浅析中西方传统婚礼文化的差异

浅析中西方传统婚礼文化的差异 Analysis on the Differences in Traditional Wedding Culture between China and Western Countries Applicant: Supervisor: Faculty: May 10, 2011 i Contents 摘 要 ................................................................................................................................................iii Abstract ............................................................................................................................................ iv 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1 2. The origin of the Chinese and western wedding ........................................................................... 2 3. The differences between Chinese and western traditional wedding ceremony ............................. 3 3.1 The difference in wedding contractor.................................................................................. 3 3.2 The difference in wedding location ..................................................................................... 4 3.3 The difference in wedding dress ......................................................................................... 4 3.4 The difference in wedding process ...................................................................................... 5 4. To analyze the reasons which cause the differences between Chinese and Western wedding culture............................................................................................................................................ 7 4.1 Social system ....................................................................................................................... 8 4.2 Chinese and western values toward marriage ..................................................................... 8 4.3Religion ................................................................................................................................ 9 4.4 Behavior criterion.............................................................................................................. 10 5. The measures of reducing conflict in wedding culture between China and western countries, promoting culture exchange and integration ............................................................................... 10 5.1 Studying western countries’ etiquette ................................................................................ 10 5.2 Changing students’ way of thinking by changing teachers’ way of thinking .................... 10 5.3Guiding students to contact with western culture materials diffusely ................................ 11 5.4 Blending of wedding culture ............................................................................................. 11 6. Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 13 Bibliography.................................................................................................................................... 15 ii 摘 要 婚姻是一种人们为了维持正常的社会生活、社会风俗和法律规范化了的社会关系、社会行为。婚礼是一种法律公证仪式或宗教仪式，用来庆祝一段婚姻的开始，代表结婚。人们通过婚礼，把丈夫和妻子的关系公开并希望藉此能够得到大家的祝福。婚俗是文化风俗的重要组成部分。对于中西方婚礼文化来讲，两者有着自己不同的特点。由于全球融合趋势的影响，许多分歧阻碍了人们的交流，因此，我们必须了解不同的文化，促进交流与融合。婚姻是社会生活的重要组成部分，因此我们可以以婚礼文化为突破口，探讨中国与西方国家传统婚礼文化的差异，基于对两种不同文明之间存在不同文化的比较，找出产生这种差异的原因与历史背景，如社会系统，价值取向，宗教信仰，行为规范等等，从而我们可以采取措施减少这种差异给我们带来的负面影响，如学习西方的礼仪，改进教学，引导学生更广泛的接触西方文化，加大中国和西方国家文化融合等等。本旨在通过研究中西方不同的婚礼习俗来中西方传统婚礼文化的差异，并对造成这种差异的原因进行初步的探讨，从而了解中外传统文化和历史背景，加强人们对中西方历史的学习，提高英语水平和开阔视野，促进中西方文化的交流与融合。 关键词:婚俗 文化差异 文化交流 iii Abstract Marriage is a kind of social behavior that people do it in order to maintain the normal social life, social custom and social relation. A wedding is a kind of legal notarial ritual or a religious ritual, and it’s to celebrate the start of a marriage. People who hold the wedding tell everyone their husband and wife's public relations and hope to take this opportunity to get everybody's blessing. Marriage is an important part of culture. For Chinese and western wedding culture speaking, the two both have their own different features. This paper is to explore the differences in traditional wedding culture between Chinese and western countries. Based on the cultural differences between the two kinds of different civilizations, we can find out the reasons and different historical background, such as social system, value orientation, religious beliefs, behavior standards, etc. Due to the influence of the tendency of globalization, many differences hamper people's communication, therefore, we must understand the different culture, promote the exchange and integration. Marriage is an important part of social life, so that we can make the wedding culture as a breakthrough point to analyze the factors hampering the globalization, thus we can take steps to reduce the negative impact that these differences have made, such as learning western etiquette, improving teaching plan, guiding the students to contact with western culture more diffusely, and increasing the blending of wedding culture, etc. This paper aims to study Chinese and western different wedding custom to analyze the