"Book of Rites: Hunyi" says: "Those who perform wedding rituals will combine the good of the two surnames. The upper ones will serve the ancestral temple, and the lower ones will inherit the descendants. Therefore, gentlemen value it." Therefore. , China has always attached great importance to weddings since ancient times and created various complex wedding ceremonies. Among the traditional wedding etiquette, the most typical are the "six rites".
1． Nacai: refers to the man's family asking someone to make a request for marriage to the woman's family, that is, "proposing marriage". "Matchmaking". When accepting, give gifts. Since marrying a wife is a major event that concerns the entire family, one must be very careful in choosing a partner. Usually, from the families of officials to ordinary people, the conditions for choosing a spouse are that they are well-matched. Under this premise, consider family income, family background, family tradition, etc.
2. Asking names: refers to the two parties asking each other about the names, ages, birth dates, place of origin, three generations (i.e., great-grandparents, grandparents, parents), titles, official positions, etc. of men and women in order to deepen mutual understanding, which is what is called "please ask eight characters" among the people. If the agreement is accepted, both parties should take the initiative to inform the other party of the situation and not conceal it.
3. Naji: refers to the man's family deciding to get engaged based on the year and month of both parties' births and the auspicious day, and preparing a gift to notify the woman's family. After the name inquiry, the horoscopes of both men and women must be examined to finally determine whether they can get married. This process is called "combined marriage", which is also known as "approving horoscopes" among the people. "Bazi" refers to the four groups of branches that are combined by the heavenly stems and the earth to represent the year, month, day and time of each person's birth. The first is the 8-character. Whether the horoscopes are compatible or not is an important condition for the success of a marriage. After Najib, even if the marriage relationship is confirmed, it is not allowed to regret the marriage lightly. From then on, the man would give the woman gifts every year and festival, and pay for her clothes in all seasons.
4. Nazheng: The groom’s family formally sends a betrothal gift to the bride’s family. This is the key to whether the man can marry the woman, and what people call marriage by sale is based on this.
5. Requesting date: refers to the man's family choosing a wedding date and asking the woman's family to agree. After performing the "acceptance" ceremony, it's time to consider getting married. There are two types of marriage invitations: oral and written. Respectable families often use the written form, which is the so-called "marriage letter".
6. Personal wedding: refers to the groom going to the bride’s house to marry the bride. This is the last step in the wedding ceremony, similar to the current wedding ceremony. The "welcome" ceremony is the most solemn and complicated ceremony in the entire marriage etiquette. It also lasts a long time and is not completed in one day. To sum up, it is mainly divided into three parts: wedding reception, worship hall, and bridal chamber. Each part contains numerous rituals and contents. Most of these rituals contain the meaning of blessing peace, good fortune, and warding off evil and disasters, and have a strong color of taboo and superstition.
The "Six Rites" are the norms and guidelines for concluding "the good relationship between two surnames", and its specific operator and implementer is the matchmaker. In the marriage system of ancient China, matchmakers played an important role. Matchmakers have been around since the transition to monogamy. Later, it became a social profession and was protected by feudal laws. Their social status has obvious duality: on the one hand, because it can match the two parties in marriage and promote a good match, it is necessary for society, so it is valued by people; on the other hand, because matchmakers are the key or key to arranged marriages, they are the persecutors of women. The accomplices even used the opportunity of matchmaking to seek wealth and murder, so they were despised and cursed by society.
For marriage, both the male and female parties involved, as well as relatives and friends, originally hoped that the couple would get along well and grow old together. However, due to various reasons, it is difficult for many couples to follow the same life path and need to terminate the relationship halfway. As a result, the custom of divorce emerged. Divorce was also allowed in ancient China, but out of considerations of stabilizing the family system and safeguarding the husband's rights and interests, the restrictions on divorce were very strict, and these restrictions were mainly to satisfy the man's will. Therefore, divorce in ancient China was called "divorcing one's wife" or "divorcing one's wife". There are seven specific conditions, called "seven outs". "Qi Chu", also called "Qi Qi", first appeared in "Dadaili Benming", and was later written into the country's code of law and recognized by feudal countries. The specific content is: "One is childless, two is adulterous, has no love for an aunt, four is tongue-tied, five is theft, six is ??jealous, and seven is evil." If the wife commits any of these, the husband can abandon her. This kind of regulation is completely the product of ensuring feudal family rights and husband's rights under the condition of serious inequality in the status of men and women, which has plunged the majority of women into the abyss of misery.
From the perspective of social stability, feudal countries also placed some restrictions on men's rights to have sex with their wives. These are the so-called "three don'ts", that is, "taking something but getting nothing, not leaving; and I will not go even if I am mourning for three years; I will not go if I am poor and humble in the past, but I will not go if I am rich and honorable in the future.” The first article refers to the fact that there is no one in the natal family and the abandoned woman is homeless; the second article means that the wife served three years of mourning for her parents-in-law and was kind to her husband's family; the third article means that the husband was previously poor and lowly, but later became wealthy and left the wealthy family. The meaning of not discarding the chaff. Compared with "Seven Outs", it is really insignificant. The miserable status of women in ancient China is evident from this.