I Saw it in a Movie Once

Or, Everything I know about Chinese weddings I learned from watching Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet. However, as we all know (either because you’ve seen it [you really should, it’s hilarious] or because you just Googled it) it actually takes place in New York. Also, it is nearly 20 years old. And, the eponymous wedding banquet is a sham marriage, anyway. So really, it’s not exactly the fictional work off of which to base one’s understanding of reality.

(Every sentence in the above paragraph starts with a conjunction. I’m sure Strunk, White, and Philip B. Corbett, the New York Times editor in charge of style, are in great intellectual pain about this fact, but it was entirely coincidental and too funny, so I am leaving it as is.)

The Wedding Banquet (Ang Lee, 1993) Don't they look happy?

Getting back to the topic at hand, why am I so interested in Chinese weddings today? To make a long story short, I had the opportunity to attend a wedding banquet last Thursday evening, and I was nervous and excited about what to expect. This is when I realized that despite four years of formally studying China, I had never learned about modern wedding culture. Tariff laws, revolutionary ballet, the introduction of fast food culture, and avant garde performance art: yes; but weddings: no.

Here’s what I did know: a Chinese wedding banquet is the main event. Unlike Western Judeo-Christian/secularized weddings, where the church (beach, ski slope, fake bridge of the Enterprise  set) ceremony is the main event and the reception is just the fun part afterward, there is no important public ceremony. There are still legal documents to sign and whatnot, but there is really no need to swear eternal love and fidelity before God/etc if you don’t believe in God/etc (which is not to say that there are no Chinese Christians, Muslims, Jews, etc, but I imagine they have their own modifications to general tradition).

Then there are wedding photos. In America, people who have professional photos taken usually have them taken the day of the wedding. In China, you have them taken in advance and have them displayed at the wedding banquet (in nice weather, you can see people all over the scenic spots of the city having wedding photos taken). Then you have more photos taken at the wedding banquet itself. A coworker who is married to a Chinese woman mentioned that they had over 5,000 photos from their wedding (side note: I think digital photography has made us really lazy about photography. Also, who is going to look at 5,000 photos? So what was the point?).

The Wedding Banquet (Ang Li, 1993). Of course, if your wedding photos looked like this, I can see why you'd avoid looking at them.

Now, there are sadly no photos of the wedding in this post. Alas, while I remembered my camera, I forgot to grab my SD card out of my computer. So I was limited to the 9 photos I could store on my camera’s internal memory (I had to delete the ones I found there to make room – they were from my own 18^th birthday. Seriously, friends: these pictures had been languishing there, forgotten, since the day I got the camera.) Anyway, I did take a few pictures, but unfortunately, I did not bring my camera’s cable to China with me, since I usually just transfer photos directly off the SD card.

The banquet itself was fantastic. We arrived as a large group of coworkers, about an hour late. We tried for a long time to get a cab, but it was peak rush hour and that failed miserably, so we eventually squeezed onto the subway to the nearest stop and then hot-footed it to the restaurant. Mind you, most of us woman are wearing nice clothes and high heels, and it’s raining and cold. Bleah. Although we were late, we were not the latest arrivals and in fact we had quite a bit of time to settle in and pose for photos with the bride and groom before things got underway. The menu consisted of several very traditional dishes, and it was all delicious. Add shark fin soup to the list of things I’ve tried (although my internal ethicist debated hard about whether to try it. But the try-anything-once part of me won out). Verdict: it’s not good enough to overcome the ethical concerns. We also had whole roasted pig, fish (homonym for abundance), and lobster. First off, this lobster was way over the legal size limit in Maine. Second, have you ever tried to eat slippery sauce-covered lobster with chopsticks? While wearing nice clothes? Yeah. Not for the chopstick novice. I had to use my fingers. It was not pretty, but it was delicious.

The Wedding Banquet (Ang Lee, 1993) Actually the drinking in the film is crucial to the plot.

There was also quite a bit of drinking. The wedding party goes table to table and engages their guests in various toasts, and guest get up and find the bride and groom and engage them in various toasts. I managed to not drink much but good heavens, the best man (well, I assume he was the best man. He seemed to be good friends with the groom and seemed to be part of the wedding party) was as boisterous as a Bowdoin student on Friday night.

Last, but certainly not least in terms of how much I agonized over it, wedding gifts. In China, you give a red envelope full of money, much like you give to children at Chinese New Year, except with more money. But how much money? I googled it, but to no avail. Most of the information was for Chinese-American/Canadian weddings. I knew I needed to avoid anything with fours (sounds like ‘to die’) and that eights (sounds like ‘fortune’) and nines (sounds like ‘long-lasting’) are good luck. Also, much like at American weddings, closer friends and family are expected to give more than more distant friends/coworkers, but really, how much?

Well, I did get an answer, and I gave over my red envelope at the door, after writing my name on it. Then later, the bride and groom came around and thanked us and gave us unmarried folk back our envelopes with a little bit of cash inside. This was a new tradition for my Chinese-American coworker, and through questioning, we determined this was possibly a Cantonese tradition (but don’t quote me on that).

Overall, it was a lovely evening. There were certainly at least 200 guests, the bride wore three different beautiful dresses over the course of the evening, there was fun and merriment, and I wish the happy couple a long and wonderful life together.

The Wedding Banquet (Ang Lee, 1993) They have a long and wonderful life together. I'll leave you to determine who I mean when I say "they."

Before I go, in unrelated news, yesterday marked six months since I arrived in Guangzhou. Sometimes I wonder if I’m having the adventure I set out to have. Sometimes I just want to be home. Sometimes I still marvel that I live in a foreign country on the other side of the world. Sometimes I wonder if this experience has changed me. Well. In any case, six months down and six to go!