Marriage as a Family Matter
In much of imperial China, marriage was seen less as a private agreement between two individuals than as an alliance between two families. It affected property, labor, social standing, the continuation of the family line and the care of elderly parents. For that reason parents and senior relatives usually took the lead in arranging a match, and the young people involved often had little say or had never met before the engagement.
A well-known saying summarizes the ideal: marriage required “the parents’ command and the matchmaker’s word.” Real practice was more varied than the saying suggests, and individual choice, courtship and elopement are all recorded in historical and literary sources. The classical model describes an ideal, and many ordinary people, especially in poorer or rural families, followed simpler routes.
The Go-Between
The go-between, usually called a meiren or, for a woman, a meipo, was the key figure. Her job (the role could be held by either sex, though women were prominent in many descriptions) was to find suitable families, carry messages, and manage the delicate task of negotiation so that neither side lost face.
A go-between was useful for several reasons:
- Information. She knew which families had children of marriageable age and what their circumstances were.
- Discretion. Because she carried proposals and replies, a refusal could be delivered without direct embarrassment. Preserving dignity matters greatly in the concept of face.
- Negotiation. She could discuss gifts, the dowry and the timing, balancing the interests of both sides.
- Witness. She often attended later stages of the arrangement and was thanked with a gift or fee.
In folk culture and literature the matchmaker is often a comic, talkative figure, accused of exaggerating the merits of her clients. This reputation hints at the fact that the system relied on trust and that families could be misled.
Checking the Match
Families commonly looked for a match of roughly equal standing, summed up in the phrase “matching doors and households” (men dang hu dui). Wealth, occupation, reputation and education were considered. Connections could also matter, since marriage created ties of obligation that resembled the guanxi networks of reciprocal favors.
Another step was comparing the couple’s birth information. Traditionally each person had “eight characters” derived from the year, month, day and hour of birth in the traditional calendar system. A fortune-teller or knowledgeable elder might compare them to see whether the match seemed harmonious. Associations from the Chinese zodiac also influenced attitudes, and some people avoided certain pairings. These practices belong to folk belief; they are described here as cultural customs, and they have no scientific basis for predicting a marriage’s success.
Betrothal Gifts and Dowries
If both sides agreed, the match was formalized through an exchange of gifts and documents. The groom’s family sent betrothal gifts, which could include money, cloth, food and symbolic items, and the bride’s family prepared a dowry of household goods, clothing and sometimes land or money. Both sides were concerned about reputation, so negotiations about amounts could be tense and, for poorer families, burdensome.
Wedding dates were then chosen through the lunisolar calendar and almanacs, and the marriage ceremony, with its own wedding customs, followed. The exchange of gifts and the choice of date were part of the same classical sequence of steps that included the formal proposal and the asking of names.
Variations and Exceptions
Not everyone followed the standard model. Several historical variations are documented, though how common each was depended on time and place:
- Child betrothal, in which families promised a match when the children were very young.
- Adopted daughters-in-law, in which a girl was raised in her future husband’s family, mostly among poorer households in some regions.
- Uxorilocal marriage, in which a husband joined his wife’s family, usually when a family had no sons.
- Remarriage and widows, where the rules and social attitudes varied greatly by class and era.
- Different ethnic customs, since many minority communities had their own courtship and marriage practices, including song exchanges and more open choice.
Some of these arrangements caused hardship, particularly for young women, and reformers criticized them strongly in the twentieth century.
Change in the Modern Era
In the twentieth century, legal changes and new ideas about free choice greatly reduced the role of arranged marriage, and the law now emphasizes that both parties must consent. Couples today usually meet through school, work, friends or online services. Still, family involvement has not vanished. Parents often hold strong opinions about a child’s partner, and in some cities parents have been known to gather in public parks to exchange information about their unmarried children. Professional matchmaking services and family introductions continue in updated forms, showing that the underlying idea, that marriage concerns families as well as individuals, has remained influential.