Han Chuantong Wedding Customs
01 · Historical Records
Han Chinese traditional wedding customs have a long history. As the Book of Rites says in its chapter "Hunyi" (The Meaning of the Marriage Ceremony): "Ritual begins with the capping ceremony, is rooted in the marriage ceremony, is weightiest in funerals and sacrifices, is most honored in court audiences and diplomatic missions, and is most harmonious in the archery gathering and the district drinking ceremony — these are the great essentials of ritual."
02 · Core Techniques & Process
For thousands of years, the Han Chinese wedding has been regarded as an important component of Confucian "ritual" (li). Since the Zhou dynasty, the "Six Rites" (nacai — presenting betrothal gifts; wenming — asking the name; naji — reporting the auspicious divination; nazheng — presenting wedding gifts; qingqi — setting the date; and qinying — fetching the bride in person) became a normative custom, which continued to play an important role in married life throughout feudal society. Doumen District, Zhuhai City, Guangdong Province, lies at the southwestern tip of the Pearl River Delta and is a nationally renowned water country and homeland of overseas Chinese. A distinctive on-water wedding custom prevails in Doumen. It has a history of several hundred years, and some of its practices have spread through marriage ties to the water-country regions of the Pearl River Delta such as Zhongshan, Jiangmen, and Foshan. The on-water wedding ceremony takes complex and varied forms and lays great stress on etiquette, with relatively fixed procedures and conventionally established rites. Its main elements include "sitting in the grand hall" (zuo gaotang), "putting up the hair" (shangtou), "lamenting the elder sister" (tan jiajie), "greeting the bride by flower boat" (huachuan yingqin), "the hall-worshipping rite" (baitang), and "the return to the bride's parental home" (huimen). In the on-water wedding custom, Shatian folk songs play an indispensable role and have become an organic component of the entire wedding custom.
The bride's rite in her parents' hall
The sequence opens with the bride seated in her parents' hall, while the groom waits outside the door.
The dressing of the bride
Hair is washed, combed, bound and painted in a sequence the bride does not perform herself.
The sisters' lament before the parting
Unmarried sisters sing the lament together the night before, unscripted, until the voice of parting turns to festivity.
The flower boat bringing the groom
The groom arrives by flower boat, first offering to the boat god and the dragon king of the water.
Shatian folk song through the wedding
Song accompanies every stage of the rite, so the officiants are singers as much as organisers.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The entire wedding custom is closely bound up with the environment in which local residents live; elements such as "greeting the bride by flower boat" and paying obeisance to "Boat Taigong" (the boat people's tutelary elder) and the "Dragon King of the Sea" all bear distinctly watery characteristics. The Doumen on-water wedding custom displays a distinctive water-country style. It has deepened the local people's sense of cultural identity and has thus become a spiritual bond sustaining the attachment to their homeland felt by overseas Chinese and by compatriots in Hong Kong and Macao.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Han Chuantong Wedding Customs · Han Chuantong Wedding Customs.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
After the advent of modern times, with the changes in society, the traditional "Six Rites" essentially ceased to be practiced; however, in some regions the Six Rites and other legacy elements of traditional wedding customs have been preserved, providing extremely valuable material for research in folklore studies and sociology. At present, under the impact of Western-style wedding ceremonies, the Doumen on-water wedding custom faces the danger of being altered or even disappearing, and urgently needs rescue and protection. Guo Xingfu (recorded in the official file of the associated inheritor): He took up the craft in 1965 and has been engaged in it for more than fifty years. The Doumen on-water wedding rites and related skills he transmits have considerable influence in Doumen and the surrounding areas. As early as the early 1960s, he was already invited to Xinhui, Jiangmen, and other places to plan and direct the weddings of boat-dwelling families. For decades he has spared no effort traveling among the water-country regions to conduct weddings for local communities; he has also created a large number of vividly worded on-water wedding lyrics, and has passed on his singing techniques without reservation to local villagers. In early 2008 he began running a training class in on-water wedding etiquette at the Lianzhou Town Cultural Center, organizing villagers to study the relevant rites systematically. Male, Han nationality, born in March 1944; died in July 2019; a native of Zhuhai City, Guangdong Province. Representative inheritor of "Han Traditional Wedding Customs (Doumen On-Water Wedding Custom)", a project of the fifth national-level batch of intangible cultural heritage. Third-generation inheritor of the Doumen on-water wedding custom.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Guo Xingfu 05-3041
- Hexiaodao
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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