User:Min-Fan1/Traditional Chinese marriage
Traditional Chinese marriage is one of the essence of traditional Han culture, it is not only the union between husband and wife, but also the union between the two families of a man and a woman. Marriage and family are inextricably linked, which involves the interests of both families. There are many steps involved in bringing a man and a woman together, mostly arranged marriages decided by the parents, which also involve Marriage-prohibitions. Traditional Chinese marriage refers specifically to arranged marriages prior to the 1930s. The ancients attached great importance to marriage, believing that it was to serve their ancestors and reproduce the next generation.
Around the end of primitive society, traditional Chinese marriage rituals were formed, with deer skin betrothal in the Fuxi era, the appearance of the "meeting hall" during the Xia and Shang dynasties, and then in the Zhou dynasty, a complete set of marriage etiquette ("six rituals") gradually formed. The richness of this series of rituals proves the importance the ancients attached to marriage. In addition to the unique nature of the "three letters and six rituals", polygamy, remarriage and divorce in traditional Chinese marriage culture, d are also distinctive.
Introduction to Marriage[edit]
"Marriage"（婚礼） is described as "evening rites"（昏礼） in the Ritual Book of Dusk. The ancients were superstitious and would choose the auspicious day for a big wedding. The ancients believed that the twilight period was the most auspicious time of the day, so in the beginning, the ritual of marrying husband and wife was called "Evening Ritual"（昏礼). Because 昏 (pinyin: hūn）means "dusk, nightfall, twilight, dark". Over time, it gradually evolved into the "婚礼".
Traditional marriage rites[edit]
The full traditional wedding rituals are known as Three Letters and Six Etiquette (三书六礼). The marriage process of three letters and six etiquettes includes the documents and etiquette from marriage, engagement and so on. However, in different Dynasties of China, wedding etiquette are also different.
1.Three letters[edit]
"Three Books" consists of a "Request Letter", a" Gift Letter", and a" Wedding Letter". In ancient times, formal letters were so important that once accepted by both men and women, it was difficult to break the agreement.
1.Request Letter: It also called "Letter of engagement". At naji纳吉 (when a man and woman enter into an engagement), the groom's family gives the bride's book to comfirm the marriage. Usually, this confirmation is sent by the groom's family.
2.Gift Letter: It is a document used at a grand ceremony that lists the items and quantity of the gift.
3.Wedding Letter: It is a document given by the man to the woman when the bride walks through the door(过门).
2. Six Etiquette[edit]
The wedding ceremony consisted of six basic procedures: making a proposal of marriage (nacai), requesting the bride’s name and date of birth(wenming), sending news of divination results and betrothal gifts (naji), sending wedding presents to the bride’s house (nazheng), requesting the date of the wedding (qingqi), and fetching in the bride in person (qinying).[1]
1.Proposal (nacai纳采): When people get married, by the groom's familiy please matchmaker to find a good woman to propose. The groom's family should give about 30 kinds of auspicious gifts to the bride's family. The bride's familiy also asked the matchmaker about the man's situation at this time. The nacai is the beginning of the whole marriage process.
2. Bride's name and date of birth(wenming问名): the groom's family will request the bride's "Eight letters of birth time" (生辰八字) to check with the with the fortune master whether the men and women's “Eight letters of birth time" is matched. It means that the men and women can not bring faith to each other after marriage, so that the man's family can divine the marriage and decide whether the marriage will take place or not.
3.Betrothal gifts(naji纳吉): When the groom's family learned that there were no signs of incompatibility, they will let the matchmaker to send some initial gifts together by the gift letter to the bride's family，and then the marriage was tentatively agreed upon.
4. Wedding presents (nazhen纳征): It also named “guodali"（过大礼). One month to two weeks before the wedding, the groom's family will invite two or four female relatives to make an appointment with the matchmaker and bring the betrothal gifts, to the bride's family. At this point, the bride's family needs to send some gifts back to the groom's family.
5.The date of the wedding(qingqi请期): The groom's family chooses to marry the auspicious day(selected by the fortune master). The fortune master will choose some auspicious day which based on the groom's and the bride's birth time. When the groom's family chooses a auspicious day ,they will seek the woman's consent.
6. Wedding Day(qinying亲迎)：On the wedding day, the groom will go to the bride's home with the matchmaker, relatives and friends. Before the groom receives the bride from the bride's home by sedan chair，he needs to pays his respects in bride's ancestral temple. After the ceremony of worshiping heaven, earth and ancestors in the groom's home, he was sent to the bridal chamber with his wife.
Family and Marriage[edit]
1. Arranged marriage[edit]
In ancient times, marriage valued family harmony. The practice of Chinese marriage ceremonies is "an arrangement by parents’ orders and matchmaker's words."(父母之命媒妁之言). Parents and matchmakers would make decisions on their children's life arrangement, which was called "Arrangement by parents". Wealthy families would look for a bride of similar social status who could manage the family finances and, most importantly, produce sons to inherit the family's wealth. Poor families, on the other hand, will not be as demanding and will only look for a bride who is willing to work hard in the fields. And in gerneral，the husband and the wife were arranged to marry even though they had never seen each other until the wedding day, they can not refuse their marriage. No one could resist this kind of marriage because it had become a social norm in the feudal era. From this perspective, marriage in China before 1930s was not based on one's own will and choice, but it an arranged marriage.
