In the past, on her wedding day, the bride always went from her own home to her marital home in a bridal sedan chair. The moment she got in the sedan chair meant the beginning of the wedding ceremony, and also a turning point in a woman's life. Later, the bridal sedan chair gradually disappeared from weddings and revolutionary changes took place.

In the past, brides went from their own home to that of their new mothers-in-law by the bridal sedan chair. If you have watched the film Red Sorghum, directed by Zhang Yimou, you may still remember the scene when Gong Li, the leading female actress, was being carried in a bridal sedan chair in the middle of the wedding procession. Getting into the bridal sedan chair is the beginning of a traditional wedding and at the same time a turning point of a woman's life. In the beginning of the 20th century, the Han people's weddings still followed this tradition.

Weddings at the Turn of the Era

Traditionally, the parents and matchmakers arranged marriages. Many new couples saw their spouses the first time at the wedding ceremony when the bridal veil was lifted. A traditional wedding consists of a serial of complicated procedures and various formalities. Due to space limitations, only the rite of the first day of the wedding will be referred to here.

Before the wedding, the members of the bridegroom's family would set up a decorated archway, put up antithetical couplets and the word meaning "double happiness", and prepare the sedan chair for collecting the bride. On the day, the bride, wearing a red padded coat, red skirt, phoenix coronet and embroidered tasseled cape and red bridal veil, was carried to the groom's home in a bridal sedan chair, escorted by the best man, bridesmaid and bridegroom, who would normally be riding on a horse. Before entering the male side's home, the sedan chair should be carried over a brazier in the courtyard, praying for a prosperous life. Holding a vase in her arms, the bride got off the sedan chair and strode over a saddle on the ground (the pronunciation of these two things: vase and saddle, are the same as that of "smooth and safe" in Chinese). Inside the bridal chamber, the couple sat shoulder by shoulder on the bed while people spread it bed with peanuts, longans, dates and chestnuts. The pronunciation of these four things together means °having babies early±. Then, the bridegroom lifted the bride's veil and both drank from wine cups with their hands crossed. They then kowtowed to the ancestors' tablets of both families, and then to the parents, before meeting met with other relatives and friends and distributing sweets to the younger generation. The wedding festivities lasted till midnight.

By the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, with the introduction of the advanced ideologies into China from the West, some young people began to break boldly through the yoke of the traditional marriage and made the declaration for freedom within then marriage. After the first wife of Cai Yuanpei, a famous educator in modern Chinese history, died of disease in 1900, many people acted as go-betweens for him, at a time when he was the supervisor of a school in Shaoxing, in Zhejiang Province. Refusing all the attentions of go-betweens, Cai Yuanpei published a notice seeking a life partner. The conditions for the marriage listed in his notice included: the woman was not to have bound-feet; she should know how to read and write; the man should not take concubines; the woman could remarry if her husband died; divorce should be possible if the man and woman felt they were incompatible. This notice was nothing but a manifesto of new ideology. On January 1, 1902, Cai Yuanpei finally achieved what he wished and held a new style wedding with Huang Zhongyu, an educated woman with unbound feet from Jiangxi. Instead of the tedious old wedding ceremonies, he made a speech to the guests speaking glowingly of the idea of equality between the sexes.

China in 1919 saw the emergence of the May 4th Movement and the New Culture Movement. Science, democracy and patriotism were the loudest slogans at the time. Men and women contacted openly and dated by their own choice. The hottest topic in discussions in newspapers was the idea of freedom in marriage. In Changsha, Hunan, a young woman, Zhao Wuzen, had been selected to be wife of the owner of an antique shop, Wu Fenglin. Zhao was bitterly opposed to the idea, but her parents ignored all her protestations. On the wedding day, she got into the bridal sedan chair with a concealed knife. When it was only in a short distance from the groom's home, she cut her throat with the knife, her resulting death striking a blow against the idea of arranged marriage. The new appeared in various newspapers and magazines in Changsha the next day and there was a public outcry. In his article, Mao Zedong (late Chairman) pointed out that the cause of this event was the rotten marital system and the dark social system.

Pioneers' Wedding

In the beginning of the 20th century, among the intellectuals or pioneers who had accepted Western ideas and concepts and devoted themselves to the revolution, the ideal of democracy and republicanism, there were many young men and women who loved each other, had common goals and enjoyed equality between the sexes. No matter whether their weddings were simple or luxurious, they had no bridal sedan chairs and no traditional ceremonies. Instead, they liked to choose the style they were fond of.

