lower level paved with concrete. There were rows of flip-flops at the stairs off the tatamis to the back because all the street shoes were lined up near the stairs off the tatamis to the front. For the two nights before the wedding, we all slept in what was soon to be the bridal chamber. Lynne and I didn’t know how to help with most of the chores, but we were able to sweep the yard and hang up some decorative banners. Biying and the other girls did a lot of work getting ready. Our last act on the morning of the wedding was to pack up all our clothes and move across the street to the neighbors with the pig farm. We spent our last night there because the bride and groom had taken over the former guest room.

As far as we could tell, there was not much ceremony to the wedding. The groom and his best man drove off in a decorated limo to pick up the bride. As the bridal limo entered the village, one of Biying’s other brothers set off a big roll of fire crackers. The groom brought the bride into his home and formally introduced her to his parents. They burned incense to his ancestors together, and he took her into the bridal chamber to change clothes. Then all the guests ate a 15 course feast at tables under a tent in the yard. The bride and groom came out and toasted the guests at each table. Each time the bride appeared she was wearing a different dress. After people finished eating, they took pictures with the bride and groom. When everyone was done with the feast, the bride and groom stood at the gate with candy for the women and children and cigarettes for the men. At each stage of the wedding, someone lit off another roll of firecrackers. The bride and groom disappeared into their bridal chamber, and we began to help clean up the leftover food with all the women of the village. There were tons of leftovers, so each woman took home several plastic bags full of food.

Early the next morning the new bride was out before 6 am sweeping up all the paper from the firecrackers that littered the road in front of her new home. I asked if they were going to go on a honeymoon, but no one seemed to understand that concept. The bride was expected to show how hard-working she was. First thing in the morning, she had to bring tea and breakfast to her new in-laws. Biying said that on the third day, her brother would take his new wife back to her mother’s house for a formal visit. Three months into the marriage, they would take their “wedding trip” to Southeast Asia if the bride wasn’t pregnant.

When we were staying in the village, I got a taste of what Lynne went through all the time, even in Taipei. No one in the village had seen a foreigner except on TV. People came up and poked me, pawed my hair, and touched my skin as I was walking down the street. Lynne was much taller than I, so as long as she was standing up, people couldn’t reach her afro. I was short enough that everyone could touch my hair. They kept saying I was a porcelain doll. Unfortunately, I have more nerve endings than a porcelain doll.

Aside from being objects (in the most literal sense of the word) of general interest, we had a wonderful time in the country. Southern Taiwan is in the Torrid Zone, and it was much warmer than in Taipei. The air was clean, and it was very quiet, especially at night. We had been kept awake in Taipei by the noise, and now we couldn’t sleep in the country because it was too quiet.