cultural differences between Chinese and western traditional wedding ceremony, and the reasons why the differences have be caused carries on the preliminary discussion, and to learn Chinese and western traditional culture and history background, strengthen the study of Chinese and western history, improve our English level and broaden our horizons, promote the Chinese and western cultural exchange. Key words :Marriage custom Culture differences Culture exchange iv 1. Introduction For any country, wedding culture is one of the important reflections of social culture. Wedding is one of the great important events in people’s life because of its special significance. It means people’s another new life begins. As China has becoming more and more advanced these years, the connection between China and Western world become closer and closer. In order to get a better understanding of each other, there are a lot of people take exploration and analysis. All of them have made the important significance and influence, and have made a lot of achievements. China is a traditional country, and its traditional wedding is always bedecked with red, and it looks jubilant. While the Western people’s thought is more open, the traditional wedding is always bedecked with white which represents purity and romance, etc. This thesis aims to study Chinese and western different wedding custom to understand its related culture and history, promote the Chinese and western cultural exchange. Here the author first analyzes the origin of Chinese and western wedding culture. Second, the author has a detail discussion on its differences: The difference in wedding contractor, wedding location, wedding dress, and wedding processes. Then, the author analyzes the reasons which cause the differences between Chinese and Western wedding culture, and talks about the measures of promoting cultural exchange and integration. 1 2. The origin of the Chinese and western wedding In China, the wedding is a big process in a person’s life. “婚”(Hun, means wedding), there is another word pronounce the same with婚:昏(Hun, means dusk). According to the comments of Zhen Xuan(A great master who was accomplished in Confucianism ), the bridegroom must marry the bride before dusk . So people always choose the wedding time at dusk, because it is the time that “Yin” comes and “Yang” goes. Then people add "女"(nv, means female) beside the “昏” , and it comes “婚” . In ancient times, marriage was not only fulfilling the male and female’s desire but also have one mission: to have a son to carry on the family name. Therefore, marriage is not only the individual behavior, but also a great family event, so people always pay more attention to it. Even in modern China, parents often worry about their children’s marriage when the latters are in the proper age. This kind of situation is incomprehensible in the western countries. China consists of many nationalities since the ancient times and all nationalities have different marriage custom and etiquette. Since China stepped into the civilized society – Shang dynasty, the wedding began to have a set of etiquette, and then was recognized as the wedding rules later. This is a classic rule: Confucian six etiquettes. It refers to offering initial presents for bride’s family, requesting for bride’s birth date, divining bride and groom’s birth dates, giving the formal gifts for the bride’s family, selecting the wedding date, wiving the bride. In the west, Greek civilization is the base of western wedding culture, the wedding history is recorded in the Koran. It says: men and women are the reflection of the spouse. At the ancient time, the slaves have no right to marry others and women have no right to choose her husband, everything was decided by their father, this was very unequal. Until 19 century, the traditional wedding’s patterns were formed. A lot of wedding custom have distinctive symbol and connotation. The bible says, in ancient times, men must use a ring to propose to women, and this custom origin from 9 century the Pope Nicholas I enacted the law that men present a ring to women is an absolutely necessarily process .People always get married in June as June was named 2 in Juno who is a goddess of love. It says Juno will take care of the new couples who get married in June. 3. The differences between Chinese and western traditional wedding ceremony Each country has its own wedding custom, the wedding ceremony is an important part of each country’s culture. With the development of the society and the effects of globalization, the forms of wedding are unceasing changing. Our wedding culture also constantly influenced by western wedding culture. Nowadays most young people in China often choose western-style wedding. How many differences sexist between Chinese traditional wedding culture and western traditional wedding culture? In this article, we discuss the wedding contractor, wedding location, wedding dress and wedding process to find out their differences. 