从婚礼习俗看中美文化差异-

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1Brief Introduction of the Wedding Customs
Marriage has long been one of the primary elements of human relations ever since the ancient time. It exists in almost every country. Wedding is the ceremonies held by two people who want to become a couple and by which they tell people the fact that they have already become husband and wife. And it is the proof of their love, their happiness, and will also leave many sweet memories to them. Wedding customs reflects time and ethnic features and has their cultural and folklore characteristics according to different countries, regions and ethnics. Different wedding customs formed their shapes after the appearance of marriage. Wedding custom is not only the unity of pluralistic social life styles and features, but also the development tendency of senses of value, including values on aesthetic, ethnics, religion and psychology, which are the cultural accumulation and spiritual legacy of human beings. Now I would like to state the wedding cultural differences by introducing the Chinese traditional wedding customs and its changes as well as the American one.
2Chinese Traditional Wedding Customs
As a very important rite in one’s life, wedding has long been an emphasized subject for Chinese people. We can divide the whole ceremony into three periods: before the wedding ceremony, during the wedding ceremony and after the wedding ceremony. And some ancient books, such as The Book of Rite and Rites of Zhou,divide it into six steps: Proposing, Asking the Name, Asking for Fortune, Sending Betrothal Presents to the Girl’s Family, and Discussing the Date of Wedding and Meeting the Bride. They are also known as the six etiquettes. (Wang Ye, 2006: 57
2.1 Before the Ceremony
These six etiquettes that I mentioned above were also known as the period before the wedding ceremony.
Proposing comes first. The boy’s family retains a matchmaker to bring a live wild goose to the girl’s family, which is the symbol of the will-be-couple’s faithfulness and eternal love. If the girl’s parents agree wit h the marriage, they will accept the wild goose and the boy may propose to the girl formally.
T he next step is to “Ask the Name”.The procedure goes as follows: the boy’s family asks the matchmaker to go to the girl’s home to ask her name and birthday in o rder to augury with the marriage. The present the matchmaker takes should also be a wild goose, and if the girl’s family agrees to tell the name, they would accept the present.
Asking for Fortune is one of the most important steps in the six etiquettes. Th e boy’s family will retain a wizard to see the reasonability of the marriage by testing the couple’s names and birthdays that they acquired from the former step, and whether the marriage would
be carried on successfully or not depends on the result of the divination.
If the result is good to them, then the girl accepts the betrothal presents that are sent by the boy’s family, and will be betrothed to the boy. This step is called Sending Betrothal Presents to the Girl’s Family.
When the boy and the girl are suitable and well prepared to get married according to the law, the boy’s family will choose a good day for the wedding and ask the matchmaker to tell it to the girl’s family for discussion.
The last step of the six etiquettes is Meeting the Bride. This is, in a narrow sense, what we call the wedding ceremony. It is also one of the most important steps in the whole process. The groom picks up the bride with a palanquin while the bride is waiting at her home. (He Xiaoming, 2007:86
2.2 During the Ceremony
The day that the groom meets the bride is the liveliest day during the whole process of the wedding ceremony. Two people will carry two big red lanterns and walk in the front of the whole team, and behind the two people is the groom who rides a tall and strong horse; then the Chinese Oboe team and a team of roustabouts carrying betrothal gifts. The whole team is surrounded by music and happiness.
After the bride is picked up and arrives at the boy’s home, the couple performs the traditional Three Bows. Firstly, they bow to the great Heaven and Earth, and secondly, they bow to their parents, and finally, they bow to each other. After the Three Bows the groom’s mother picks up one dumpling which is in the “bowl of children”by using a pair of “chopsticks of children”, blessing the bride’s pregnancy. After the blessing rite, there will be a banquet held by the boy’s family; everyone there will enjoy a luxurious dinner. Then a program called Revelry in the Bridal Chamber, which is also named “Nao Dongfang” by the Chinese, will be on. It is often very interesting; people there will make it happy and lively by playing practical jokes on the couple, and sometimes they will friendly embarrass the bride to achieve this goal. (Li Guimei & Yu Fangqin, 2000:12
2.3 After the Ceremony
Then the wedding ceremony nearly comes to an end. But there still remain two rites to perform; they are meeting the relatives of the spouses, and going back to the bride’s home to thank parents-in-law and other people. Till then, the Chinese traditional wedding comes to an end.
