Excuse me, how to write an ancient wedding invitation?

With the arrival of "white day", Rongcheng ushered in a new wave of wedding climax yesterday. The red invitation cards that new people send to relatives and friends, although small in size, are enough for everyone to share the sweetness in their hearts. What about the "wedding invitations" of the ancients when they got married?

At the end of last month, the yamen archives in Baxian (now Chongqing) collected by Sichuan Provincial Archives were included in the China Archives Heritage List. Yesterday, the museum announced to the public for the first time the parts related to marriage customs in Baxian archives, among which there are many rare "Gengtie" and "Xi Ke". Although it has a history of more than 200 years, these "wedding invitations" of the Qing Dynasty, which are only square inches in size, tell the changes of the marriage customs of Bashu people and even China in ancient times.

The provincial archives first published the archives of marriage customs in Qing Dynasty. The "Geng Invitation Card" used for folk marriage in Qing Dynasty is similar to the present wedding invitation, and marriage has to go through six procedures.

Reveal the background of archives

After decades of hard work, we have compiled 1 10000 files of Baxian yamen.

Yesterday, the warehouse of the Provincial Archives was opened, and the files of the yamen in the Qing Dynasty accounted for one third of the whole floor. The bookcase with the documents stands tall, almost touching the ceiling. Wandering between bookshelves, browsing the years marked on the box, where should I look at so many files?

Sean, deputy research librarian, introduced that the archives of Baxian yamen have just been included in the China Archives Heritage List. Due to the huge number, the archives began to be sorted out after the founding of New China. Through the efforts of several generations of archivists from the former Southwest Museum, the History Department of Sichuan University, and then to the Provincial Archives, it was not completed until the beginning of 2000. At present, among the more than 3000 volumes of 1 10000 in the provincial archives, there are more than 3000 volumes involving folk customs, and the ancient "wedding invitations" that have been preserved for more than 180 years are even more precious cultural relics.

The Chinese nation has always had the habit of "protecting history with resources", but due to frequent wars in the old society, the archives of local grass-roots governments are extremely scarce. During the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression period, in order to avoid the Japanese bombing, the Eight Immortals archives were urgently placed in a ruined temple in Shapingba, Chongqing. However, due to the lack of storage and sun exposure, many files have become a pile of papers that are difficult to separate. Some files were taken out by beggars and burned to keep warm.

Most of the files about marriage customs involved in the lawsuit are tragedies.

Although the Qing Dynasty's "wedding invitations" published this time are full of festive flavor, the actual marriage life behind them is not beautiful.

In a file concluded in the eighth year of Daoguang, a short marriage was shown: less than a month after the marriage certificate was concluded, Chen Lushi, the bride of Baxian County, sued Qiu Jia, who was about to get engaged to her, at Baxian Yamen. The Eight Immortals yamen immediately held a court hearing and concluded that Chen Lushi's original husband, Chen Yongshun, was not dead, but her ex-husband "sold her for money" because of her poor family. After the marriage certificate was issued, when the Qiu family was going to take Chen Lushi back to her hometown of Jiangxi to get married, Chen Lushi worried that the Qiu family would "betray" her again, so she sued the yamen.

Sean said that most of the archives of the Eight Immortals yamen are tragic. This is because these files all involve litigation, which is equivalent to the current litigation. "When marriage reaches the point of litigation, it will naturally be tragic," Sean said. We can't simply infer from these files that marriages in feudal society are tragedies.

The marriage procedure of ancient people

The six steps of marriage are indispensable.

Turning to the yellowed archives, the "Geng Tie" and "Xi Ban" used in the folk marriage in Qing Dynasty are still full of festive colors. Although it has a history of 180 years, Geng Tie, which was first published in the provincial archives, is still bright red in color and clear in pattern.

On the top right of this "Geng Tie", there is a couple who are saluting, and five expected guests are painted below. In the middle of "Gengtie", a golden vertical frame is used to write the birthdays of men and women. The other one that matches it says "forever and ever". On a long staircase, the groom and his wife walked up the stairs. The officiant stood at the top of the steps waiting for the wedding to begin, and the whole post was full of festive atmosphere.

Sean said that the traditional wedding ceremony always pays attention to the "Six Rites", and the "Six Rites" in the Qing Dynasty evolved into six procedures: "Inviting Geng, asking questions, reporting to Japan (inviting Japan), offering, bridging and getting married". Among them, the only things that need to be written on paper are "please promote" and "registration date". This kind of wedding invitation is a kind of "marriage invitation", that is, a man and a woman keep birthdays for each other and ask someone to measure whether they match. "Invitation date" means asking people to calculate and choose auspicious days, rules and taboos suitable for holding various wedding ceremonies. Its content is usually written on red paper, and the man's family informs the woman's family, which is called "happiness class" or "color class". "This was the engagement agreement at that time, which shows that the ancients attached importance to fate."

During the reign of Daoguang, Wang Desheng made a will "I wish to divorce my wife and remarry" with footprints on it.

Divorced women can only follow the footprints.

Of course, there are also marriages and divorces. On a divorce file during the Daoguang period, a man named Desheng Wang made a contract of "willing to divorce his wife and remarry", because the "year shortage" made him too poor to support his wife. At the same time, it is mentioned in the contract that the divorce between the two is "friendly consultation between husband and wife". But in the fourth year of Daoguang, a man named Pu Hongfu divorced on the grounds that his wife was "disobedient to women, unfilial to her in-laws and disrespectful to her husband".

Sean said that in ancient China, divorce was generally proposed by the man, which was divided into "divorcing his wife" and "getting married". Generally speaking, divorcing a wife means that the woman has no major fault, while "becoming a wife" means that the woman has violated the "seven rules" and has a major fault.

Strangely, these two contracts not only have the palm prints of the parties, but also have a footprint. In this regard, Sean speculated that the handprint was the man's and the footprint was the woman's, because men were superior to women in ancient times. Moreover, if there are footprints on the contract, there must be handprints. If there are handprints, there may not be footprints, indicating that the divorce is the man's final say, and it doesn't matter whether the woman agrees or not. Sean smiled and said, "Unlike now, many divorces are because women don't like men."