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‘Me? Sixteen I was married. No, fifteen,’ my grandmother told me one hot summer’s day when I was recovering from mumps. My cheeks were painted with a topical herbal remedy, and I was lying on my grandmother’s wooden bed, watching as she combed her long hair. It reached down to her waist.
‘But you were allowed to marry at thirteen,’ my grandmother continued. ‘The age when girls become fertile. Everyone starts looking for men then, as suitable husbands, for their daughters and girls. I must have been about fourteen when I first saw your mother’s father. He was older than me by twenty -one years. But it was an arranged marriage – all arranged. He had agreed to marry me. My foster father’s eldest son, Ah So, was sent along with two large baskets full of food as a dowry. It so happened that your grandfather was living only two hamlets away from me at the time. In fact, he even knew who I was, although I didn’t know him. My foster family were from the same village as his, and they knew one another through business.’
‘How come?’ I asked.
‘You know he was in the clock and watch business, right? I had been to Hong Kong before, and had helped his friend look after the shop. Buying and selling things, you know. Your mother’s father said to the others, “this girl is very good”. But they told him I was a wild one, full of life. “Just don’t know if you can ride her, that’s all. She’s very strong willed, and bad tempered,” that’s what they said of me. But your grandfather said to them, “that’s no matter. If she’s bad tempered, all I have to do is to teach her slowly.” They challenged him. “Go on then,” they said. “See if you can tame the wild horse.”’
I couldn’t imagine my grandmother being such a maverick, but looking back on her life now, she was a very determined woman, hard-working, strong, industrious and wise. And quite surprisingly, for someone who was traditional and old-fashioned at heart, she embraced not only her own culture and tradition but those of other cultures with a tolerant and compassionate interest. After all, my father was not Chinese, and she had been under a great deal of pressure from well-meaning family and friends not to go ahead with it when she gave her blessing for my parents’ marriage.
‘Was it a big celebration when you were married?’ I asked. Some quick mental arithmetic put the wedding at about 1912 or 1913.
My grandmother reminisced, with that dancing twinkle in her eye I often saw. ‘Weddings back in the village were such happy events, and many guests were invited. Marrying a tin fong (a bride who filled the place of a first wife after her death) was like marrying a first wife. So I had all the trimmings; there was a tai hung fa kui (a sedan chair), tai long san (large patterned umbrella) and hei cheung (cloth embroidered with symbols of happiness). I married your grandfather as a tin fong, and my foster brother bought two large baskets full of coconuts, betel nuts, sweet rice cakes and buns. It lasted three days, the wedding ceremony, with big banquets on each day for relatives and friends. It’s very different now, of course. We had at least twenty tables at the banquet. When your second and third uncles were married, back in the village, they had over forty tables. Their celebrations each lasted for three days too.’
China was such a foreign country to me. Her borders were closed, and at the time there was little chance of my ever visiting the village my grandmother spoke so often about. It was the ancestral village of the Mok clan, in the southern province of Guangdong.
‘Why three days? I’ll tell you why. Each day had a special meaning. On the first day, the day of the wedding itself, the banquet is to welcome in the dowry; then the second day’s banquet is to celebrate the wedding and the third day’s is for ching chi (the ritual tea ceremony to one’s elders). On the day of the wedding, the bride has to offer tea to all the family elders in the Ancestral Hall. A middleman called out each of the groom’s relatives by name, sat them down in the centre of the Hall, in order of seniority, and I then offered them their tea. They each gave me a laisee (red lucky packet), with money, jewellery or gold. They all wore those long black, silk damask gowns with auspicious emblems woven into the fabric. And those funny hats, you know, the ones with the red knob on top.’
I smiled at the traditional image I recognised from the old black and white Chinese operas, iconic stage productions reprised for television. Although I couldn’t understand them, I was able to follow the gist of the story line mainly by the mood expressed in the music, and I often found my grandmother enjoying their screeching high-pitched singing and their stilted mime. The Cantonese opera star Yum Kim Fai was her favourite by far. Renowned for her ability to sing in the lower register, she was able to play both male and female roles, although she often performed the male lead opposite famous actresses of the day.
‘You know, it was customary for the guests to make fun of the bride during the banquet, as a way of testing her temperament,’ my grandmother went on. ‘Sometimes they would tease the bride, other times they might goad her to drink a sip of alcohol, or sing a song or recite some poetry. Guests asked me to make up a poem.’ She chuckled. ‘But I just made up a funny joke and sipped a little bit of wine. Then of course, on the third day, I went back home and we had a roast pig,’ she boasted.
‘What! You roasted a whole pig?’
‘Of course. Your grandfather’s family sent a whole roast pig back to my home. If there was no pig, it would have brought dishonour to the family name.’
I didn’t understand any of this, so my grandmother explained. ‘If there was no pig, it means the bride had lost her virginity before the wedding night. Chastity was the most important thing, not like nowadays. You know, a man could have his new bride thrown out if he discovered she was not a virgin.’
‘What, you mean even after they are married?’
‘Yes. The marriage ceremony goes on for three days, right? Well, after the first day, the man takes his new bride by his bedside. If he discovers then that she has already given herself to another man, he can have her thrown out and the wedding is called off. It would have been the ultimate disgrace. That is why girls were not allowed out unchaperoned after they were thirteen. You know, in case they became acquainted with men. We all had our own little back streets in which we maidens could wander freely.’
