Daughter of Good Fortune: A Twentieth-Century Chinese Peasant Memoir by Chen Huiqin

Author:Chen Huiqin [Huiqin, Chen]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9780295806020
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Published: 2015-05-15T04:00:00+00:00

MOVING BEYOND THE ANCESTRAL COMPOUND

In 1968, my cousin Zhongming, my uncle’s elder son, got married. Zhongming was working as a Chinese violinist in the Beijing Opera Troupe in Shanghai. His wedding involved new practices such as distributing “wedding candies.” Both the bride’s and groom’s families gave candies to each person present at the banquet. Candies were also given to all households in the village and to colleagues and friends of the bride and groom. In fact, beginning in this period, when asking somebody when he or she was getting married, the question became “When will I eat your candy?” Since the sedan chair had been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution as an “old thing,” the bride now got to the groom’s house either on a bike or on a “sedan chair with a tail,” which was a boat, whose propelling oar looked like a tail.

Zhongming’s wedding continued the tradition of having unmarried girls as maids accompanying a bride. Shezhen served as one of the bridesmaids. The practice of giving gifts to the bride continued, too. Elder relatives presented meeting-ritual money at a ceremony where the bride was introduced to the groom’s relatives. After the wedding ceremony, the bride presented appreciation gifts, which were face towels at that time, to the groom’s relatives who had given her money gifts.

The wedding also retained the tradition of having a party in the bridal bedroom. At the party, people counted pieces of homemade cloth, pieces of clothing, and pairs of handmade shoes inside the furniture the bride brought with her. Zhongming’s bride, Ah Juan, did exquisite needlework. Neighbors and relatives admired the shoes she made and sang her praises.

When Zhongming got married, his family’s bedroom, which was in the southwest quarter of the West Compound, was partitioned into two rooms, one as the bridal bedroom and the other as the bedroom for Zhongming’s mother and younger sister. His younger brother and father slept in the side room attached to the East Compound. That room had been my grandmother’s living quarter. Grandmother now slept in the guest hall right outside our main living quarter.

By the early 1970s, my uncle’s second son, Hanming, had started to date a girl and needed his own space. The family applied for a homesite and was granted one right in front of our West Compound. A three-room house was built. One of the three rooms was used as the bridal bedroom, the middle one as guest hall, and the other one as kitchen. Hanming got married and established a home in the new house.

Around the same time, the elder son of Ah Bing, who occupied the northwest quarter of our compound, was also old enough to get married. Ah Bing’s family of five people—he, his wife, two adult sons, and a teenage daughter—all slept in one bedroom. The crowded living conditions made it very difficult for the sons to find wives. To make the situation even worse, Ah Bing’s family had been categorized as “landlord” in the Land Reform. During

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