Chinese love story
I thought about writing it as a Valentine’s Day post but I end up going to the gym and enjoy the park.
We grew up with lots of love stories in Chinese culture, a lot of them are history turned to proverbs.
相敬如宾（respect each other like your guest) is a 100BC story, where a man was not offered a job in the government because his father try to assassinate the king. He became a farmer, his wife sent him lunch every day, the couple, never failed one day to show each other appreciation and courtesy even he is only a poor farmer and they were in the field. one day the king and his servants pass by, he saw the couple having lunch, he was very impressed by the man and his wife and decided they are people with integrity so he reinstated the man’s position.
That’s how my parents taught me about love. To be polite to each other, and more importantly, 志同道合 (share a common cause and be on the same road).
张敞画眉 (Zhang Chang paint eyebrows) is a 50 BC mayor of the capital who got famous because of his wife. His wife lost the one end of her eyebrow from injury, she was insecure and sad about it, so for the next couple of decades, Zhang Chang painted her eyebrow. At first the gossip went out, his colleagues mocked him, the emperor, in private enquired him, which he replied: ‘couples do more than this in the bedroom, what’s wrong with me painting my wife’s eyebrow?’
断袖之癖(the likings of cut sleeve) is not exactly a positive proverb, but it’s a documented history of homosexual love. Another emperor at around 20 BC had a lover which was a man. They took a nap, he fell asleep on the emperor’s sleeve, so instead of wake up his lover, the emperor cut the sleeve in order to get up.
糟糠之妻不下堂(not divorce the wife who went through bad days) came from a story where an emperor wanted to find his sister a husband, so he asked the person she fancied, what he thought about when people are in better circumstances they change friends, when people are rich they change wives, where the person replied, I heard friends you made when you were poor shouldn’t be forgotten, wife you married when you were nobody shouldn’t be divorced. In a way rejected the proposal.
Old wedding traditions are interesting too. Birds are seen as a symbol of love. During the courting/proposal phase, the men need take a pair of swan goose to the women’s home to ask for permission of marriage. Swan goose is the symbol of loyalty because they are monogamous and don’t find other partners after their partner die. During the wedding two people bow three times, first to the earth and sky(the universe), second to the parents, and third time bow to each other. Two people also both take out a strand of their hair and tie it together, to show their fate is therefore bounded.