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Wedding of the Nu ethnic group: three days not enough

2013-04-12 15:02:37

(cultural-china.com)

 

The wedding ceremony is a party of performing dances and songs. In the house, while playing the pipa and the Jew's harp, some boys and girls play the pipa and guozhuang dance joyously. Gathering around the fire, the old people express good wishes to the couple and sing wedding songs. In the yard, some boys and girls sing wedding songs in response and dance with an agreeable melody. The whole yard is full of joy. The content of their songs is very rich, from the origin of the human being to the life of their ancestors, from the love between boys and girls to the wedding customs. The wedding songs are so long that they are completed several times. At the intervals the singers and the bride and groom eat rice with their hands (the Catching Food in Hand) and then go on singing. Sometimes they will sing until daybreak. On the next morning, each of the guests is served a dish and then they leave happily.

The wedding banquet is the largest one of all the ceremonies. Before the wedding ceremony, the bridegroom goes to the father-in-law's with pork and rice to help to chop the wood and plough the farmland. The feast must be wonderful and the site of the feast must be laid out. On the occasion the bride and groom drink the wine together to celebrate their marriage and the girls sprinkle the flour on them, which means good luck and good fortune.

Within the three days after the wedding ceremony, the bride and groom are accompanied to go to bed separately by their own maid. The bridesmaid lifts water and cooks on behalf of the bride every day and will be given a present for thanks when she returns home.

According to the traditional customs, the bride and groom can't live together in the first three days after marriage and are separately accompanied to sleep in two beds in the bridal chamber by a lad and a girl. On the fourth day, the bridegroom takes his wife to his father-in-law's with a pig and a jar of wine to show respect. And not until then can the bridegroom bring his wife home and can the whole wedding ceremony come to an end.

Nu Ethnic Minority Group has a system of monogamy by and large, but there are still many survivals of the primitive marriage. For example, the sub-consanguinity homogeneous marriages are those mostly from the same clans or even the same families. That is to say, all boys and girls who have the same grandparents or even have different family hierarchies, except their natural parents and biological brothers and sisters, can get married. In addition, Nu Ethnic Minority Group remains the system of "the wife's brother marries the husband's sister". In some clans, the head has more than one wife. After marriage, the man separates from his parents and forms a small family.

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