3.1 The difference in wedding contractor In China, from time immemorial, there is a view that a man should get married at a proper age, and so should a girl. Only the boy can continue family’s line. After marriage, women should obey all the rules that the husband told her. So, in China, the traditional wedding undertaking side is generally the groom's parents. The groom’s parents think other people's daughter marry their son, then she became one part of the family, so they will give the bride’s family some gifts and the bride's parents prepare some dowry to their daughter. At the wedding date, the groom’s parents invite some relatives and friends at their home or in a hotel to have a dinner. But in western countries, wedding contractor is not the groom’s parents, while the bride’s parents will arrange the wedding ceremony. Because they think after their daughter gets married, they would never take care of their daughter like before; they need the son-in-law take care of their daughter well, therefore the bride’s parents hold a wedding ceremony, and send their best wishes to the new couple. 3 3.2 The difference in wedding location For our Chinese people, the wedding should be grand and lively. The holder invites many friends and relatives, so the wedding location commonly is chosen in the place where the traffic is convenient and the space is capacious. While the Western wedding gives prominence to sobriety and sanctity. The wedding location is generally in a church or some place comparative quiet. The wedding is always in perfect order. But compare with Chinese wedding, it seems not so cheerful. 3.3 The difference in wedding dress In China, red is a symbol of jollification and happiness, therefore in the traditional Chinese wedding ceremony, the bridegroom and the bride will wear red dress. The dragon and phoenix’s pattern in China are always necessary in the wedding dress and they occupy an important position in wedding dress. According to ancient Chinese legend, dragons symbolize the male and phoenixes symbolize the female, both imply auspicious. As the dragon is the symbol of the emperor, therefore, In China, the groom usually dresses in red robe, wears a black hat, and puts a big red cloth flower before the chest. While the bride's dress could have big phoenix designs, and wear chaplet and red robe. This dress root in the Qing dynasty GaoMing lady (the most important Monsignor’s wife)’s dress, which is the symbol of power and position. Because it is full of jewelry, and extremely symbolize natural, graceful. It soon became the object that people admired and gradually evolved into rich family’s wedding dress. And when the daughters of ordinary family married, they usually dressed in red skirt, a red head covering and red embroidered shoes, use a red sedan carried her into the husband's family. Western wedding presents more romantic. The bride's dress is generally white, the bridegroom is a trim black dress, white and black make the whole wedding appears solemn. In western traditional wedding ceremony, the groom’s dress has no special provisions. If the bridegroom is a soldier, military officers or noble, they wear their uniforms, if the bridegroom is just the ordinary man, he can just wear a new suit .The bride’s dress is root in the Catholics ceremony 4 clothing. The dress can use four words to generalize: "New, Borrowed, Blue, Old". "New" refers to the bride's white wedding dress must be new, it is the symbol of purity, and the mark that the bride will start a new life. "Old" refers to the bride’s white head gauze must be the old gauze that her mother used, says the bride will not forget parents’ nurturance." Borrow" refers to the bride’s handkerchief, it must be borrowed from her female friends, and means the bride won’t forget the friendship. "Blue" refers to the bride’s ribbons must be blue, means the bride will be loyalty to love. Because of different history and tradition, the traditional wedding dress is always various in colors and styles, China’s wedding dress presents happier, while the western’s looks more romantic, solemn. 3.4 The difference in wedding process The wedding process is the most important part of the wedding, the wedding process also have different styles. China has 56 nationalities and there are some differences in the wedding process of different nationality. In this paper, we mainly talk about the Han nationality’s wedding process: 1. The groom should offer sacrifices to ancestors before he goes with an escorting team to marry the bride. On the way to the bride’s house, the groom will give roadside pedestrians candy. 2. On the way to the bride’s house, the escorting team must set off firecrackers to show celebration. 3. When the groom and the escorting team arrive at the bride’s house, the groom should give red packets to the bride’s family and friends who are waiting for him beside the door, then he can go into the bride’ s house. 4. The new couple also need offer sacrifices to ancestors before the bride leave home to her new family, and the bride will sent off with bamboo sieve or black umbrella by an elder female who has a good life, because on the wedding day, the bride’s status is the most important. 