2.4 Changes in the Ceremony
With its dross and essence, the miscellaneous and tedious Chinese wedding customs have kept the traditions for hundreds and thousands of years ever since the first one was
performed and now it is integrated into the modern society. The essence becomes beautiful scenery of the city, while some dross and complex rites are abandoned, however,
some of which still can be seen today. This, to some extent, enables the Chinese modern wedding customs to come into existence. But according to different eras, Chinese wedding presented different kinds of visages.
During the republican period, it is in the spirit of developing people’s spiritual life and doing away with superstition that the republican government intentionally carried out the New Life Movement. As a result, the wedding customs that were very close to people were inevitably influenced, some traditional complex rites were abolished and some new styles of the western kind were integrated into the new customs. After decades of years, many people took off the mandarin jacket and cheongsam, put on the black suit and white dress in the wedding.
After the establishment of People’s Republic of China, Chinese government advocated the simplicity and modesty of holding the wedding ceremony, so the traditional one gradually lost its power. People did not stand on the old rites and customs, hence the wedding ceremony was held simply and rustically. Green uniform took the place of the wedding costumes; daily necessities like watch, bike and sewing machine played the role of betrothal gifts and marriage portion.
As time goes by, nowadays people are more literate; they not only prompt the Chinese weeding to abolish the old complex rites and customs as well as dross, maintain the basic feature and essence like Three Bows, but also have been developing it by absorbing the western one’s advantages. (Shan Qi, 2005:274
3The American Traditional Wedding Customs
In the book All Dressed in White, Carol Wallace holds that the American wedding customs today originated in the middle of the 19th century. She says that the customs took its shape by combining the religious ceremony and the banquet held later together, and the principles they follow today are wedding customs sprung up around 1850s in the American upper class, which then gradually infiltrated into the common people. (Wallace,
2001:49 As far as we know, the American wedding can be categorized into three kinds. They are religious marriage, which is held by a priest in church; secular marriage, which is the non-religious one that is held by local officials; and common law marriage, which is the one that does not need to receive the marriage certificate nor hold a ceremony. (Liu Ning, 2006:10 However, the religious one is adopted by most American people and it is the one I will introduce to you.
3.1 Before the Ceremony
Generally speaking, the spouses’ friends will be invited to the parties held before the
wedding come s. As the girl’s family will hold a bridal shower, whi ch only allows women to attend to give presents to the will-be-bride, while the boy’s family will also hold a bachelor party, which only allows men to attend. And after the parties they will hold a betrothal ceremony and make the preparations for the wedding ceremony. In the betrothal ceremony the couple exchanges betrothal rings, which represent the unbreakable relations and the duty they have to bear after they get married.
Traditionally, on the wedding day, the groom cannot meet the bride nor even take a look at the bride’s dress before they set foot on the church land. And another great feature of American wedding is that the bride always wears “something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue”. (Li Changlei, 2000:220
3.2 During the Ceremony
The wedding ceremony usually takes place at the church. When it begins, the church plays wedding march composed by Wagner, and the bride walks slowly through the corridor of the church with her father onto the chancel. At the same moment, a flower girl who is in charge of throwing flowers walks in front of them and throws petals into the air to make a happy atmosphere. Then the father brings his daughter to the groom who wears full dress in deep color. After that, the bride will stand on the left side of her will-be-
husband and the priest will make them standing in front of him with their faces facing him. Soon the priest will preside over the traditional wedding ceremony. After the oath is made and wedding rings are exchanged, the priest says “I now pronounce you husband and wife, and hope you will be both very happy” in a solemn way, then the wedding in church comes to the end. Surrounded by the music of solemnest and happiness, the couple walks hand in hand through the corridor and roams out of the church. On their way outside, those people present will show blessings by throwing rice, petals of rose and confetti onto them. The ceremony in church usually takes 45 minutes at the most.
3.3 After the Ceremony
There will be a banquet after the ceremony. By contrast with the Chinese one, the fee of American wedding banquet is bored on the girl’s family, and the size of it depends on their living condition. On the banquet, every male guest may kiss the bride, which means that it is the end of the bride’s yo ung era, and is the time for her to become a faithful wife from then on. Then a big wedding cake will be served on the banquet. Together the bride and the groom grip a knife and cut the cake into small pieces. The first two pieces will be the couple’s, a n d the rest ones will be handed over to every guest. When the banquet is nearly over, the bride will stand in the middle of the room with her back on the guests, and throw a bunch of flowers to the young ladies, or throw the garter to the gentlemen. It is said that the one who catches the bunch of flowers or the garter will be the next bride or groom, and will
get blessings from the others. So the banquet ends in a happy atmosphere.
