Traditional Chinese marriage () is a ceremonial ritual within Chinese societies that involves not only a union between spouses but also a union between the two families of a man and a woman, sometimes established by pre-arrangement between families. Marriage and family are inextricably linked, which involves the interests of both families. Within Chinese culture, romantic love and monogamy were the norm for most citizens. Around the end of primitive society, traditional Chinese marriage rituals were formed, with deer skin betrothal in the Fuxi era, the appearance of the "meeting hall" during the Xia and Shang dynasties, and then in the Zhou dynasty, a complete set of marriage etiquette ("six rituals") gradually formed. The richness of this series of rituals proves the importance the ancients attached to marriage. In addition to the unique nature of the "three letters and six rituals", monogamy, remarriage and divorce in traditional Chinese marriage culture are also distinctive.
Etymology
The two-Chinese character word (pinyin: hūnyīn, literally "marriage") can be analyzed as follows: (hūn) was defined as the father of a man's wife (e.g. a man's father-in-law) in Erya, the earliest known Chinese dictionary; but now it generally means "marriage" in Modern Standard Chinese. The character has the phonetic component (hūn, "dusk, nightfall, twilight, dark") beside the radical as well as the semantic component 女 (nǚ, "female"). The phonetic component itself was used as the ancient (original) form of in Old Chinese. This implies that wedding ceremonies were typically performed in the evenings when yang (representing days/male) and yin (representing nights/female) cross over. (yīn) was defined as the father of a daughter's husband in Erya, but now generally means "marriage" or "relation by marriage" in Modern Chinese. The character has the same pronunciation as its phonetic component (yīn). According to Shuowen Jiezi, a dictionary of ancient Chinese characters, in this character is not only a phonetic component but also means to "go to" or to "follow" one's husband.
Marriage in a Confucian context
In Confucian thought, marriage is of grave significance to both families and society, as well as being important for the cultivation of virtue. Traditionally incest has been defined as marriage between people with the same surname. "One of the earliest marriage prohibitions, and one surviving to this day, was that forbidding persons of the same surname to marry. An imperial decree of 484 A.D. states that this rule was promulgated far back in the Zhou dynasty, which was from 1122 to 255 B.C.' Any one marrying within his clan received sixty blows, and the marriage was declared null and void. It was feared that such mating would produce weak offspring.” From the perspective of a Confucian family, marriage brings together families of different surnames and continues the family line of the paternal clan. This is generally why giving birth to a boy is preferred over a girl. Therefore, the benefits and demerits of any marriage are important to the entire family, not just the individual couples. Socially, the married couple is thought to be the basic unit of society. In Chinese history, there have been many times when marriages have affected the country's political stability and international relations. For International Relations,“intermarriage has continued throughout Chinese history as a means of establishing and maintaining relations among families in the private sphere, as well as a factor in political careers. " For example, "Marriage alliances, or ho-ch'in 和亲, literally 'harmonious kinship,' was something new in its Han-era application. It was a part of a formal peace treaty arrangement at the interstate level, designed to pacify the powerful Hsiung-nu (匈奴) empire" During the Han dynasty, the rulers of the powerful Xiongnu tribe demanded women from the imperial family. Many periods of Chinese history were dominated by the families of the wife or mother of the ruling emperor. For the country's political stability, during the Qing dynasty, although no "evidence of prohibitions against ethnic intermarriage within the Eight Banners", "in elite families of the ruling class, primary wives were almost entirely Manchu, while qie (commonly translated as "concubines") and other partners of lower status could be Han". In the Qing dynasty, most of the high officials were mainly Manchu, so in order to protect the interests of the family, in the selection of a wife will be very important whether the woman was born in the "eight banners". For example, "the ethnicity apparent in the maiden names of wives in genealogies from elite Manchu descent groups, such as the Imperial Lineage."