Chapter 22 Chapter 22: Lover Marriage

In this way, the bride and groom lived together for two days and two nights, which can be said to be not legal, but they have already received the sweetness and happiness of being a husband and wife.On the third day--following the last ceremony in a Chinese marriage--miaomiao, if the family's ancestral temple is nearby--of course it's at the ancestral temple, but for those who live in towns and don't have an ancestral temple nearby People in temples, this ceremony is held in the ancestral temples or ancestral halls of people with status, reputation, even if they are very poor.Such ancestral temples, temples, or shrines all have a altar inside, or red sheets of paper pasted on the walls. As I have said elsewhere, they are churches of the state religion of rites. This kind of church is identical in nature with the churches of the ecclesiastical religions in Christian countries.

This ceremony-see you in the temple, first of all, the father of the groom will kneel in front of the altar of the ancestral temple. If there is no father, then the closest elder in the family will act on his behalf. The young members are now getting married.Then, the bride and groom kneel in front of the same ancestor spirit in turn.From then on, the man and the woman - not only before the moral law or God - but before the family, before the country, before the law of the state, are married.Therefore, I call this temple ritual—the ancestral hall ritual in Chinese marriage—a social or civil marriage.And before this civil marriage, that woman, that bride—according to the provisions of the "Li"—could not be regarded as a legal woman ("Bumiao sees a married woman").At the same time, according to the "Li" scriptures, if the bride dies violently before the sacrifice, she is not allowed to receive sacrifices and burnt paper at her husband's house - the place where her husband burnt paper to sacrifice her and her memorial tablet are not placed in the ancestral temple of her husband's family .

In this way, we see that in China, a legal civil marriage contract is not between the woman and the man, but between the woman and her husband's family. She does not marry him, but enters into his family.In China, a wife's business card often does not write the wife of Chang XX, such as "Mrs. Gu Hongming", but rigidly writes words such as "Gui Jin'an Feng's 裣衽".In China, the marriage contract between a woman and her husband's family must never be broken by both spouses without the consent of the husband's family.This is the fundamental difference between marriages in China and Europe and the United States.In Europe and the United States, people's marriage is what we Chinese call a lover's marriage, that kind of marriage is only based on the love between a single man and a woman, while in China, marriage, as I said, is a social marriage, a kind of marriage. A contract established not between husband and wife, but between a woman and her husband's family—a contract in which she is not only responsible to the husband himself, but also to his family.Through the family to society - maintaining social or civic order.In fact, it eventually spread to the entire country.Finally, let me point out here that it is this civil conception of marriage that makes the family strong.So far, please allow me to point out further - in Europe and America, people seem to understand what civic life means on the surface, understand and have a real concept of being a real citizen - a citizen does not live for himself, but first of all for His family lives, through which the civil order or state is formed. --However, in the true sense of the two words, Europe and the United States have failed to form such a thing as a stable society, civil order, or state--as we see in modern Europe and America today, the men and women in their countries There is no real conception of society or of civic life--such a country with a parliament and a governing machine, if you will, "one gigantic business house".Or, during the war, it was simply a gang of bandits and pirates - not a nation.In fact, here I can further point out that this hypocritical national concept of a big business that only cares about the selfish material interests of the largest shareholders-this false national concept with the spirit of gangster cooperation, in the final analysis, is the current reality. At the root of the terrible war that continues.In short, without a real conception of civic life, there is neither a real state nor a real state, and there is no possibility of civilization at all!For us Chinese, a man who is not married and has no family and shelter cannot be a patriot, if his conscience is aroused and he becomes a patriot - we Chinese also call him a robber patriot .In fact, to have a real idea of ​​the state or civil order, one must first have a real idea of ​​the family, and to have a real idea of ​​the family and family life, one must first have a real marriage Concept--to get married is not to enter into a lover's marriage, but to enter into the kind of civil marriage that I have tried to describe above. (z-39)

Let's get down to business.Phenomenon love, you can imagine how the lovely wife waited until dawn--to worship her in-laws, and after finishing dressing up, she asked her husband-in-law in a low voice, how deep is the thrush--from this you can know what I mean by Chinese There is love between couples, and even though they did not know each other before marriage, not even on the third day of the wedding, it is a fact that there is love between them.If you think the above-mentioned love is not deep enough, then I will give another two-line poem written by a wife to her husband who is far away: (z-52)