5 5. After the bride leaves, the bride’s family should put a bowl of water, some rice after the groom’s escorting team, which presents their daughter has already left the family, and she has her own new life. They wish her live a better life. 6. On the way to the groom’s home, it also needs to set off firecrackers on the road to celebrate. 7. When the team arrive at the groom’s house, there is a child who is holding two oranges and waiting for the new couple, the bride should touch the oranges once, and give a red packet to the child. These two oranges should be kept till night, and then the bride will peel the orange, and give it to the groom, which means longevity. Before the bride goes into the hall, she should be received by the elder female who is full of fortune. At the door, the new couple can’t step on the threshold, and the bride should across the fire-pan directly, and it denotes that the fire would put her unlucky and ominous things away. 8. Then comes the most important thing: salute to the heaven and earth, salute to the groom’s parents and the new couple salute to each other. After this, they formally become husband and wife. 9. The wedding dinner is always held at noon. At the dinner time, the new couple will toast to every guest. After dinner, the host would prepare some entertainment activities，to make the guests have a happy time. Such as play a short comedy or play mah-jong. 10. The relatives and friends play tricks on the new couple before the latters go to bed. To the new couple, it is a nervous but happy time and the “size” of the trick depending on the new couple’s humanness and if they ever played some tricks on other people’s wedding ceremony. In the west, they just invite the most important friends and relatives to witness wedding rite .However, the banquet appears more informal and lively than the rite, and the invited guests seems more widely. There in after is western traditional wedding process: 6 1. In the church, when the ceremony begins, everything is ready,. First, the father stands in his place, and then the bridesmaid and groomsman enter with the wedding march. 2. With the wedding march, the bride links her father’s arm to enter, and then the bride’s father put her hands to the groom. When the music stops, the bride and groom sworn and exchange rings, then a witness makes a speech. 3 With the completion of ceremony, music ringing, the new couple leaves among the petals which are threw by the guests. Then the guests took photos with the new couple. 4. The guests enter the restaurant and take the seat according to the number on the invitation card; the band starts to play music and the restaurant has prepared drinks and appetizers for guests. 5. The bride and groom enter into the restaurant. The first dish comes, the waiters give the guests champagne, important guests make a speech and send their congratulations. 6. After the appetizer, the bride and groom start to dance. Then the groomsman and bridesmaid and other guests begin to dance. 7. Everyone goes back to seat again and waits for the staple food. After that, the prom continues. 8. After the bride throws the bouquet to the single girls who attend the wedding, the new couple says thanks to the guests for their presence. Coffee and various kinds of postprandial drinks are prepared for guests. 9. The bride and groom cut the wedding cake together, serve them to the guests when they are having a rest after dancing. At this time, the guests can exeunt. 4. To analyze the reasons which cause the differences between Chinese and Western wedding culture 7 4.1 Social system Chinese emperors treated themselves as the son of heaven. Beside the heaven, they are the greatest person in the world, and all the people belong to him. While in the west, the emperors and their people are in accordance with God’s will and they control the country equally. Ancient Chinese political system is centralized system that the power of autocratic centralization is the core. Autocratic centralized system continuities 2000 years in China, and it had a profound impact on Chinese unification, the development of multi-ethnic, political system, bureaucratic administration, as well as culture and education. The source of western political civilization lies in ancient Greece and Roman. Whether the legal system, or the philosophy of people’s wisdom political, all of them had given posterity the wealth of ideas that has provided valuable. 