My grandmother looked at herself in the mirror as she put the finishing touches to her hair. ‘But some men, they really went too far. After taking their bride, they wiped her down below with a handkerchief, and then took it out for their elders to inspect. Just to prove whether or not she was a virgin. They had no sense of decency. No shame.’
‘Where exactly were you married?’ I asked. ‘Guangzhou. Well – the village. Very close really. Once I got into the bridal sedan chair, I was there! Crying all the way, of course. The go-between said to me, ‘you can throw down your handkerchief now, we’re here.’ Hmm, how come so quick, my heart was thinking within. You know, back in those days, the bride was locked in a small cockloft for a month before the wedding, and not allowed to come out. Her maiden friends had to bring in food and comb her hair and keep her company. We all cried together, singing bridal laments.’
My grandmother gave me a short rendition, her waxing modulating tones gracefully rippled the surface of the still air. I couldn’t understand the words, but judging from her coy expression it must have been a little mischievous. I enjoyed its lyrical melody, and the way in which my grandmother swayed her head and relived a very different world.
‘OK, that’s all. You don’t really want to hear any more. It goes on and on, there are so many things to sing about, you know. All about the family, and what we are doing, and how we are feeling, and what we wish for.’ There was that smile again. ‘Then afterwards, they went out to gather chee tau mong (plants which stick to clothes and hair) to throw at the wedding procession.’
‘Oh, a little like the Western custom of throwing rice and confetti and things like that?’ I offered, trying to compare and contrast what I knew about English traditions and customs.
‘They do that in Western weddings too?’ my grandmother was rather surprised. ‘I didn’t know they threw rice. In Chinese weddings, when they scatter rice we had to open an umbrella to shelter ourselves. It was to prevent bad luck falling upon the new bride. But you know, years ago, we never had to do that. Do you know the story of how it came about that we use rice in the village? I will tell you why.
‘Many years ago it was said that two Immortals, Chow Kung and Tao Fa Kuo, had been battling for some time to determine who was the more powerful of the two. You see, they both had the power to help people by predicting their futures. But although they both had this power, Chow Kung was also a judge.
‘One day, an old woman went to him to ask about her son’s future. She was horrified to learn that her son would die at a certain time, on a certain date. Naturally, the woman was very distressed, and she cried and cried, and begged him to save her son. But Chow Kung told her there was no way he could help her. So the woman’s friends and relatives implored her to plead with Tao Fa Kuo instead. She went to see her, and recounted her story. Tao Fa Kuo told her to go home, and at the time and date predicted for her son’s demise, she was to hold up his clothing and shout his name very loudly. The time arrived, and the woman did everything she was told. Her son heard his mother calling him, woke up from his sleep and rushed outside to her – just as his house collapsed.
Now the old woman was overjoyed that she had been able to save her son, but she soon became very angry with Chow Kung for refusing to help her. She went to him and announced, in no uncertain terms, how his long-time rival, Tao Fa Kuo had come to her rescue. This annoyed Chow Kung, so he thought up a plan to get the better of her. Using his position as a judge, he ordered Tao Fa Kuo to marry his son. His scheme was this. He planned to use his gold cockerel to peck the new bride to death as she rode in her sedan chair on her way to the wedding. Should that fail, he planned to kill her on the wedding night, when the newlyweds dine together in their bridal room on a special dish that was meant to symbolise good luck and long life. They would take this meal together at midnight, and his plan was to hide a white tiger in their bed, so that the bride would be eaten when she got in.’
‘Wouldn’t the tiger eat his own son too?’ I asked, a little puzzled.
My grandmother had anticipated the query and had the answer waiting. ‘It’s customary for the bride to sit on the bed and wait for her meal to be uncovered, and then be invited to take it by her new husband. But luckily Tao Fa Kuo saw through his evil plan. She realised when she was ordered to marry his son that Chow Kung was out for revenge. Cleverly, she arranged for her relatives and friends to prepare bags of rice, and told them to throw the rice over her sedan chair as she was getting in. That way, the gold cockerel would be too busy pecking at the grains of rice to pay any attention to her. Then she asked the cook to prepare another pork dish, and just before their midnight meal on her wedding night, she threw the dish onto the bed to attract the white tiger. She pushed the groom in as well, and he soon got eaten. That is how it came to be that people in the village throw rice on the sedan chair, and why Leun Cheong Fan (the special dish of pork and rice) is customary on the wedding night in order to protect the bride.’
I remember being more than a little confused by the story, for I had a bad recall of traditional Chinese names. To make matters worse, it was difficult to tell male characters from female characters, as there are no gender pronouns in Cantonese, like ‘he’ or ‘she’. Maybe I was thinking in English and I should have been thinking in Cantonese. But it was always fun to listen to my grandmother talking. She had a lyrical quality about her voice, and intensity in her speech and manner which was hard to resist.
I watched her as she put away her brushes and combs. Her dressing table had served her well over the past sixty years. She had the top drawer, and my sister and I had one each of the lower drawers for almost all the clothes we owned. It is a little strange to know that this dressing table, which featured so prominently in our little flat, is now a permanent exhibit in the Museum of Hong Kong. I wonder if one can still smell the grain of wood, so richly perfumed by a collection of medicinal oils my grandmother kept in her little side drawer next to the mirror; oils of lavender, eucalyptus, cinnamon, lemon grass, peppermint and white flower. Sometimes when I walk into a Chinese medicinal store, I get a subtle reminder, and it takes me back to a time and a place that seems so far away.