Then it is the honeymoon travel, the fee of which should be bored on the bo y’s family. It is said that in the 4th century, the young Teutones kept such a custom when they got married, and now, the honeymoon travel becomes the first stop of the new couple’s life, but it does not have to be 30 days now but the length should depend on their living condition. (Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2002:64
Some regions have their own traditions. In a city of Maryland, “Do not kiss your lover” is a popular wedding custom. It is said that a man cannot initiatively kiss his spouse when they are chatting, or he will be refused or even be accused of insulting and be taken in custody for a week. As in Hawaii, there is a lively wedding held on water, in which the couple will sing and dance first, then they will be thrown into the sea and swim to a boat prepared for their honeymoon. As time changes, some American young people today do not abide by the traditional ceremony but pursue the ones of innovation, so some of them have a mountain-tops wedding, some have the wedding on the ocean floor with oxygen tanks and some would like to hold snowfield wedding. (Zhu Huan, 2005:876
4 Different Cultures and Thoughts of the Weddings
The above are some customs about Chinese wedding and American wedding, but what are the differences between the two weddings?
4.1 The General Image of the Two Weddings
To begin with, we can describe the Chinese wedding as a red one and the American wedding as a white one. People have different understandings of the color of red and white between the Chinese people and the American people.
The main color of the Chinese wedding is red, and Chinese people have kept the habit of pasting big double red Chinese character “happiness” on the walls, the window glasses, the doors and the other goods around them ever since hundreds and thousands of years ago. In addition, the candles, eggs, peanuts, red bag, the bedclothes in the bridal chamber and the wedding dresses that the bride and groom wear during the ceremony are all red. It fills the wedding with happiness and jubilance; blesses the new couple to lead a happy life. If a bride can wear a red wedding dress made by her mother, the bride gets blessings from her mother. The reason why there are so much red things in Chinese wedding is that red has long been regarded as a symbol of good fortune as well as good luck and happiness for Chinese people. (Guo Shangxing, 2006:355
American wedding also pays much attention to choose a color for the wedding. There is a saying about the symbols of the wedding color, and it goes as: white wedding, all the best; blue wedding, right choice of the groom; brown wedding, living in the town; green wedding, shy people; red wedding, death curse to yourself; yellow wedding, wrong choice of
the groom; black wedding, it’s better to cancel. (Pan Wenjin, 2008:159 So the main color of the American wedding is white, which is helpful to make the wedding quiet and peaceful. For instance, the wedding dress, the layout of the celebrating places, the cake on the banquet and the wedding car are all white. The bride’s white dress and the groom’s black full dress plus the white surrounding create a solemn atmosphere. Back in Roman times, the white color was the representative of festivity, while between the years of 1850 and 1900, white was also the symbol of riches and honor. And now, white as the symbol of chasteness has surpassed the other meanings.
Second of all, the two weddings are totally different from the sound aspect. It is considered, in China, that the more noises the wedding is, the more lively it will be and the more blessings the couple would get, and as a result, the wedding day is always filled with the noise of firecrackers. As in America, the wedding is a peaceful one, and the wedding march played in church is serene and gentle. There will be no other sound in church when the wedding march is being played, so the wedding would be completed in a very solemn atmosphere.
Due to the different traditional cultural perspectives, main colors and the sound environment of the weddings between the two countries differ from each other. Red or white is considered unpropitious in America or China. A red wedding makes American believe that it brings curses of death to them; only white which brings a quiet and peaceful environment makes them believe that it may bring blesses from God; on the other hand, the color of white usually appears in funerals of China, but only a red and
noisy environment helps to build a happy and lively atmosphere for the wedding ceremony.
4.2 Different Wedding Dresses in the Two Weddings
As time goes by, the traditional Chinese red garments are now used less and less, and as the result of foreign culture’s aggression, most Chinese brides would like to wear a white wedding dress as the Americans do to show her purity and beauty. However, while Chinese traditions have not stop spreading in the new environment, white wedding dresses will still be decorated with red flowers or ropes, for after all, white is the color used in funerals of China by tradition. All the clothes, shoes and stockings will be well prepared by mothers. She will exhort the bride not to wear anything that include the Chinese character “短” in the name, such as knickers and socks. It is believed that all the things that have a “短” character in it symbolizes the marriage would be a n ephemeral one.
