zimatravels

     The night before a rural Chinese wedding, it is a good sign that all will go as planned when the groom’s matchmaker brings the chamber pot to the bride’s home.  As with other parts of the peasants’ life in China, there are changes taking place.  But the changes in the countryside are far behind those of the city dwellers who are adopting more western culture.

     A peasant wedding has a great deal of ritual that is still practiced and is very important.  And there are many differences from one village to the next.  In this wedding, the bride and groom each came from tiny villages a thirty-minute boat ride apart.  When the groom’s matchmaker brought the chamber pot, the bride’s family sent their matchmaker to collect the money for the bride’s family.  A poor family may pay the equivalent of $200 to $300 for the bride.  And each member of the immediate bride’s family receives some of this money.  The night before the wedding, the bride’s matchmaker sleeps in the groom’s bed.  He sleeps elsewhere.

     The bride’s family put into the chamber pot, which is a very practical gift in a place with no toilets, two red eggs for fertility, waste grain which is a play on words (in Chinese it means “stable,” a good wish for a marriage, and the same word in their dialect means “waste”), salt to urge them to have a baby early (Chinese couples often have their one allotted baby under the one child policy during the first year), and candies for a sweet life.  That night, the bride’s family carefully rolled many colorful quilts they were presenting to the new couple, slipping candies inside.  They also tied red yarn to the hope chests and furniture that the bride would bring to the marriage.

     Very early on the wedding day, the bride went off to have her hair styled and her face made up.  They prefer a whitish face with prominent rouge.  Still very early in the morning, I was awakened by musicians clanging and drumming their way to the bride’s home.  Except for the bride and groom, the musicians and guests don’t wear special clothing.  As a matter of fact, in response to the question, “What does one wear to a Chinese countryside wedding in January?” (a popular time for weddings because of the upcoming Chinese New Year usually in February), I have to respond, “Everything one can put on.”  Since heat is used sparingly only in the north of China, it is considered unnecessary in the south of China which is cold enough to get snow.

     Dressed in four pairs of pants, three sweaters, a down jacket, scarf, and gloves, I greeted the musicians whose faces registered shock when I appeared.  The group, including the groom and his close male relatives and the two matchmakers were invited in for tea and the perennial weed in China — cigarettes.  They had also brought with them two large baskets of food for the bride’s family.

     Eventually, male members of the bride’s family carried the dowry outside the home, receiving a small amount of money from the groom.  Time was given for all to properly appreciate the pieces of furniture, hope chests, and large tape recorder that represented what the bride had been able to buy from her savings as a worker in a sock factory.  The bride’s family then gave permission to take it away, and the groom’s relatives took the dowry to the waiting boat.  While the musicians clanged and drummed to urge the couple to hurry to their new room at the groom’s family home, the groom asked the bride, “Can we go now?”

     The musicians played and the firecrackers popped as we all walked to the waiting boat.  The bride, dressed attractively in a red silk padded jacket, looked very serious.  As a special guest, I was allowed to ride to the groom’s home along with the musicians, bride and groom, matchmakers, and four girls the bride had chosen to accompany her.  The parents of the bride stayed at home to prepare to meet their relatives who would be coming to their home in the afternoon.

     The villagers stood on the bank to wish them well as the bride changed into new red shoes before stepping onto the small boat.  I carefully balanced on a small plank and made my way under the crowded canopy.  The youngest sister took a bucket of water from the river, which somehow insured a safe trip.   Then, the pole had to be maneuvered properly to quickly and easily propel the boat on its way while keeping the tip of the pole under the water.  Otherwise, it would be rude and bad luck.  The chamber pot accompanied us in our cramped quarters in the boat.

     Waiting excitedly were the relatives and villagers of the groom’s family.  The new mother-in-law invited the bride to come into the house.  The mother-in-law is indeed an important person since the bride becomes a member of the groom’s family and will hereafter visit her parents’ home only as a guest.  In fact, she usually severs relationships with her own aunts, uncles, and cousins.

     Inside the groom’s home, the bride and groom stood before a long table that held vases of paper flowers and two large red candles.  With one of the musicians officiating, the ceremony was brief as the marriage certificate issued by the government (physicals and blood tests and permission having been taken care of earlier) was read and the new couple bowed to the groom’s parents and to each other.  Someone preceded them with the two lit candles into their new bedroom in which the four bridesmaids and all the bride’s dowry were waiting.

     The bride, still looking serious, was introduced formally by her mother-in-law to each new relative.  She called them by their new titles — aunt, uncle, etc. — and they each gave her a red envelope containing a gift of money.  To the younger nieces and nephews, the bride had to give a small amount of money also wrapped in red.  The distribution of small bags of candies by the bride to relatives and friends seemed to be an important component of being honored.  The bride bestowed several upon me.

     Before all could eat, the bride’s brothers had to come into the home and be seated.  They were served sweets, nuts, sugared water, and yes, of course, cigarettes.  Then, they were given regular tea with tea leaves after which a brother placed a red envelope on the table and only the brothers got up and went outside.  They returned immediately, and the the eating began in earnest.

