Another Chinese Wedding

DSC02075.JPG

http://matadornetwork.com/community/katemonster/another-chinese-wedding/attachment/7/

DSC02162.JPG

http://matadornetwork.com/community/katemonster/another-chinese-wedding/attachment/8/

The wedding…just as every region in China has its own dialect, regions also have their own wedding customs, which are still used despite the western influences that also have drifted into Chinese weddings (white dresses, photo albums, candle lighting,etc).

I went to the wedding with Song. He called me on that Saturday night to inform me that hte wedding began at 6:30. Okay, I said. “See you tomorrow night.” He said, in English, “No.” He meant that things got started in the morning.

Turns out, he meant that he would be waking at 6:30 to begin preparing flowers for decorating the wedding cars. He came by my house, with the groom in tow (the groom was clutching a small bouquet of roses and lilies–twas his bride’s bouquet) and we zoomed off in a car driven by an overweight chain-smoking man who kept a photo album in the backseat of his car featuring family photos from a trip to some aviary where everyone in the family held an exotic bird on his or her hand or head.

We drive way, way out…past the botanical garden, out near Fragrant Mountain. Also in the car is Mr. Zhang, Song’s main worker, who is filming the scenery on his camcorder.

Although it seems we’re in a terrible rush, we suddenly detour into a commerical area so that the groom can hop out and go buy twenty or so cartons of cigarettes, boxed in the shiny red cartons of weddings and other celebratory occassions that require the hosts to hand out cigarettes for good luck.

We dash off again, only to pull into some totally random construction sight. Workers were just pouring in, wearing their yellow safety helmets and carrying whatever tool they had–some with a hammer or shovel, others with an unwieldly, over-sized screwdriver.

Turns out we were in the wrong waiting spot, and so we pulled out and turned a few yards down into an actual street. Here, the wedding car (a Cadillac) was decked out with the flower bouquet and white-wedding dolls featured in the photos I sent you earlier.

But then we had to wait for other Audis and slick black cars to arrive before we headed to the next destination. Also, the groom disappeared again, and an hour later we take off. Song instructed me to sit in one of the black cars, though he was sitting in another. I asked him why. He said that not everyone was there yet, but we still had to make it LOOK like there were a lot of people in the wedding party (the more fancy cars and the more people the better).

So we drive, drive, drive. Another woman is in front seat but we only say hello. Then we pull into a motel-apartment-restaurant type place. A boarding house of sorts. People are waiting outside, and they set off strings and strings of the gun-powder packed red firecrackers that make enough noise to scare away the roaches. Then we all storm inside. I expected this to be the wedding. But no, with the groom in the lead, about 20 of us run down a dim hallway, passing doors that have small viewing windows, but they’ve been covered with Chinese newspapers. Finally, at room 223 (no significance, I assume, just vacancy) we stop and the groom knocks. Kids scream inside the room. He knocks again and the kids respond with more squeals, followed by demands for ‘hong baos’–red envelopes stuffed with money.

The groom obliges and the kids open the door just a crack. Six or seven pairs of hands (not all children) stick out and grab the small red envelopes, which, I later noticed, contained one and five kuai bills. (equivalent perhaps to children’s Easter egg money, particularly I’m thinking of an egg hunt that Mrs. Costner threw for the kids one year).

Well, one orund of envelopes isn’t enough. The ritual continues, with the door peeking open, more hands waving, grabbing, closing, squealing. They’re all speaking fast and in dialect, so I’m fairly lost, until finally the groom raps with extra intensity and someone inside yells, “Why do you want to come in?” And the groom, apparently with great embarrasment but pride, was forced to say, “Because I love her.”

The door flung open, and everyone went charging in to a very small hotel room. 15 or so people are already inside, and in comes our group of 20 or so. The bride is wearing a sleeveless white wedding gown (quite beauitful, in fact) and red roses in her hair. She’s sitting on a white double bed with her legs tucked under her. I couldn’t help but htink of hte scene in The Great Gatsby when Daisy, dressed in white, seems to be floating on the white sofa.

The groom lifts her stockinged feet out from under her and slips on a pair of patent red high heels, princess to Cinderella style. Then the bride’s father feeds her some bread. More cheers and shouting. Then the groom picks up the bride and carries her (over the threshold style) out the hotel door, down the hallway, down the stairs, and all the way to the flower-decorated Cadillac idling in the dusty parking lot outside.

This time, Song, Mr. ZHang and I rode in the same car. We drive farther out into the outskirts of Beijing. We’re technically still in the city, but we enter a village that is so, so, so countryside. I’ve got to pee by this point, having been up since 5:30am, and I’m about to pop as we bounce over pot holes and get jammed on tiny streets crowded with bicycles and women walking with babies and old ladies weheeling vegetables home from the market on these funny little wooden baby carriages come shoping carts.

Finally, we stop and everyone pours out. We’ve increased in numbers, maybe 50 people now. Song sends me to the outhouse, which is the second worst toliet I’ve ever entered in my life. And I’ve used some bad toliets.

While inside the concrete hovel, I hear more firecrackers erupting outside. I emerge from the outhouse, only to walk into smoke and that tell-tale whistle of a firecracker about to explode. Frightened, I jumped back behind the filthy concrete wall. Luckily, no one saw me for the smoke. Otherwise, they would have teased me for being scared of a double-kick firecracker exploding far away from where I stood.

I locate Song in the smoke and crowd and we walk further back into this village until we come to a modernized house, which is to say that it’s tiled with bright white tiles, outfited with flourescent tubes for light, and has running tap water inside. We spill in, and encounter tables loaded with bananas, cigarettes, special wedding candy and bowls of sunflower seeds. Folks nibble as we wait turns to go into a bedroom where the bride is sitting on yet another bed, though this one is covered with the tradiational red ‘Double Happiness” bed spread. We take turns joining her on the bed for photos.

Before I even have a chance to enjoy a banana, we’re off again. This time, we arrive at the hotel restaurant where the feast was to be held. The food was fabulous and the men drank loads of Chinese white liquor, expcept for Song, who stuck to beer, and therefore did not turn red in the face and increasingly louder and more obnoxious like the other men.

The bride and groom came around to each table to raise a toast, with the bride then unwrapping a candy and pushing it straight into each guests’ mouth, much like a priest dealing the body of Christ.

We had to take the bus home, having driven out with the groom, and after an hour on the road, I came straight home and slept for a wonderful two hours and a half.