Traditional Chinese marriage

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Introduction

The Chinese have seen that marriage (‘’hūn yīn’’,婚姻;婚姻) should be founded on love since the concept of monogamy rooted in their mindset. Ideographically, ‘’hūn’’ (婚) is identical to ‘’hūn’’ (昏, literally means an evening; a dusk) in ancient writings, though the former has the radical (Chinese character) ‘’nǔ’’ (女, literally means a female). This implies that courting couples go dating in the evening. Similarly, ‘’yīn’’ (姻) is the same as ‘’yīn’’ (因). According to Zhang Yi’s (張揖) ‘’Guangya Shigu’’ (廣雅•釋詁), a dictionary for ancient Chinese characters, ‘’yīn’’ (因) means friendliness, love and harmony, indicating that correct way of living for a married couple. To the Confucians, marriage is of grave significance both in family and in society. In the perspective of family, marriage can bring families of different surnames, or rather clans together, and continue the family life of the concerned clans. Therefore, only the benefits and demerits of the clans, instead of the individual couples, are concerned in a marriage. Socially, a married couple is the basic unit of the population; sometimes marriages can affect the country’s political stableness and international relations (especially to certain foreign tribes like Mongolians, Muchus, Huns, and Turks); thus marriage can be related to politics.

Prehistoric Chinese marriages

Marriages in primitive societies

Around three to four millions ago, when primitive people were evolved from apes, they “married” and had sexual relationships with one and other in heaps. The reason for the prevalence of such mass marriages is that the population of human beings was still at a comparatively low level, and individual defensive power was weak. Therefore, people lived the way like other animals, and they did not have the precise concept of motherhood, fatherhood, sibling, husband and wife, and gender, not to mention match-making and marriage ceremony.

Sibling marriages

Sibling marriage, which was derived from the marriages in primitive societies, forbad the sexual relationship between parents and their offspring. But it permitted marriages between siblings. There was a story about the marriage of Nüwa and Fu Xi, who were once sister and brother respectively. At that time, the world was filled with no people. The siblings wanted to get married but, at the same time, they felt ashamed. So they went up to Kunlun Shan and made a prayer to God. They asked for God’s permission for their marriage and said, “if Thee allow us to marry, please make the mist surround us.” God had given the approval to the couple, and promptly the peak turned out to be misty. In order to hide her coyness, Nüwa covered her blushing face with a hay-made fan. Nowadays in some villages in China, the brides still follow the custom to use a fan to shield their faces. As Nüwa and Fu Xi are both siblings and a married couple, the story more or less reveals sibling marriage once reign in the ancient China.

Sibling marriage showed an improvement of the marriage system, and people began to appreciate the importance of parenthood, thereby stop any undesirable marriages between parents and their children. Yet, sibling marriage might result in offspring with weak physical fitness, mental retardation or other disastrous genetic diseases (a typical example is the Down syndrome), which hindered the agricultural productivity at that time.

Inter-clan marriage and antithetic marriage

After a lengthy agony of trial and error, people realised that males should not marry females of the same surname, as abnormal births might be resulted. Later on sibling marriage had become a taboo, and people were prone to have inter-clan marriage. Different clan might have more than one different surname. Males married to females with a different surname with in a clan. Historically, there were numerous clans living alongside the Yellow River in the ancient China, like the tribe of Huang Di with the common surname Ji and that of Yan Di with the surname Jiang. They coupled with each other from one generation to another.

Later, marriage was not confined with in a clan, with an increase in the geographical mobility of an individual, and people found their spouses from another clan with a different surname. Couples were married in pairs in the extra-clan marriage, or better known as antithetic marriage. This occurred in the midst of the New Stone Age, i.e. around 5000 BC. Matriarchy prevailed in society at that time, therefore husbands needed to stay and live at their wives’ families. When a couple died, the husband and the wife were buried separately in the respective clan’s graveyard. Offspring would be buried with their mother. Antithetic marriage still happens in today’s China: In Yunnan, males and females in the minor tribe Nakhi would form temporary couples, and they call each other “Ahchu” rather than “husband and wife”. The male “Ahchu”s have to live and work at their female “Ahchu”s’ homes.

Maternal marriage and monogamy

In a maternal marriage, a male would become a son-in-law who lived in the wife’s home and assumes the role of a son. The husband would also need to change his surname into his wife’s one. This happed in the transformation of antithetic marriage into monogamy, which signifying that the decline of matriarchy and the growing dominance of patriarchy in the ancient China.