白头偕老 bái tóu xié lǎo
Meaning: To live together until the white hairs of old age; Especially related to wishing a newly wed couple a long and happy marriage.
白 bái - white (Phonetic: by)
头 tóu - head (Phonetic: toe)
偕 xié - together (Phonetic: she'air)
老 lǎo - old, aged, experienced (Phonetic: lou'd - as in the first syllable of loud)
Marriage in China: Ancient & Modern
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破镜重圆 pò jìng chóng yuán
Meaning: A shattered mirror put back together; In relation to marriage, to pick up the pieces and start anew; For a separated couple, to reconcile and reunite
破 pò - to break, ruin, destroy; rout (Phonetic: pore)
镜 jìng - mirror; lens; glass; glasses (Phonetic: jing)
重 zhòng - heavy, weighty; double (Phonetic: jong)
圆 yuán - a circle; round, circular; complete (Phonetic: you'anne)
Marriage in China: Ancient & Modern
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天作之合 tiān zuò zhī hé
Meaning: A marriage made in heaven
天 tiān - day / sky / heaven (Phonetic: tea'anne)
作 zuò - to do (Phonetic: tz'ore)
之 zhī - (possessive particle, literary equivalent of 的, similar to the possessive apostrophe in English) (Phonetic: jer, as in 'jerk')
合 hé - to close / to join / together (Phonetic: her)
Marriage in China: Ancient & Modern
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伐柯 fá kē - Cuts the axe's handle
Meaning: fá kē was used as a synonym for "matchmaker". It is from the Book of Songs 诗经 (shī jīng), where it is written: "How will you mold an axe without an axe? How can you marry a wife without a matchmaker".
伐 fá - cut down, subjugate, attack (Phonetic: far)
柯 kē - axe-handle (Phonetic: cur, as in curse)
Marriage in China: Ancient & Modern
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叶公好龙 yè gōng hào lóng - Ye Gong loves dragons
Meaning: This idiom is used to describe someone who pretends to love and admire what he really fears.
叶公 yè gōng - Name (Phonetic: yeah gong)
好 hào - to be fond of (Phonetic: how)
龙 lóng - dragon (Phonetic: long)
In the Spring and Autumn Period, there lived in Chu a person named Chu Zhuliang, who addressed himself as “Lord Ye”.
It’s said that this Lord Ye was very fond of dragons. The walls had dragons painted on them. The beams and pillars and the doors and the windows were all carved with them.
As a result, his love for dragons was spread out. When the real dragon in heaven heard of this Lord Ye, he was deeply moved. He decided to visit Lord Ye to thank him.
You might think Lord Ye would have been very happy to see a real dragon. But, in fact, at the sight of the creature, he was scared out of his wits and ran away as fast as he could.
From then on, people knew that Lord Ye only loved pictures or cravings which look like dragons, not the real thing. Figuratively it has been a satire on inconsistency of deeds and words.
by Liu Xiang in the Han Dynasty
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人眼里出西施 rén yǎn lǐ chū xī shī - It is in the eyes of the beholder
人 rén - man / person / people /
眼 yǎn- eye
里 lǐ - inside / internal
出 chū - to go out / to happen
西施 Xī Shī - Xi Shi (c. 450 BC), famous Chinese beauty, foremost of the Four legendary beauties 四大美女, given by King Gou Jian of Yue 勾踐 as concubine to King of Wu as part of a successful plan to destroy Wu
;)
Xi Shi 西施 c. 506 BC was one of the renowned Four Beauties of ancient China. She was said to have lived during the end of Spring and Autumn Period in Zhuji, the capital of the ancient State of Yue. Xi Shi's beauty was said to be so extreme that while leaning over a balcony to look at the fish in the pond, the fish would be so dazzled that they forgot to swim and gradually sunk away from the surface, birds would forget to fly and fall from the sky.
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无谎不成媒 wú huǎng bù chéng méi - Without lies there is no matchmaking
无 wú - not to have / to lack (Phonetic: woo)
谎 huǎng - lies / to lie (Phonetic: h'wung)
不成 bùchéng - won't do / unable to (Phonetic: boo chung)
媒 méi - intermediary / matchmaker / go-between (Phonetic: may)
The Matchmaker, or Yue Lao (literally meaning the old man in the moon), is the god who unites people in marriage. It originated in a Chinese legend in Tang Dynasty. The figure later became a widely known image of the immortal.
As the legend goes, the matchmaker holds a book in his hands called "the book of fate" on which the marriages of all people are recorded. He is also holding a red ribbon. Once he ties the ribbon around the feet of a man and a woman the two will surely become a couple, even if they were once irreconcilable enemies or strangers far away from each other.
The is a folk custom in China is to make statues of the matchmaker and to build a temple and pray for blessings. There is such a temple by the West Lake of Hangzhou, in which people can burn joss sticks, draw straws and make wishes to the god for their marriage.
Marriage in China: Ancient & Modern
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先结婚后恋爱
xiān jié hūn hòu liàn ài
First get married and then fall in love
The Traditional Arranged Marriage
先恋爱后结婚
xiān liàn ài hòu jié hūn
First fall in love and then get married
The modern marriage
Marriage in China: Ancient & Modern
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天作之合 tiān zuò zhī hé - Marriage made in heaven
Modern China
Belated wedding photos capture a lifetime
A couple married for 78 years have their first wedding photos taken in Leping, East China's Jiangxi province on Oct 13, 2010. The couple, 103-year-old Huang Desheng (R) and 97-year-old Cheng Yinzhi, were selected to participate in Leping city's "free wedding photo shoots" ahead of the upcoming Chongyang Festival, or Double Ninth Festival, which advocates filial piety and respect for elders. The Chongyang Festival falls on the ninth day of the ninth month of the Chinese lunar calendar, or Saturday this year.
Marriage in China: Ancient & Modern
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天上无云不下雨、地下无媒不成婚
tiān shàng wú yún bù xià yǔ, dì xià wú méi bù chéng hūn
Without clouds in the sky there would be no rain/ Without matchmakers there would be no marriage
The Matchmaker, or Yue Lao (literally meaning the old man in the moon), is the god who unites people in marriage. It originated in a Chinese legend in Tang Dynasty. The figure later became a widely known image of the immortal.
As the legend goes, the matchmaker holds a book in his hands called "the book of fate" on which the marriages of all people are recorded. He is also holding a red ribbon. Once he ties the ribbon around the feet of a man and a woman the two will surely become a couple, even if they were once irreconcilable enemies or strangers far away from each other.
The is a folk custom in China is to make statues of the matchmaker and to build a temple and pray for blessings. There is such a temple by the West Lake of Hangzhou, in which people can burn joss sticks, draw straws and make wishes to the god for their marriage.
Marriage in China: Ancient & Modern
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