4.2 Chinese and western values toward marriage Each culture has its own unique world outlook and unique philosophy, thus they formed their unique values. Values are the axis part of the social culture. Cultural differences can be embodied in the different values. Chinese traditional culture foundation is very firm. The people’s behavior was mostly influenced by Confucian thought. Chinese collectivism culture is a presentation of Confucian culture, it advocates humility and wariness, advocates the golden mean, and advocates abstaining from making a showy display of one’s ability. On this basis, the Chinese cultural values formed: emphasizing integral benefits and rights, ignoring individual rights, individual consciousness must obey the integral consciousness; people's personalities should be oblivion in integral behavior. Chinese traditional wedding's main purpose is to breed the next generation, strengthen the family, maintain and improve family reputation and position. In order to not lose family’s reputation, the 8 man in the choice of a marriage partner is very cautious. Marriage is no longer a person’s thing, but the whole family, and love is not the foundation of the marriage. In ancient China, there is much conventional custom about marriage, such as “parents' orders, matchmakers' help”, “legally marry”, “equality”, and so on. That is to say, men and women should be first introduced by matchmakers, after parents’ agreement can they make engagement and get marriage. At the wedding date, each side’s parents are the greatest, take good care of the guests is the most important of all. After all day, the bride and groom would be very tired. By contrast with the Chinese culture, the western people’s value is the typical individualism: emphasizing the individualism, the rights of the individual and personal freedom. An important concept is that all must rely on themselves. Marriage is not the grave of love, but a beautiful love ending. Most westerners have a same experience: cohabit before getting married, this is in order to know whether they really understand each other and if he/she is suitable for the lifelong companion. Parents have no right to decide their marriage. Couples marry for love, not for family’s reputation and position. On the wedding day, everything is in order, grand and romantic. 4.3Religion In China, most people believe in Buddhism. Bowing to Heaven and Earth is the most important part of Chinese traditional wedding, since the Buddhism is advocated “causality”. Sky is the reason, earth is the result; parents are the reason, sons and daughters are the result; husband is the reason, wife is the result. While Christianity is most influential in the west, every phase of human’s life is touched by this religion. The Bishop set up marriage law as the fourth chapter in1234.After issuing the law, it was carried on under the church control. In 1917, the marriage law referred: wedding ceremony should be held by priest or at least two witness; the willing should be true and not be forced. 9 4.4 Behavior criterion Behavior criterion is a tool to adjust interpersonal relationship, realize social control and maintain social order and it comes from the experience among the interaction. When communicating, people of different cultural backgrounds often use their own code of conduct to judge the reasonableness of each other’s behavior. Due to difference in both sides, there will be mutual misunderstanding and unpleasant things or even worse. For instance, in China, tapping a child’s head means friendly, whilst in the west, this is a great lack of respect manner for children. And people in the west care about the personal space very much. So, when we in a cross-cultural communication, we must understand each other’s code of conduct, in particular, which conduct is suitable,. If you don’t want to be misunderstood, the best way is to do as the Romans do. 5. The measures of reducing conflict in wedding culture between China and western countries, promoting culture exchange and integration 5.1 Studying western countries’ etiquette Today, the Chinese are learning from the west a lot. A society that lacks of social etiquette is often an immature society. If a country lacking uniform standards of decorum, the country is often discordant. To create a harmonious society, we must start to learn the etiquette from the west. Only a clear understanding of cultural differences and western rites will be both reasonable and effective, then we can establish suitable etiquette and cultural systems for contemporary Chinese society, and then we can approach the ideal harmonies society. 5.2 Changing students’ way of thinking by changing teachers’ way of 10 thinking In Chinese current education system, foreign language teaching has only been carried out in the classroom, teachers playing a leading role. Students’ way of thinking is correlated with culture exchange and integration. If the teacher only focuses on grammar and vocabulary teaching, the students can’t learn the foreign language well and lack cross-cultural communication ability. Therefore, teachers must be taught to change their concepts, to realize the importance of cross-cultural communicative competence. At the same time, teachers should enhance learning, improve their diathesis, thus they can fully grasp the English language and cultural knowledge well and grasp ranges of specific teaching steps and methods to achieve the expected instruction purposes. 