A Study of Han Wedding Customs in the Late Qing Dynasty

1. In the late Qing Dynasty, the old rites prevailed, and the weddings of officials and gentry were conducted according to the official wedding system. After the same light passed, the Western-style wedding gradually had an impact, creating a new complexity and presenting cumbersome and complicated features. On the old-fashioned marriage, the matchmaker was first, then the auspicious day. There were strict rules for putting on auspicious clothes, sacrificing to heaven and earth, suppressing ancestors, and various ceremonies. Wedding customs are also very elaborate. On the day of the wedding, some saddles are placed at the door so that the husband can pass. In the courtyard, there are incense, corn bucket, bow and arrow, bronze mirror, balance wood and the inside, South worship. From the bride arrives at the door to the door of the room, there is a man singing a happy song, holding a basket of walnuts, copper coins, crushed grass, scattered, called the next kiss; some brides on the door, the bride shoots an arrow cloud to kill the gods; some eat dumplings, dumplings are not ripe, that is, ripe is not accounted for. Out of the world, take out the meaning of the world also; in some nights, the bride and groom to take the flowers of the window must be in the lower part of the window. The lower the window, the earlier the birth, and so on. Xu Ke: Qing taolu zhiqi, book 5, page 1990. Marriages all over the world are about family hierarchy, arranged by parents, complicated weddings with lots of superstitious overtones, and so on. It is more or less the same. As for the late Qing Han folk wedding, there is a tendency to simplify this period. 0755 to 79000 Guangxu years revised: the past is the custom of marriage, the first day of dress, the second into marriage, the third meet. It was changed to dressing up in the morning, getting married in the morning, and getting married in the afternoon. Volume XVIII. 2. Marrying with matchmakers and choosing relatives for wealth. In the late Qing Dynasty, folk men and women were still better off with matchmakers. So the matchmaker became the most important guest at the wedding. In Pingxiang, Jiangxi Province, on the day of the kiss, as a media person, I am proud of myself, I am well dressed, I am proud of myself. The host must set up a square table outside the main door with a number of fruits and wine, and two or three drinkers will stand in front of it. When the press arrived, give them a congratulation, force them to drink, and then welcome them to the church. They would be honored as important guests. Juan: Shun Tian Fu Zhi. The main purpose of matchmakers in Qing Dynasty Han society was not the beauty of adult marriage, but to earn others which was a fortune full of drawbacks. As someone said at the end of the Qing Dynasty, the husband's matchmaker was compared to a dove by the ancients and was honored by later generations. Dead are matchmakers, most of them are followers and good people. He doesn't I don't care about his intentions, either to get a big payoff or to make friends with a noble family or money. So, when you talk short, you are colluding with others. If you succeed, you will be rewarded; if you fail, you will suffer, with a mind like a fox. Chen: Shuntianfu Zhi, Chinese National Customs Zhi? Jiangxi Pingxiang, vol. 1, vol. 2, Sanlian Bookstore, 1978, p. 856. Therefore, according to the parents' eyes, the words of marriage established by the matchmaker are actually arranged and bought and sold marriages. During the late Qing period, the concept of gentry in economically developed areas was impacted and the phenomenon of choosing a relative to discuss wealth appeared. Meanwhile, scholars in Xian and Xi'an believed that bad customs had little impact, and they all used the township division as a diversion. Jia his son, though thick, never socialized with Tongqing. After the Daoguang, once the scholar entered the first section, he chose the rich and wealthy families of his village, and widely sent Zhu Juan to marry them regardless of their origins. Shen Shouzhi: On the Disadvantages of Weddings, quoted in Chen, vol. 2, Selected Current Discourses of the First Ten Years of the Xinhai Revolution, World Publishing House, 1935, p. 297. It is a sign of social and economic development and the improvement of the quality of businessmen this is also a reflection of the change of social customs.3. Doll marriage, empty wife marriage, concubinage Doll marriage is a form of marriage in which the man is not yet of marriageable age, and his parents betroth him or marry him, and then formally marry him when he becomes an adult. For example, in A.D. borrowed nest notes years, when a child in Hubei Huangpo

