A City Wedding in China
In 1998, when I visited a newlywed couple, I didn’t know what to make of a large photo on the wall of their home with the groom dressed as a bullfighter, and his wife as a Spanish dancer. My friend, the groom, told me that it was one of his wedding photos. In fact, engaged couples in China spend a lot of money on a wedding album in which they wear different and often elegant costumes on every page. I guess this is possible in China because they’re almost all small and thin.
As they get married, my friends are buying apartments. Rather than being totally paid for by their work units as before, some get partially subsidized units. The newer places come only with the bare space. Each couple must decide how to decorate their apartment, which includes making a floor plan and putting in everything, including the walls. In the 1990’s, it was still the custom to pay for everything in cash, but mortgages were being slowly introduced in China in the late 1990’s.
In spite of all my visits to China, I was only able to catch two weddings - a rural wedding and a city wedding. In January of 1998, my timing was right to attend the city wedding of one of my former students. They took me to the home of the bride’s parents where I met other members of the family gathered for the wedding. One bedroom was gaily decorated. As was the tradition in both the countryside and the city, this room would forever be kept for the couple to come home to at any time.
Since the vast majority of people did not own cars in 1998, a rented car and driver came to take us around on the day of the wedding. The first stop was definitely a surprise to me. Certain family members had been invited to a small lunch at the local KFC! The bride, in her lovely long white gown, and the groom in his tuxedo, were warmly welcomed and seated in one area of the restaurant where tables were set for us to enjoy the Colonel’s best.
This small group eventually got back into cars and traveled to the hall that had been rented for the occasion. There is still no ceremony as we westerners are used to, and much less ritual than in a Chinese village wedding, but the crowd of invited guests celebrated with an abundance of energy. We all kept our coats on because the hall wasn’t heated on this wintry day. The food was plentiful and good.
I was invited to go with the photographer and the bride and groom as they went to a few parks in the city to take pictures and make a video. The cold gave us all rosy complexions as he positioned the beautiful bride and handsome groom in various poses for the cameras.
He took photographs of them at a park with a traditional sedan chair in which the bride used to be carried to the groom’s home where she’d sometimes meet her husband for the very first time. My mind meandered back to those old days in China and I wondered what the traditional couple and this modern couple would have to say to each other.
Tags: City wedding in China in 1998; modern Chinese culture, Travel
