Friday morning, the 18th of December, 2015.
6AM: Groping around in the darkness of the room, the cell phone was hard to find. At this early hour, before the sunrise, I clumsily muted the alarm and pulled myself upright in the bed. Moments later, as if by some psychic connection, a text came in to my phone. My friend, the contact I was to meet, was making sure I hadn't decided to sleep in.
"Hi David, are you awake yet? Remember, the bus to the village leaves at 6:50."
"How could I have forgotten?" I grumbled to myself and rolled out of bed, as another message pinged in. The contact again:
"You'd better make sure to eat some breakfast before you go. We probably won't be able to eat for another 6 hours."
Releasing the kind of deep sigh that people who are not accustomed to being awake before the sun are wont to give in these circumstances, I heaved myself on to my feet, flipped on a lightswitch, laid out the sweater and dress shirt I'd set aside the night before, taking care not to wrinkle them. I was, afterall, headed to a wedding.
***
In any discussion of the core facets of a culture, weddings loom large. They're events where values and time-honored practices get put on full, public display. Often, the ceremonies are loaded with discourse on what it means to live a good and happy life together, and how to best uphold the values of the community. They're also instances in which the best food and music and oldest customs get put on display. As I've been doing my interviews here in Jinan, I've noticed a recurring pattern when I ask respondents about cultural events that are special to the community. Those over the age of 50 or so quickly start to mention funerals. Those on the younger side of that line talk about weddings.
When a friend of mine, a Han who was a lifelong resident of Jinan, mentioned that one of his childhood friends, a Hui woman from a majority-Hui, suburban village on the city's east end was getting married, and had offered to me an opportunity to observe the ceremonies, I jumped at the chance. These are the kinds of events where a mere two or three hours may provide more useful observations than a week's worth of interviews. It was an opportunity that was too good to pass up. And so, early on Friday morning, before the sun had even risen in the sky, I boarded a long-distance bus, and began the trek to the village.
***
8:30AM: The house where the wedding was to take place was easy enough to spot from the road. The giant, inflatable party arch, topped with a dragon and phoenix and the character 囍 (xi , commonly translated as "double happiness," and usually associated with weddings), made the driveway a dead give-away. We stepped out of the car, and walked past the arch. In the long dirt and gravel driveway, what seemed like an army of men were busy making last minute preparations. Four men, looking very serious, unrolled package after package of firecrackers, laying the bright red line of festive explosives out in two parallel lines not unlike tire tracks. They stretched nearly 50 meters in length, starting near the archway at the head of the drive and only ending near the entrance to the house. The end of this trail of celebratory munitions lay directly in front of two sections of chairs covered in red cloth, and separated by an aisle marked with a red carpet. In front of these chairs, other men busied themselves with putting the finishing touches on a small platform stage that looked like something from a reality TV show. On a red background, scripted gold letters read "Wedding," as if to eliminate any lingering doubts in the minds of would be passers-by as to what kind of event might be taking place here. Pop music blared from a large set of speaker as people darted around hurriedly trying to put things in order.
My friend informed me that the wedding party probably wouldn't arrive until 9AM, leaving about half an hour of standing around outside in the cold.
"You'll see them coming," he said. "There's going to be a long line of cars that comes in all at once. The front car will be decorated with lots of ribbons and flowers. That's the bridal car."
I nodded, mostly wishing that the ceremony could have been an indoor one. In the shadow of the houses on the little alley, the cold felt more severe than it had walking up in the early morning sunlight. I shuffled my feet, trying to shake off the chill, and watched as one man barked out orders to the others who continued to set up the scene. He was imposing. A tall man, he wore a leather jacket, and chain smoked (in very close-- one might even say dangerous-- proximity to the firecrackers, it should be noted) while gesturing and emphatically and directing people every which way: guests (now arriving in droves) toward the house, workers to their stations, photographers toward the road. Suddenly, over the crest of a hill, a line of black Audis following a flatbed truck full of men and women dressed head to toe in red appeared. "That's them!" my friend told me, before explaining that the procession would loop through the entire village before circling back around to the site of the ceremony. Sure enough, the cars turned off onto another small country lane twenty yards down from the inflatable arch, vanishing from sight again. Suddenly, there was commotion. The last car in the procession had attempted to park rather than follow the train. The man in charge of festivities shouted angrily at the them "Get the hell out of here! Get back in line and follow!" At this, the car pulled a three point turn, and quickly fell back in line. I was perplexed.
"What was that about?" I asked my friend.
"There have to be a lucky number of cars following the procession. There were 8, but when he tried to park, it left only 7. That man (pointing to the man seemingly in charge) is responsible for making sure everything goes well. There are so many small details, and a lot of pressure. He wants everything to be perfect, and so when little things go wrong, there's usually a lot of shouting."
"Well, at least some things are universal," I replied with a laugh.
