Folk Culture in Yangxi County, Yangjiang City (300 words)

The wedding ceremony of Yangxi people is regarded as the most important etiquette in life, grand and complicated, mixed with many superstitious colors. Before liberation, the wedding of Yangxi people was generally a feudal wedding. After liberation, there were great changes, but in some places, the basic etiquette of folk marriage in China was still maintained, and it was full of Yangxi characteristics.

In the past, when men and women in Yangxi reached marriageable age (18 men and 16 women), their parents asked matchmakers (commonly known as matchmakers) to find spouses for them. The matchmaker selects the object according to the "right match" and introduces the age, conduct and family status of both men and women to their parents. If both parents agree, they will write the birthdays of the married men and women (commonly known as Niangeng) on red paper, and the matchmaker will give them to each other, and then each side will invite a warlock. If nothing unlucky happens within a certain period of time, parents of both sides can formally meet, propose marriage conditions to each other, agree on bride price, cake, food and dowry, enter into an engagement, choose an auspicious day and hold a ceremony. This stage depends entirely on both parents. The children of both sides have never met.

At the end of feudal society, some enlightened parents would let men and women meet before they got engaged. The meeting place was agreed by both parties, commonly known as "meeting". If both parties have no opinion, that is, the parents decide that the man will give the bride price to the woman, and the woman will be regarded as the man if she accepts the bride price, and the wedding date will be chosen by the man.

After the man chooses the wedding date, he informs the woman and sends someone to send the post with the wedding date to her home, commonly known as "sending a daily list". After the woman took it, she sent invitations to her relatives and friends. On the day before the wedding, Mr. Nan Yi was hired as an exquisite bride during the day and held a banquet for relatives and friends at night, commonly known as cooking.

On the wedding day, the man sent someone to deliver the bride price early in the morning. The amount of bride price depends on the man's wealth. Women prepare dowry before this. On the wedding day, the man's wedding procession first set off firecrackers to celebrate, and then the matchmaker took the Tsing Yi sedan chair to lead the way. Tang Xin holds the Khmer Rouge gift box, followed by the bride's sedan chair, followed by the honor guard who blew his hand, and the woman holds a banquet to entertain the wedding procession. After dinner, the bride went out in a sedan chair and returned to the man's house with the wedding procession.

On the wedding day, Yangxi women have to do a lot of etiquette. First, you should dress up, second, you should open your face, third, you should feed, and fourth, you should send it out. When sending out, my mother wants to sprinkle rice and read some greetings as she scatters it. When a woman goes out, she is not allowed to step on the threshold, look back at her father and brother, or cry. This is auspicious.

In the evening, the man gave a banquet to entertain the guests. My uncle is in front, the groom hangs flowers and the best man is waiting at the door. When the wedding procession came back, firecrackers exploded. The groom stood on the stool at the door with a paper fan in his hand. When the bride passed by, he patted the bride on the head three times, which meant to give the bride a fright and listen to the man's discipline in the future. After the bride enters the room, the bride's dowry should be opened by the groom, checked one by one, and put his hands on his head for all relatives and friends to have a look.

There is a frustum of a cone at the dinner, and eight lucky men and women are selected to accompany the bride and groom to the dinner, commonly known as accompanying the frustum of a cone. Halfway through the dinner, the bride was accompanied by bridesmaids, who offered tea to the elders of the man one by one. After drinking tea, the elders should give the bride tea money to show their concern and love for the couple. After dinner, the bride went back to her room, and the kitchen workers cleaned up the dishes and set the banquet. The players at the poker table are divided into two factions. They rap for the bride and groom, while asking questions to the bride and groom, covering ancient and modern China and foreign countries, ethics, love life and so on. The memorial tablet was played until late at night.

On the wedding night, the bride and groom will hold a wedding in the bridal chamber. There are many procedures and ceremonies, but no matter how noisy the bridal chamber people are, the bride and groom should obey and not make trouble. The wedding didn't end until the groom left.

The next day, the newlyweds will go to church to worship their ancestors, bow down to Aunt Weng with tea, and visit relatives tomorrow, commonly known as Sanzao. After the Three Dynasties, the bride returned to her parents, commonly known as the Three Dynasties. When the bride comes back, before sunset, the bride's family will present cakes and distribute gifts to the man's relatives and friends. When the woman's family gets married, on the first festival, the woman will wrap zongzi for the man's family, commonly known as the head-sending festival; On New Year's Eve, a cake will be made and sent to the man's house, commonly known as New Year's Eve. Send it to New Year's Day. It depends on the future. Generally, the woman's family will send cakes to the man's family several times. In the old society, poor families were worried about sending cakes when they married their daughters. When the daughter comes back, parents should also worry about it once. Therefore, in the old society, Yangxi called marrying her daughter "cold wind", which meant that it was not worth the trouble to her parents.

In the old society, women in Yangxi were not allowed to go out casually before marriage. They have to stay at home, gather a group of sisters, collect wedding songs and use crying as lyrics to express their feelings of leaving their parents and relatives. There are many forms of crying marriage, including crying and sighing, and answering and answering. Before the fisherman's daughter gets married, she will live in another boat and get married crying on the boat. They sing salty songs. On a moonlit night, it is a pleasure for local people to sit on the shore and listen to the fisherman's daughter crying and getting married. The listeners couldn't help singing the salt water ballads of the past, and all the people waiting to get married there came back. It was quite lively at that time.

The marriage customs of Yangxi in the old society can only be roughly described here. As the saying goes, hundreds of miles have different customs. As far as Yangxi itself is concerned, the marriage customs vary from place to place, and some places even differ greatly. I won't list them here.