married, some brides never see their husbands in their lives, and some see that they are old. When a bride is in her home when she marries her groom, she must follow the rules. She must not get close to outsiders or have sexual relations with other men. Otherwise, she will be severely punished by her people. During the late Qing Dynasty, due to the accumulation of wealth and political corruption, the aristocratic bureaucrats and rich men were extravagant and extravagant, and the trend of concubinage was prevalent. In this regard, Chinese cultural history has disclosed that this year there were two thousand dollars concubines, six thousand dollars concubines and twenty thousand dollars concubines in the Tianjin official market. Thus, the Tianjin market appeared a peculiar advertisement, Daben banned the word concubinage

July 30, 1909. After the Opium War, all aspects of late Qing society are undergoing profound changes, marriage regulations are no exception. Especially in the bourgeois reform and revolutionary movement after the Sino-Japanese War, the reformists and revolutionaries launched a fierce attack on the feudal marriage system after the emancipation of women under the slogan. Kang Youwei in the Chinese national custom Zhi Nian shouted to eliminate the harm of women for thousands of years; Liang Qichao in the Qing taolu class notes? Marriage class on the Grand Communiqué, a profound exposure of the shortcomings caused by the feudal marriage system; Tan Sitong in the Grand Communiqué boldly denied the husband for the wife, advocating that the union of men and women should be consensual. After the reformists, the revolutionaries criticized the feudal marriage system even more y. Tatung Shu Newspaper published an article signed by Chen Ren, titled New People's Journal, listing six major drawbacks of feudal marriage, i.e., the absence of a man and a woman, the exclusivity of marriage between parents, the shortcomings of matchmakers, the sending of gifts for hiring, early hiring and early marriage, and red tape. The author exclaims: I want to make a big wish, to make a big effort, to make a big effort, to base on the independent separation of families, to aim at free marriage, to sweep away all kinds of social storms, to break up the evil forces between families, to let the national marriage **** homo sapiens shine, to create a new world for compatriots and men, to destroy the dependence of men and women, to overthrow the crooked winds of despotism, to stop the words of matchmakers, and to behead and decapitate people. Book 1 Book 2 Trilogy Bookstore 978 p. 858. Calling out women's strong voice of the times liberation and marriage revolution. While impacting the old marriage relations, the reformists and revolutionaries vigorously advocated civilized marriage and put it into practice, which had a great impact on the feudal marriage system in the late Qing society. In the process of preparing for constitutionalism, the Qing government made some changes to the old marriage system when it amended the law, such as abolishing the taboos of intermarriage of the same surname, intermarriage of the good and the bad, intermarriage of the Manchus and the Manchus and stipulating that the parents must give permission to be engaged to marry, but for a man over 30 years of age, and for a woman over 25 years of age, it is necessary to 055-7900 Volume II, page 888. Compared with the old version of the ban on early marriage, a lot of progress. However, the Qing government to amend the law is still in line with the principle of modifying the statute, all the relatives, marriage, inheritance and other matters. With the exception of some modifications that were contrary to the constitution, they were either based on the existing legal system, various classics and principles, or involved morality in order to maintain the people in the upright order that they had been in for thousands of years, vol. Renxue, p. 913. This inevitably had a negative impact on the reform of the marriage system at the end of the Qing Dynasty. From the 1850s to the 1960s, there were not a few scholars who had close contact with foreigners, and the phenomenon of marrying in Western rites emerged. Those who witnessed such scenes have this record: the day before yesterday was the day of Chunfu's marriage. In the law, the priest clothes squarely, standing in front of him, set up several, several marriage treaties. The bride stood on the south side, and the priest asked what was in the treaty. The best man will take care of it. Then look up to the sky and worship, followed by the newcomer's intercourse, and retire after the ceremony, which is extremely brief. , p. 259. It is worth noting that the Western ritual here has actually changed. First, the bride and groom don't answer the priest's questions per se, but the bridesmaids answer them. Second, unlike Western weddings, where couples kiss each other but look to the heavens to worship, the new couple worships. It can be seen that those imported Western customs ha