There is an unwritten rule in American wedding saying that the bride has to wear five things: “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue and a tanner in the shoes.” “Something old” is a white yarn the bride wears on her head, the old one that her mother used in the wedding dozens of years ago, which means the unforgettable parents’ fosterage; “something new” refers to a white wedding gown, which must be newly bought by
the bride, representing her virginity and also th e beginning of th e couple’s life; “something borrowed”is a handkerchief the bride uses should be borrowed from her friends, which means that she will never forget their friendship, “something borrowed” has to be returned to its owner so that it meets the meaning of “borrowed”; “something blue” is a ribbon that she wears has to be blue in color, representing her faithfulness and loyalty to their love; they put a tanner in the shoes to wish that they will lead a rich and
comfortable life after they get married. (Zhu Huan, 2005:876 It is worth mentioning that the bride is not allowed to sell her wedding dress, or their marriage will be over soon.
They have different clothes, but we are able to know from their clothes that they have something in common. Neither people of the two countries expect a short marriage, they all wish they can be happy and grow old together. We can also see the culture blending from the different wedding dresses; however, they both maintain the continuation of traditional cultures.
4.3 Different Banquets in the Two Weddings
Whether it is a Chinese wedding or an American wedding, people will enjoy a banquet held by the couple. The differences are that: who pays for the banquet? In China, it is the groom’s family who pay s the money, while in America, th e bride’s family deals with it. Secondly, the Chinese new couple always holds a luxurious banquet for the guests; they drink wine with every guest at every table to thank them for their coming and blessings. Consequently, the two peoples are both whacked to the wide after the wedding banquet is finished. But it is delightful that the cash gift received from the guests is capable of dealing with the banquet, and there may be some extra money left if it is lucky enough. While on the other hand, the American wedding banquet is not the same with the Chinese one, the Americans prefer a buffet including a ball, and they barely give cash as a gift. (Xia Qiaohua, 2005:50
4.4 Different Rites in the Two Weddings
There are a lot of different rites between the two countries when the groom marries the bride. In China, no matter how the two people meet and how they fall in love with each other, the wedding should be presided over by the matchmaker who has a son and at the same time has a family in which three generations are present, and only in this case does the bride marry into the groom’s house in an open, correct manner. In America, weddings are usually presided over by a priest who declares the legality of the marriage.
It can be tough for the groom to meet the bride on the day they get married in China, for the bride’s relatives will think up every method to make it difficult for the groom. They may ask the groom for red packets or hide the bride’s shoes in order to make sure that she cannot walk out of the room etc. All of these are to express the feeling that the bride’s family hates
letting their daughter go and to tell the groom to cherish his wife.
However, in America, the bride’s father passes her onto the groom directly. Everything in an American wedding is solemn and impressive especially the oath the couple makes in front of God, which is also the climax of the whole wedding, and it goes like this: “I (name, take thee (name, to be my wife (husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death, as God is my witness, I give you my promise.”So many people burst into tears at this. (Liu Ning, 2006:10
4.5 Different Religious Beliefs in the Two Weddings
Different religious beliefs are one reason that makes the wedding differ from each other. For one thing, Buddhism is the most popular religion in China and besides the Chinese people is deeply influenced by Confucian thoughts. By contrast, most Americans are Christians and they believe in God.
So the most important part of Chinese traditional wedding is the Three Bows, and after they finish the three bows, they will be real husband and wife; while the most important part of American traditional wedding is the couple making vows in front of God, and then the priest pronounces that they are husband and wife. But as a matter of fact, there is something similar between the Three Bows wedding and Christian church wedding, which is something religious inside them.
