"The 'Six Rites' are not concerned with one essential feature of modern Chinese marriage: 'initiation'. . . . Each in his own house (usually the night before the day the bride is to be conveyed), the girl has her hair ritually put up, the boy is 'capped' or given a courtesy name. By that solemn act the married pair are rendered fit to enter into the conjugal tie of marriage, both having been made ready for the circumscribed emancipation that the transfer of the bride will bring."

Freedman 1970, 181


Return to Chinese Wedding Traditions