2. Family interests and power[edit]
Marriage is closely related to family interests. A good example of this is the marriage of a princess in ancient times. Ancient kings often married off princesses to stabilize relations between countries and to stabilize their borders. It was a way to protect the interests of his country, the royal family, not to wage war.“intermarriage has continued throughout Chinese history as a means of establishing and maintaining relations among families in the private sphere, as well as a factor in political careers. " [2]For example, "Marriage alliances, or ho-ch'in 和亲，literally 'harmonious kinship,' was something new in itss Han-era application. It was a part of a formal peace treaty arrangement at the interstate level, designed to pacify the powerful Hsiung-nu 匈奴 empire"[2] During the Qing dynasty, although no "evidence of prohibitions against ethnic intermarriage within the Eight Banners " [3], "in elite families of the ruling class, primary wives were almost entirely Manchu, while qie (commonly translated as ‘concubines’) and other partners of lower status could be Han"[3]. In the Qing Dynasty, most of the high officials were mainly Manchu, so in order to protect the interests of the family, in the selection of a wife will be very important whether the woman was born in the "eight banners". For example，"the ethnicity apparent in the maiden names of wives in genealogies from elite Manchu descent groups, such as the Imperial Lineage."[3]
3. Marriage prohibitions[edit]
In traditional Confucianism, marriage between people with the same surname is incest and needs to be forbidden. “One of the earliest marriage prohibitions, and one surviving to this day, was that forbidding persons of the same surname to marry. An imperial decree of 484 A.D. states that this rule was promulgated far back in the Chou dynasty, which was from I22 to 255 B.C.' Any one marrying within his clan received sixty blows, and the marriage was declared null and void. It was feared that such mating would produce weak offspring.”[4]
In society, most families will not allow their sons to marry the following five types of girls，"the daughter of a rebellious house; the daughter of a disorderly house; the daughter of a house that has produced criminals for more than one generation; the daughter of a leprous house; and the daughter who has lost her father and elder brother"[4]The groom's family will prevent these types of girls from entering their home out of concern for the family's interests and reputation.
Polygamy[edit]
1.Comparative status of wife and concubine[edit]
In ancient China, concubinage was very common, and men who could afford it usually bought concubines and took them into their homes in addition to their wives. The standard Chinese term translated as "concubine" means "concubine: my and your servant (derogatory self-description)."
Most of the roles a concubine plays in a family are that of a man's sexual partner, needing to add to the man's offspring.
A concubine's status is very low compared to a regular wife. Even if the concubine was close to the man, the children she bore were only named bastardy, and their children had a lower social status than the children of the main wife. “concubine was always inferior to the wife, even if her relations with the husband were more intimate." [1]
The wife is the female partner in an ongoing marriage relationship. The wife usually takes care of everything within the family, including the health of the family, the education of the children, and the needs of the parents.
The wife's rights in the family were great, and she assisted the man in managing the family business. The children born to the wife, called firstborn sons, had the right to inherit the family business. ”She shared her husband’s class, whether he was a peasant, merchant, or official; accordingly, the clothes she could wear and the etiquette. she was expected to display depended on her husband’s background and achievements.”[1]
Remarriage and Windows[edit]
In ancient times, social attitudes toward widow remarriage were opposed. "The neo-Confucian opposition to widow remarriage was expressed in an oft-quoted aphorism of Zhu Xi: 'It is a small matter to starve to death, but a large matter to lose one's virtue.'"[5] In ancient times, women were required to study the "Analects of Confucius - Women's Studies" at a very young age. Daughters of rich families studied the Analects in books, while daughters of poor families learned about feminine virtues through the sayings of their parents and brothers. Culturally, societal attitudes toward female remarriage are subconsciously controlled from an early age through education, and in practice, the government has issued measures against widow remarriage.For example，"The state reinforced the neo-Confucian attitude against widowremarriage by erecting commemorative arches to honour women who refused to remarry. In 1304, the Yuan government issued a proclama-tion declaring that all women widowed before they were thirty who remained chaste widows until they were fifty were to be so honoured. The Ming and Qing continued the practice." [5]However, although the majority of women do not remarry and enjoy the honor of government awards, in reality they are still treated unfairly, their social status is still low, “They were portriyed in a popular metaphor as ‘crabs without legs,’”[5]and the prejudice and persecution against women has not disappeared.
Reference[edit]
- ^ a b c Sexuality in China: Histories of Power and Pleasure. University of Washington Press. 2018. ISBN 978-0-295-74346-2.
- ^ a b YIHONG, PAN (1997). "Marriage Alliances and Chinese Princesses in International Politics from Han through T'ang". Asia Major. 10 (1/2): 95–131. ISSN 0004-4482.
- ^ a b c Chen, Bijia; Campbell, Cameron; Dong, Hao (2018). "Interethnic marriage in Northeast China, 1866–1913". Demographic Research. 38: 929–966. ISSN 1435-9871.
- ^ a b Baber, Ray Erwin (1934). "Marriage in Ancient China". The Journal of Educational Sociology. 8 (3): 131–140. doi:10.2307/2961796. ISSN 0885-3525.
- ^ a b c Waltner, Ann (1981). "Widows and Remarriage in Ming and Early Qing China". Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques. 8 (3): 129–146. ISSN 0315-7997.