In 1914, following a setback in the republican revolution, the great Nationalist leader Mr. Sun Yat-sen stayed temporarily in Tokyo. Soong Ching-ling, then 22 years old, took over from her married sister and worked as Sun's English secretary. Soong had followed Sun at an early age and devoted herself to the democratic revolutionary course and respected and loved Sun very much. Soon after they began working together, Soong Ching-ling decided to marry to him. On October 25, 1915, they signed the pledge for their marriage in a ceremony in Tokyo. They shared weal and woe together for 10 years. After Mr. Sun Yat-sen passed away, Soong Ching-ling took on his uncompleted work.

Xiang Jingyu was a pioneer of the Chinese women's movement. In 1920, she went to France to work and study, where she met Cai Hesen, one of the founders of the Communist Party of China. They fell in love, and their simple wedding was held in a small wooden schoolhouse. Dozens of Chinese students joined in the wedding, congratulating them enthusiastically for their free marriage and reciting the poem they wrote together, the Alliance of Xiang and Cai. In the photo they sent back to their home, the two sat close together holding an opened book by Karl Marx, On Capital, a proof that their marriage was based on the common belief in the Marxism.

Wedding During the Years of Revolution and Wars

Mentioning weddings during this period, the most moving one was that of Zhou Wenyong and his assistant Chen Tiejun, held on the execution ground. One of the leaders of the workers¯ movement in Guangzhou, Zhou Wenyong was arrested during a demonstration. Chen Tiejun and other comrades broke into the jail and rescued him, however. In 1927, to prepare for the Guangzhou Uprising, Zhou and Chen were asked by the party organization to set up an office for secret work under cover of being husband and wife. In the work, Zhou got much help from Chen so he respected her and loved her gradually. But they both had adhered to the pure relationship between comrades. In 1928, after the failure of the Guangzhou Uprising, Zhou Wenyong and Chen Tiejun were both arrested, having been betrayed by a traitor. In prison, they remained faithful and unyielding. Just before their death sentence was executed, Zhou Wenyong asked to have a photo together with Chen Tiejun and declared that they would have a wedding at the time."Let the sound of reactionaries"guns act as our wedding salvos!± Chen Tiejun said fearlessly in the last minute of her life.

In the winter of 1929, Gu Bai, an early revolutionary activist of the CPC and Zeng Biyi, a female guerilla from Guangdong, decided to marry and invited all their guerrillas to come to a tea party at the revolutionary base. When Mao Zedong heard of this, he sent people to tell the new couple that he wanted them to have a grand wedding. "You should post your marriage declarations everywhere to let all the people of the county know our CPC's marriage policy: free courtship and monogamy. Taking Mao's suggestion, Gu Bai and Zeng Biyi posted many "marriage declarations" on the walls of the vital communication lines and then held a simple but bustling bonfire wedding. This exerted a great influence in the local area.

In 1937, a woman came to Shanghai from Sichuan to find her fianc¦, in the hope he would return home with her and consummate their marriage. But this was just at the moment when the Japanese invaders launched an aggressive war on China and Shanghai was in the forefront of the action. At a time when the CPC and Kuomintang were cooperating to resist the Japanese together, how could red-blooded youths return to the rear area of Sichuan for marriage? Finally, the two decided to get married in Shanghai. The wedding was held in a grand hotel; an intimate friend of the couple acted as the master of ceremonies. But, instead of gaiety and laughter, every one appeared solemn during the ceremony. The bridegroom returned to work soon after the wedding and the bride also joined in the ambulance corps taking care of the wounded soldiers for the Chinese anti-Japanese armies.

Collective Weddings

In some large cities such as Shanghai in the 1930s, a new-style wedding was in vogue. The propose of the collective wedding put forward by the Shanghai Bureau of Society attracted a large number of young people who were going to marry. The first collective wedding was held on the afternoon of April 3, 1935 in the assembly hall of the Shanghai Municipal Government. In all 57 new couples took part. The bridegrooms were all in blue long gowns and black mandarin jackets while the brides were all in pink satin qipao, white wedding veils, holding bunches of fresh flowers. This wedding attracted the whole town to turn out to watch, and the whole process was filmed and shown in all cinemas in the city. Many people in many cities followed suit after that. Five group weddings were held in Shanghai in that year, involving 399 couples.

By the 1940s, collective wedding gradually took place of old and traditional wedding ceremonies. In 1947, in the wedding of this kind in Nanjing, brides and grooms came into an auditorium in two lines. After the ceremony, now socially recognized as couples, they walked down the steps out of the hall in pairs, arm in arm. Though a number of new style weddings were held in cities, they always attracted crowds of onlookers.