     The small red envelope left by the brothers was for the person who dutifully fed the fire from behind the stove.  Surrounded by baskets holding mounds of cut up meat and vegetables, a hired cook stood in front of the two woks permanently set into the stove and, with a cigarette constantly dangling from his lips, produced perhaps 30 freshly prepared dishes for each table of guests.  The groom’s family served the tables graciously and kept each guest well supplied with wine or a soft drink.  I, who well outweigh mostly all Chinese people who can eat much more than I, disappointed them by my meager appetite.  However, they were impressed with my skill in using chopsticks.

      They were all naturally very curious about me and often wandered over my way to stare at me.  We couldn’t speak, but we smiled a lot and they got the impression, according to my friend, that I was friendly.  Since I had brought my camera along, they happily requested family pictures.  A camera is an expensive rarity in the countryside, so most adults tended to look very serious when they posed, while some children even broke into tears at both the foreigner and a strange object looking at them.

     Eventually, the bride and groom changed clothes, and the groom successfully put out both candles at once with the swish of a straw hat, and we made the return visit to the bride’s home where the bride’s relatives eagerly awaited us.  The feasting began again with another cook, cigarette dangling, preparing a similar number of freshly cooked dishes.

     Toward evening, the four male relatives who accompanied the groom began to clash cymbals to urge the new couple to return to their new room.  The bride lingered, as is customary, but at last they set out again to meet the groom’s relatives waiting for them in their new room where they played intentionally embarassing games such as making the bride and groom bite the same candy on a string.

     On the morning of the third day, the new couple returned to lead the immediate female and male relatives, including the bride’s parents, to the groom’s family for another feast where they were the guests of honor.  There is a great deal of required visiting (no honeymoon off by themselves) during the coming days  and the days of Spring Festival, which is the Chinese New Year.  A nice meal is always served, often including a side of pork, which is an expensive sign of respect and honor for the new couple.  They also receive a rice cake with a cooked red bean inside, symbolizing a baby.  These cakes can sometimes be distributed to all the villagers of the groom’s family.

     As is generally true in Chinese culture, there is a great deal of protocol that must be followed to insure good relations in the years to come.  There were almost no similarities to western weddings, except for the high spirits of the relatives and friends who gathered to give the new couple a good beginning.

This was a small rural village wedding that I attended in January of 1992.  It is an excerpt from my book, Memoirs of a Middle-aged Hummingbird, published in 2006.

     The bride sat sadly on a dais decorated with palm fronds in a very large room in her home.  I sat among the women in the room who chatted and ate the variety of fruits, nuts, and drinks continuously served to us.  It was a Druse wedding in Shefaram, Israel, in 1986.

     Druse, who share Arab culture and language, have a very separate religion with its own traditions.  Men and women are separated at celebrations, and often there is neither music nor dancing.  Feasting, however, is a major part of the wedding with huge quantities of meat, rice, and vegetables heaped on hundreds of plates.  I was taken into a side room to view the dowry — basically clothing and furniture that this bride would bring to her new husband’s home.

     The chatty, informal atmosphere changed abruptly when several women began to cry.  The bride herself cried rather hysterically.  I, who was used to only gaiety at weddings, was confused.  I was told it was sad because the girl was leaving her family even though she would actually be living quite close by.

     The bride’s father and brothers, who had been together at the groom’s home next door, entered the room and came up to the bride.  They placed a cloth over her head and led her out of the room, down the steps, and over to the next house.  Young girls threw flower petals along the way and we women followed her.  Once she was settled in a chair in a room in the groom’s home, a very nervous young man approached apprehensively, threw the cloth off her head, and immediately ran out.  This was the ceremony that marked their union forever.  The women and the bride intensified their crying as each woman came up to wish her well.  Then we were given extremely bitter, unsweetened coffee.  When I commented to a woman I knew how strange it was to see so much crying at a wedding, she said, “I cried much harder at my wedding.”

     Since that time I have also been to a Druse wedding without the bride who was in her own village having a wedding celebration at the same time as the one in her groom’s village.  A Christian Arab wedding has quite a different tone.  There I ate excessively and danced too wildly — the woman is supposed to restrain her exuberance while the man is the showy, more active dancer.

     It is still common in the Arab culture to have an arranged marriage, sometimes putting together people who have never met, or are actually first cousins.  Unfortunately, as evident in Shefaram, deformed children are often the result of first cousins marrying.  When I asked a young Arab co-worker if he wanted his parents to choose his bride, he surprised me by saying, “Yes, because my parents can choose better than I can.”  While I, from a Western tradition, worried that a loveless marriage would be an unhappy marriage, I discovered instead a solidarity among the women in an extended Arab family that was a strong, secure, support system.  Unlike the Western tradition, the husband was not expected to be the “best friend” in the woman’s life.  While it is also true that Arab women suffer from gross inequality and the subservience expected of them, I was impressed that the marriages I saw worked as well as they did.

This is an excerpt from my book, Memoirs of a Middle-aged Hummingbird, published in 2006.