Traditional Marriage Miscellaneous Custom-Buying Dowry

Dowry, called "dowry" in ancient times, originally refers to the "dressing box" used by women to dress up, and later refers to the practical and ceremonial items that women accompany their daughters to get married together. According to documents, the custom of dowry has appeared since the Spring and Autumn Period. Priscilla, a famous politician at that time, entered the State of Qin as a princess of the State of Jin. The custom of heavy dowry was very popular in the Southern and Northern Dynasties. In order to improve their status by marrying their daughters to the children of the gentry, civilians would rather accompany a large amount of property to make up for the lack of their family status, so she called "dowry" "dowry door".

Parents often buy a set of rich and complete slave makeup for their daughters out of blood relationship, family dignity and in order to ensure their daughter's status after marriage. "There are endless fields and endless years", and wedding consumption is a heavy economic burden for families.

Types of dowry

People often use "a thousand acres of fertile land, ten miles of red makeup" to describe the rich dowry and the spectacular scene of marrying a wife. The full set of "Ten Miles of Red Makeup" has everything from furniture to bedding: everything from a thousand-work bed to needles, threads and brains. In the past, the dowry of wealthy families mainly included the following categories:

(1) hardwood products

Comprises a set of camphor wood boxes with box seats, the number of which is even, such as 2 pairs, 4 pairs, 6 pairs and 8 pairs, and clothes of the four seasons, cloth with ruler heads and various shoes are filled in the boxes; A pair of rosewood or nanmu jewelry boxes, containing complete sets of gold and silver jewelry, jewelry and jade articles: in addition, there are dressing tables, mirrors, basin stalls and box racks made of high-grade materials such as mahogany.

(2) Furniture and appliances

Including vases, fruit bowls, fruit boxes, teapots, teacups and other daily household items, the materials are mostly porcelain, silver, bronze, lacquer or cloisonne.

(3) Bedclothes

Including bed sheets, embroidered pillows, curtains, bed curtains, etc. The number of dowry bedding is very particular, with four beds and four covers as "flat", eight beds and eight covers as "stable" and six beds and six covers as "smooth".

(4) Dressing and washing

Mainly cosmetic case, with built-in mirror and attached drawer, which is equipped with comb, scalp needle and rouge pollen. In addition, there are washbasins, foot pads, bathtubs and washbasins. The average person marries a woman without valuables such as antique furnishings, only two beds of bedding, four-season clothes, a pair of boxes, a set of pots and pans, a pair of lamps and candles and a few simple pieces of jewelry are essential. Poor families should have at least wooden boxes, toilets and candles.

Special dowry

(1) offspring barrel

"Descendants' Bucket", also known as "Happy Bucket", is a kind of lacquer red bucket, which contains some items such as red dates, peanuts, longan, melon seeds, cloud cakes, half-baked red eggs and so on, meaning early birth. Stick a red hi on the lid of the bucket and tie it with a red line. A cultured person will wrap it in red cloth. When sending a wedding, be sure to ask a handsome little boy to carry a "boy bucket" and follow the dowry team. At the groom's house, according to different customs in different places, children's buckets are handled in different ways. In some places, a healthy and lively boy was invited by the man's family, opened the lid of the bucket, took out the "colored head" in the bucket, and then peed in it to wish the newlyweds a boy for the first time. In some places, this is the wedding night. When Xi Niang poured out the contents of the bucket, she read "Koucai": "The bucket of children and grandchildren will fall round and round, and children and grandchildren will all be top scholars". In some places, after a man receives a child's bucket, he takes out the contents and then asks a female chef to wash it with boiling broth, which is called "Bai Zi soup".

(2) Daughter wine

It is a custom in Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province to use daughter wine as a dowry. If a girl is born at home, after her daughter is born, she will choose several jars to make wine, such as refined white rice and wheat songs. Please ask the painter to carefully draw auspicious patterns such as landscape flowers and birds, pavilions or longevity cranes on the jars, call them "carved wine" and seal them with mud. On the day of daughter's wedding, these carved jars are the most striking dowry in the queue, called "daughter wine" or "daughter red". At the wedding reception, the man used this wine to entertain his guests. It's delicious when it's unsealed.

(3) Longevity chickens

In the makeup delivery team in Huaibei, eastern Henan, there is a boy with a pair of "happy chickens" in his hand. Like "auspicious", he adds "auspicious" to "auspicious". Everything goes well. According to the rules, the couple should be carefully fed until they die of old age, and buried under the same tree, which symbolizes the love of the newlyweds, and is also called "long-lived chicken".

Save makeup and frame

The thickness of the dowry has become a sign to measure the woman's family status and identity, so relatives and friends who have a direct or indirect relationship with this "decency" will sponsor the dowry. The source of dowry usually consists of two parts: one part comes from one's own savings and purchases, that is, "saving makeup"; The other part comes from relatives and friends and is called "adding boxes" or "adding makeup". People who pay attention to etiquette divide the wine, meat, snacks, dried fruits and vegetables in the dowry into many parts after receiving the date of the man's large dowry or invitation, and send them to relatives and friends together with the invitation. After receiving the invitation, these people will naturally send gifts and "boxed" gifts.

Send a dowry

The main tool for dowry delivery is the "dowry tray". In the old days, weddings usually rented a "dowry tray" from the wedding car shop to hold the dowry. The dowry tray is a special rectangular gold lacquer carved table with railings around it. The boxes, antique furniture, various utensils and other various appliances placed on the table are firmly fixed with red lines and railings.

The topic of dowry has caused a heated discussion on the Internet before, but it is still necessary from the perspective of traditional marriage customs. Dowry determines the bride's confidence in her future marriage. It's not that the more dowry, the better. It's the dowry that determines the importance that the bride's family attaches to her daughter. The bride's family is her daughter's confidant, and naturally she dare not neglect her husband's family.