5.3Guiding students to contact with western culture materials diffusely In the college, English lessons are very limited, but the students themselves have plenty of time. Hence we can't just rely on the teacher’s teaching to foster intercultural communicative competence in the classroom. Meanwhile teachers should instruct students to use spare time to read extensive western literary works, newspapers, magazines and news commentary, and so on, to know more about cultural knowledge, increasing cultural literacy, broaden the vision of western culture, and improve intercultural communicative ability. In addition, the schools which have foreign teachers should make full use of them in teaching western culture. They are living culture materials so that the students can communicate directly with foreign teachers, listen to foreign teachers’ report, and lectures. 5.4 Blending of wedding culture The trend of globalization in the modern world is becoming popular, the relationship between China and the west is becoming more closely. As the policy of reform and opening up and the pace of economic construction strengthened day by 11 day, the western society is more and more coming into our field. In this case, the multinational communication increase gives us plenty of chances to communicate with foreigners. Nowadays more and more companies were set up to help people to design the wedding ceremony, they have a great number of methods to make the ceremony livelier, they choose the advantages of the two cultures and avoid the disadvantages, make the wedding ceremony cheerful, romantic and unforgettable. Today more and more young people like to choose western culture wedding or the wedding mix with Chinese and western culture, and the tendency will be more popular in the future. 12 6. Conclusion Today the world is tending toward globalization, and the relation between China and western countries is becoming more interlinked. As Chinese policy of reform and opening up and economic construction, we have more opportunity to communicate with the western world. We contact with foreigners and exchange culture through cross-border communication. As wedding culture is an important part of the social culture, we can make the wedding culture as a breakthrough point, analyze the differences and promote culture exchange and integration. Both Chinese and the western wedding culture have gone through for a long time, it attracts a great deal of attention since it’s meaningful to a person. There are many differences in the wedding ceremony. In China, the groom’s parents always hold the wedding ceremony, while in the western countries, the bride’s side would hold the wedding ceremony. In China, the wedding location is in the groom’s home or in a hotel where the traffic is convenient, however the west always choose a church or a place where is comparative quiet. In China, the wedding dress is always red while the western people prefer to white. In China, the whole ceremony looks lively, while in the west, it looks more solemn and romantic. Speaking of these differences between the two sides, there are many reasons which causing these differences such as the different social system, different values, different religion and different behavior criterion .But along with the tendency of globalization, these differences will become the prevention factors which would prevent people’s communication and culture mixture. To explore the culture differences is good for the elimination of existing barriers in cross-cultural communication, so we should adopt measures to reduce these obstacles, such as study western countries’ etiquette, changing students’ way of thinking, guiding students to contact with western culture materials diffusely and blending of wedding culture and so on. So understanding the culture differences between china and the west will help us foster cross-cultural communicative competence and then we can use it better to 13 serve the spread of English, to widen communication and to improve teaching services. In conclusion, the wedding culture is a big field for English learner to explore and study. These traditional wedding differences maybe still exist for a long time, the way of exploration will be hard and we need work and study studious. 14 Bibliography [1] Zhang Lin. Culture Differences in Marriage between America and China [J]. 云南社会科学院, 2007, (29):72-75. [2] Michael W. Morris, Kaiping Peng. Culture and Cause: American and Chinese Attributions for Social and Physical Events [J]. Journal of Personality and Psychology，1994,(67):947-949. Communication between [3] Samovar, L. Richard E. & Porter Lis .A Stephanie. Cultures [M]. Foreign Language Teaching and Research, 2000. [4] Karl Jaspers. The Origin and Goal of History. [M].Artie Gomez Press, 1999. [5] 吴国华，蒲军.中西方婚礼服饰文化研究[J].美与时代.2006,(12):59-61. [6] 陈永宁.浅谈中西方婚礼差异[J].魅力中国，2010,(14):283. [7] 王叶.缤纷多彩的中西方婚礼文化[J].海内与海外，2006,(10):57-61. [8] 韩芳.中西传统婚俗之比较[J]. 中国对外教育杂志，2008,(08):1204-1216. [9] 张秋雅，王玉峰.中西方婚礼习俗的差异[J].世界华商经济年鉴?科学教育 家,2008 [10] 潘晓梅，严育新.婚俗简史[M].中国社会科学出版社，2004. [11] 叶涛.中国民俗[M].中国社会出版社，2006. 15