This practice is very different from the traditional wedding customs of the Han people, that is, couples do not get married until the day of the wedding to meet for the first time, which shows a new feature of the progress of wedding customs. Going further than folk marriage customs, intellectuals or revolutionaries who received a modern education in the late Qing Dynasty were allowed to fall in love freely and marry on their own. Although it was not common, it represented the right direction of the change of marriage customs in the late Qing. On this basis, civilized weddings emerged in the late Qing. 5. Civilized weddings emerged civilized weddings, except that the wedding venue was not in a church, and there was no need for a priest to officiate outside the marriage. Many of the rituals were roughly transplanted from Western etiquette. Although some of the Chinese content of the American tradition of fainting rituals mishmash, the spirit and form of the basic Westernized. Xu Kejue Min said: the ceremony of welcoming people has not been used recently. At the turn of the light public, civilized marriage prevailed. Promoted in the metropolis and commercial port, and gradually adopted in the Mainland. The certificates prepared on the sidelines were read by the witnesses, the introducer, witnesses, male and female guests have eulogies, the host read the sermon, and the guests sang civilized wedding songs. There are three lengths of civilized weddings. One is to supervise the freedom by the order of parents, the words of matchmakers, and the same of men and women. The order of the case is, Chen Man for his parents volunteered, parents recognized, that is, the introducer to the woman petitioned his parents agreed. Then the introducer made an appointment to invite men and women to meet, men and women agreed, the engagement is finalized. Secondly, after the betrothal, the man and the woman enter into a contract, starting with an oath of self-reliance. Third, the wedding is to be frugal in order to economize on extravagance and to avoid impediments to economic life. On the day of the wedding, the parents of the man and the woman gave each other gold rings, and the gowns were put on. The civilized wedding system had no fixed pattern. The practitioners of the society at that time were as follows: first, play music. Second, the master of ceremonies takes his seat, facing north. Third, the male guests were seated, facing north. Fourth, female guests were seated, facing north. Fifth, male wedding guests are seated, facing south. Six, female wedding guests, face south. Seven, all are seated, facing west. Eight, all females are seated, facing east. Nine. Witnesses are seated facing south. Ten: Introducers are seated, facing south. Eleven: The proper honoree is seated, facing north. XII.The male and female bridesmaids lead the bride and groom to the table, facing north. Thirteen: The best man is seated, facing north. Fourteen. Bridesmaids sit at the table, facing north. Fifteen. Music is played. Sixteen. Witness reading of certificates. Seventeen. Witness stamping. XVIII. Seal of the witness. X. Seal of the bride and groom. XX.Witnesses exchange ornaments for bride and groom. XXI. Bride and groom marry, face each other, and bow. XXII, Playing of music. XXIII, Marriage ceremony. XXIV, Proof of marriage. XXV, Bride and groom thank witnesses, bow three times. XXVI, Bride and Groom thank introducers, bow three times. XXVII. Representatives of the male and female guests give eulogies, lay flowers, and double bow. Twenty-eight, play music. XXIX. Bride and groom thank, double bow. 30. Female guest sings civilized wedding song. 31. Witnesses quote back. Thirty-two, male guest of honor returns. Thirty-three, female guest of honor returns. Thirty-four. Bride and groom meet male and female wedding guests and all ceremonies for male and female families.35. Music is played. XXXVI. male and female wedding guests and elders face south and bow three times. XXXVII. Both men and women face west, and both men and women face east with double bows. Thirty-eight: Both men and women welcome, facing east and west, double bow. Thirty-nine: The maid of honor and bridesmaids lead the bride and groom back. Forty, two men and women marrying and all men and women retiring. XLI. Correctors and ushers retire. XLII. refreshments. XLIII. The feast.