Fuddland
I attended the last stage of a Chinese wedding at the weekend — I say last stage because it’s pretty tough to attend the entire wedding ceremony, given that it’s spread over many months and the couples are officially married when the paperwork is completed, often weeks before the wedding “reception”.
This particular couple — the bride is a teacher at one of the larger schools in (苏州) — live just outside the city in a small complex of housing units with a central communal area of medium-sized halls. An army of older women were already hard at work when we arrived, washing the dishes of those that had already eaten, preparing them for the next wave of diners, as well as cooking a veritable feast of many and varied dishes. When it came to be my particular group’s time to eat, we were presented with plate after plate of food: crabs, fish, other [unknown] seafood, beef, chicken [possibly], duck, and a surprisingly tasty turtle. I ate some of its shell and it was very interesting: soft, with a texture and taste that’s quite hard to describe.
On the walls either side of our table hung two raw fish — to symbolise savings, for the Chinese word for fish sounds very similar to the word for abundance — and joint of pork, which I believe represents fertility, although I’m not certain that’s correct, and even if it is, why it is so.
The official wedding photos are done months in advance, and are presented in lavish albums, depicting the bride in groom [and no others] dressed in various outfits: traditional clothing from past dynasties, or contemporary scenes such as barman and cocktail dress-wearing customer, or black tie at the [superimposed] waterfall. A selection of these photos were blown up and bedecked the family home, including the “honeymoon suite” — that is, one of the bedrooms. This room was further decorated with rose petals and cutsie “I Heart You” teddies.
Gifts of food and packets of cigarettes were thrust into my hands — there was no expense spared and seemingly no limit to the generosity of the hosts and their friends, whom I had never met before. There was a certain degree of feeling like some kind of sideshow — being one of only two foreigners there, the video camera spent an uncomfortable amount of time filming us as we ate and chatted, and I got asked by a young girl why my eyes were blue [she didn’t stick around for the biology lesson] — but all in all, it was a fun experience.