To be detailed, the Three Bows has become one of the Chinese characteristics and it is a perfect combination of Chinese folk traditions, religious belief, and moral standards. The first bow they will give to the Heaven and the Eart h. Thi s not only outpours people’s respect for the Great Heaven and Earth, but also shows their respect for the great nature, and to a certain extent, shows their reverence for nature due to some facts that exists in the society, such as the fear of earthquake, fire and flood etc.; the second bow is for their parents, which is the respect for giving their lives, for human relations and it expresses their gratitude for their parents’ upbringing; they will bow to each other at last for their love and respect. On the other hand, the western Christians believe that the combination of two individuals is the will of God; marriage is based on the words of Jesus. In other words, Bible is the reference. In the Christians’ opinion, marriage is made by God who creates the universe. When he saw humans, his greatest masterpiece, all on his own, God expressed his thought that it was not appropriate for the man to be alone, and he made up his mind to create a spouse for him. As a result of the help from God, the man got a wife and led a happy life. The Bible says, in the ancient time, the love token used by a man who proposed to his lover would be a ring. So the Americans today use rings as their love token. The entire above make the American traditional wedding take place in church and accompany with the Bible. (Pan Wenjin, 2008:159
4.6 Different Marriage Thoughts in the Two Weddings
Last but not least, different thoughts cause different phenomena of the two weddings.
Marriage has its solemn meanings in Chinese traditional concepts, and people considered marriage as the combination of Ying and Yang of the Heaven and the Earth.
“A marriage made in heaven”: Chinese people in ancient time believed that the marriage was determined by the Heaven, so a happy marriage was always ca lled as “a marriage made in heaven”. It came into being under the influence of the Confucian thoughts and thousands of years of feudalism had covered it with its characteristics. In
Chinese feudal society, relationship could not be freely decided by the two young couple.
A matchmaker takes part in all the processes of wedding, including discussing the marriage, engagement and the wedding ceremony. It’s not hard to see from the traditional wedding customs that in ancient time the parents and the matchmakers decided whom the young people would be married to, while the young people who played the main role in getting married were out of the name list of planning. The parents would first check their names and birthdays to see if they were suitable to marry, and they had the taboo as follows: if one of them was three, six or nine years older than the other, or their birth years were respectively horse and cow, pig and monkey, dragon and tiger, the parents and the matchmakers would not let such a marriage happen. They would rather that the male were several years older than the female but would not wish to have the female even one year older than the male. They believed the harmoniousness of their names and birthdays would be helpful for them to build a happy marriage relationship. So when people are talking about ancient marriage, there will be a saying that: “obey the parents’ order, consider the matchmaker’s advises.”
The American marriage ethics is derived from the integration of Hellenism and Hebraism, and today it develops into the modern marriage ethics of free love. Basically, the young Americans are free to choose their lover, but not completely, because they are often influenced by the family-related factors. That’s because, on the one hand, parents educate their children in their way during the years of raising their children, so the children’s concept and behavior are often influenced by their parents. That’s the indirect influence of family. On the other hand, it is true that American parents do not choose a spouse for their children, but if their children chose a spouse that is not suitable for them, parents will express what’s in their mind and try to change their children’s option directly. However, although the young Americans are influenced by the family-related factors directly or indirectly, they still do not lose the leading power when choosing their spouse, and in fact the young keep the right to make a final decision on their marriage. So the American marriage is not only the stage of placing importance on free will of individuals,
of the free development of human nature, of the spontaneous outpouring of humanity, but also cooperation between parents and children in the marriage. People meet each other in daily life and one is attracted by the other without
any external influence; they pursue each other and finally fall in love with each other. When their love climbs to a climax that is inseparable, they will be willing to marry themselves to each other and to contribute everything they have to their lovers. With mutual affective commitment, people build up a family to work together for their ideal life of common wish. (Wang Enming, 2000:271
5 Conclusion
As what I have elaborated above, we can see that each of the two countries’ cult ure has its uniqueness, and through the thousands of years of evolution, this uniqueness is responsible for the different shape of weddings. As one of the cultures of a country, wedding culture shows the characteristics of a country. And when different cultures are influenced by each other, they will adjust and change themselves so that they can absorb the advantages of each other, and then they will be able to make some progress. So does the Chinese wedding culture.
Chinese wedding customs have changed a lot, and wedding dresses change from the ancient gallant full dress decorated with luxurious jewelry to the last century’s long gown and mandarin jacket, and then to today’s suit; from a chaplet and official robes to cheongsam, then the white dress; the vehicles used in wedding change from horse to bicycle, and then brand cars today; in ancient time Chinese people did the Three Bows, but today some of them give oaths in front God in church; the Chinese wedding has changed enormously over the last thousands of years, especially the last one hundred years. As time moves on and the world is becoming smaller and smaller, foreign countries’ wedding culture will infiltrate into the Chinese one, but when facing the foreign wedding culture’s “invasion”, we do not need to be too worri ed about it, in that。

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