Tea And Marriage

In chapter 25 of Red Mansion Dream, Wang Xifeng sends Lin Daiyu two bottles of tea leaves and joked, "You've drunk the tea of our family, how come you are still not the daughter-in-law of our family?" What brought tea and marriage together? Ancient Chinese considered marriage as the origin of all ceremonies. Zhou Yi—the classic book of Confucianism-said, "sky and earth give birth to all beings, all beings give rise to couples, couples give rise to fathers and sons, fathers and sons give rise to kings and ministers, kings and ministers give rise to the order of high and low, and high and low give rise to mistakes in ceremony." Marriage is regarded as the footstone of the entire moral system, so the durability and stability of marriage has been considerably stressed, as is said in "the principle of marriage is eternity as opposed to ephemerality." From courtship to wedding, certain rules and formalities have to be observed and certain gifts have to be presented. This not only shows respect to marriage, but implies people's good wish to the future married life.

In ancient China, a boy going to a girl's family had to bring a wild goose as gift, called "goose foundation." Wild goose is migratory bird that migrates to the south in winter, so ancient people took them as “sun bird." The Chinese character for sun is called Yang. Since men belong to Yang, they expect their future wives to follow them as wild goose following sun. This obedience is called "husband sings and wife follows," suggesting a perfect domestic harmony. Besides, wild goose is loyal. It doesn't live on alone after its partner dies. People expect couples to be that loyal too and can live and die together. Later, it gets harder and harder to catch wild goose, so people substitute them with home-raised chicken, duck, and goose. With the popularization of tea, it superseded these poultries to be the best gifts for proposing. In a very long time, Chinese people planted tea trees by sowing seeds because they thought tea trees could not be transplanted for fear of dying of drying up. Ancient people expressed through tea their nice wish that their daughter would take root in her husband's family and be loyal all her life, just like a tea tree. If a woman re-married, that was "drinking the tea of two families." That woman was sure to be despised.

In Tang Dynasty, custom went so that tea was treated as betrothal gift or tea gift set. Since Song Dynasty, tea was even more closely related to wedding. Betrothal gift was also "tea gift," and to present betrothal gift was commonly called to "present tea." If a girl accepted the gift, that was "drink tea." To return the gift, fruits were usually chosen, sometimes together with tea, called "order tea." Even today, in the countryside in many parts of China, engagement is still called "accept tea" and the cash gift in engagement is called "tea cash." If both the boy and girl were willing, they appointed a time to get married. Many guests were invited to attend the wedding, during which tea, wine, music and opera were four necessary ingredients. In Qing Dynasty, the wedding ceremony developed to the systemized ceremony of "Three Tea," namely "present tea" when proposing, "settle tea" in wedding, and "join tea" on the first night of marriage. According to Lu You's Notes from Hut of Old Knowledge, in some southern regions at Lu You's time, single boys and girls got together to sing. Boys started with a song with "girls are flowers, come for tea sometimes." So tea was a good excuse for a date. In Hunan Province of mid-south China, tea was also the best tool for boys and girls to communicate. When a boy went to a girl's home on a blind date, the girl would serve him tea in person if she was satisfied with him. And the boy would accept the tea if he was also satisfied. The story didn't stop at this. Match making, blind date and bridal night were all accompanied by tea to add some fun. The custom of using tea as a matchmaker was not limited among common folks, either. It even influenced the aristocrats. When a royal man got married in Song Dynasty, he had to present 50 kilos of tea leaves as betrothal gift. The connection between tea and marriage was so intimate that it's almost "no marriage without tea." Emperor Kangxi (1654-1722) of Qing Dynasty used to send ministers to south China (south of Yangtze river) to choose wives for him. Girls there all hurried to get married to avoid the widow-like life in the imperial palace. Nevertheless, however poor they the boys were and however hurried they were, tea was by no means dispensable.

Even after marriage, tea could not be done without. It played a role of stabilizing family and promoting conjugal emotion. In Ningbo of Zhejiang Province, there was a custom of "tea of new son-in-law." When the son-in-law went to his wife's home for the first time after marriage, his parents-in-law would lavishly entertain him with many dishes. Moderate family generally presented tea two or three times, and rich family could present as many as seven or eight times. The girl's family put their expectation for the son-in-law in the tea. Local people believed that even though discords occurred between the couple, as long as the husband remembered how well his parents-in-law once treated him, he would treat his wife kindly.

Not only did people associate the planting of tea trees with loyalty, but poets of past time liked to compare tea to girls as well. Su Shi had a sentence "good tea is always like beautiful woman." Poet Chen Yuyi of Song Dynasty also wrote a sentence "your black skirt and beautiful face look familiar and camellia blooms are all around in September." Because of tea's symbolic as well as practical value in the married life of Chinese people, it has been given enormous recognition and praise. In old China, when you went to another house as a guest, you could not bring tea leaves as gift if the host had a single daughter, because that would cause misunderstanding. However, now the Chinese don't need "order of parents and words of matchmaker," but prefer free low, so this function of tea has gradually gone to oblivion.