What are the marriage customs of the Maonan people?

Maonan marriage customs refer to the marriage customs of the Maonan ethnic minority. The Maonan people are prevalent in early marriage, and even before birth, the parents of both parties are determined, generally at the age of six or seven by the parents of both parents, if they do not restrain each other, they will go to the man and woman through a matchmaker to determine the number of weddings and dowries. At the time of engagement, the man should host a banquet and give some of the gifts to the woman's home.

Others include: giving cotton strips to the bride, matchmaking matchmaking, marriage procedures and etiquette. After getting engaged, the man and woman can get married on a date when they reach the age of about 20.

When you get married, you should ask a mage to do "spiritualism" and other rituals, and you should also invite people with both children to kill pigs. When killing pigs, look at the situation of pig blood flowing out and predict the auspiciousness of future generations, if the blood is bright red and bursts away, the descendants will be prosperous. After marriage, the bride does not leave her husband's house, and on the day of the wedding, she goes back to the man's house once, and is accompanied by one or two young women, and the man should give the bride half a cotton strip, which means that the children and grandchildren are continuous, and then only return to the husband's house when the farm is busy, until she becomes pregnant and gives birth, and then settles in the man's house.

The characteristics of Maonan marriage customs are: such as festivals or agricultural evenings, young men and women like to sing mountain songs; The uncle's power is more prominent - the aunt's family marries a daughter, and she wants to give gifts to her uncle; The etiquette of marriage is more complicated, with traditional colors, etc. Influenced by the marriage customs of the Zhuang and Han ethnic groups in the vicinity, the phenomenon of intermarriage with other ethnic groups has become relatively common.

The free and easy love life of Maonan youth, from love to marriage, has many unique national characteristics. There is a funny wedding Maonan people are free to fall in love, but their marriage is not autonomous. Marriages are often matchmakers.

The wedding of the Maonan people is both complicated and chic, and there are two forms of matchmaking with a unique taste: One is that the man's parents first take a fancy to the woman and ask the matchmaker to propose. The second is that the two parties don't know each other, and they all rely on the matchmaker to build a bridge, and then the fortune teller calculates and looks at the eight characters of both sides.

If the two sides clash with each other, they cannot become husband and wife, and they must return the eight characters to the woman and plan for another purpose. <>

Free love: The Maonan people have always had the custom of free love for songs. Before the couplet, people often see an interesting phenomenon, which the Maonan people call "hat grabbing". "Grab the hat" is the business of the younger brothers and girls.

When rushing to the polder, eating wine or folk gatherings, when the young man takes a fancy to which girl, he will do everything possible to find an opportunity to snatch the other party's flower and bamboo hat (and some snatch the other party's handkerchief). After the girl's flower and bamboo hat was snatched away, she glanced back at the young man, and if she felt that the talent was not satisfactory, she showed a dissatisfaction to the other party, and immediately snatched the hat back. If you can't get it back this time, you should also look for an opportunity to grab it back in the future, or ask someone to claim the original item back.

In this case, the young man knows that he can't make friends with the other party. On the contrary, if the woman thinks that the young man is liked, she silently promises to let the young man take away the flower and bamboo hat, and immediately or in the next few days, she will also ask the other party for a gift as a souvenir. There are also some courtship girls, when they rush to the polder or go to be a "maiden companion", they often deliberately expose the handkerchief in their purse, or clip it under a conspicuous intestine socket, so that it is convenient for the young man with a heart to snatch it away.

grabbed the hat", and the two were friends. However, "hat grabbing" is just a friendship between friends, just a prelude to love. <>

The marriage customs of the Maonan people are more complicated. The legacy of blood marriage, feudal arranged marriage and modern free marriage in primitive society were in a state of overlap and cross-popularity, which was mainly manifested in the following aspects. 

From intra-clan marriage to a large number of extra-clan marriages. After the middle of the Qing Dynasty, the feudal landlord economy of the Maonan people was still in the development stage, and the closed and self-locked mountain gate was slightly opened, and the primitive intra-clan marriage could not withstand the impact of the outside world. In particular, the influx of Han culture has fundamentally shaken the backward concept of marriage.

The same surname and the same "light" (zongzhi) are upgraded to not marry within the five suits, but a few people still have popular habits such as "aunt and cousin marriage" and "brother to brother". Residents of the surrounding villages have more and more contact and marriage with the neighboring Zhuang people, but intermarriage with Miao, Zhaoxiaoyao and Han is still rare. Since the 30s of the 20 th century, the number of people who have gone out to study and seek jobs has increased, and the number of men and women who have married men and women of fraternal nationalities such as Han and Zhuang has increased.

Especially after the founding of the People's Republic of China, most of the young and middle-aged people who studied and worked abroad got married on the spot, so the boundaries of intermarriage underwent historic changes. 

Marriage method. There are three ways and means for Maonan people to choose a mate: 1. Use song as a medium.

Whenever the song sits at night, the Spring Festival sings, the festival and the time of labor, the young people like to sing, and the singers indulge in expressing their love for each other and choosing their sweethearts. It is common for men to take the initiative to "snatch" the target's scarf and hat as a way to attract the other party to chase and approach him. If the woman is interested, she will make an appointment to go.

If the woman is not pleased, she will go to real time to recover the lost property, or ask her sister to get the scarf and hat back, indicating that she refuses to court. 2. Media matchmaking. The Maonan people live relatively scattered, and there are not many social and cultural activities, so they need to rely on a third party to thread the needle and make marriages.

This is especially true of exogamy. 3. Parents arrange for Min Sun. Especially under the rule of the feudal patriarchal system, the marriages of young people were mostly manipulated and arranged by their parents.

However, a convention is still retained: where the two parties did not know each other, the bridge chain is arranged by the parents and matchmakers of both parties before the marriage relationship is determined, allowing them to express their intentions, and the ceremony is commonly known as "Luodian". 