***
In《济南伊斯兰教史》 (The History of Islam in Jinan), the definitive work on the Hui community in Jinan, weddings are mentioned only briefly. The book gives over only a few paragraphs to describing the events that surround a wedding day. This paltry amount of text feels especially small when compared with the amount of text given over to describing the rituals associated with other holidays or important life events. Funerals, by contrast, are given over five full pages of description. The book gives careful descriptions about the preparations to be taken immediately before death, about how bodies should be washed after passing, which passages from scripture should be read immediately after passing, how the family of the deceased should be comforted, about how graves should be placed geographically so as to be placed in the proper direction in relation to what is prescibed by the Qur'an, and about how quickly the body should be buried, etc.
Weddings, however, get a relatively short shrift. Interviewees had provided only a little more specific information when pressed about how Islamic weddings differed from normal Chinese weddings. Most commonly, respondents mentioned that at weddings in the Hui community, a local imam would be called upon to "nian jing" (念经), or read from the Qur'an. There were also certainly some specialty wedding foods that were repeatedly mentioned. You Xiang, the ubiquitous oil cakes eaten at nearly every holiday or occasion of significance in the Hui community should be expected. Otherwise, my expectations of what a Chinese-Islamic wedding might entail remained completely uninformed.
***
8:55AM: After about 10 minutes the procession found its way to the party. First, came the flatbed truck filled with men and women wearing red jumpsuits and hats, and pounding away at drums and cymbols of various sizes. The truck pulled through the arch, and off to the side, allowing the bridal car, a black BMW covered in red ribbons and sporting a huge heart-shaped arrangement of red roses on its hood, to pull through the archway and stop. Suddenly, and without warning, the pyrotechnics began. For what must have been two minutes, but seemed like far more, the thunderous booming of explosions rang out, making the occasion feel more like the trenches at the Battle of the Somme than a would-be party. As the explosions contined a thick cloud of smoke began to hover in the air. At last, the fireworks ceased, leaving bits of red paper debris everywhere.
The bridal car pulled forward, following the drummers who now walked in front, like a New Orleans second line, continuing to bang away on their instruments. The guests followed, too, and making my way through the wake of the firecrackers, the sulfuric smell of the pyrotechnics coated the inside of my nostrils, even leaving the faint taste of gunpowder in my mouth as I moved through. The wedding party's car continued toward its destination. As it drove toward the house, guests surrounded the car in a frenzy. The groom attempted to emerge, only to be assualted by fistfuls of confetti thrown at him by friends and relatives, and a barrage of silly string shot at him by boys who I assumed to be overzealous pre-teen relatives tasked with making merry. The groom, wearing a neat blue suit and red tie, now both covered in silly string and confetti, shielded the door of the car, attempting to clear a path. In a surge of motion that happened so quickly that I almost missed it, he swept his bride (wearing a red veil) into his arms and carried her into the home.
***
Contemporary Chinese weddings an interesting blend of old and new traditions. Globalization, as it does everywhere, influences the choices made by couples. My friend who accompanied me to this wedding explained the evolution of weddings this way: rituals have become far more simple in recent years. Many of the old traditions of gift-giving, dowries, ancestor veneration, etc. have fallen by the wayside in recent years, as weddings have evolved. Now, he says, they mostly resemble large-scale parties, or game-shows held in large hotels. Even some essential traditions, he said, have faded. For instance, the red veil that brides have traditionally worn over their faces is still a fixture at weddings, but many friends tell me that many brides choose to wear white, western-style bridal gowns over the traditional red. In China, white is a color usually reserved for funerals, but increasingly the bride in a white gown is a fixture at Chinese weddings, as well. Other cultural practices have gone through modern updates. The old practice of carrying the bride from her home village to that of the groom's in a sedan chair has been replaced with that of driving her from one place to the other in a BMW.
Hui weddings add another level of cultural blending to this mix. In addition to the blending of older traditional Chinese customs with more contemporary wedding traditions, Hui weddings also blend traditional Chinese practices with those that are prescribed by Islam. Occasionally, such blending leads to points of contention. Many of the practices which are central to a traditional Chinese wedding stem from old Confucian or Daoist folk customs. In some cases, these practices lead to real tensions between traditional culture and Islamic religious dictates. Take, for instance, the use of firecrackers in the wedding procession. One Hui interviewee explained to me that, traditionally, firecrackers and drums were used to scare off evil spirits. "This was something that came from old local religious traditions," he told me, "but, because we're Muslims, we Hui aren't supposed to believe in these things." How was this problem resolved? "In some communities, especially in the northwest, Hui strictly prohibit the use of firecrackers at weddings," he said. "But in Jinan, people are usually more relaxed about this." He explained to me, "It's just an amusement, right? It's not like having firecrackers hurts anything, it's just for fun. So, if people want to set off firecrackers for New Year's or at weddings, it's no big deal."
***
9:25AM: The inside of the house buzzed. Men and women ran back and forth through the enclosed courtyard between the kitchen and the living room, carrying tea cups, and kettles, and plates of small snacks. Small children chased each other around the room, in-between the adults who stood waiting. The men from the morning's preparation crew sat gathered at a table towards the back of the courtyard cracking jokes, and smoking and drinking tea. In the formal living room, two men, local imams (one of them the village's first resident to complete the hajj) sat stonefaced behind a table on which had been placed a huge plate of wrapped candy, dates, and peanuts. The men wore white prayer hats and made occasional chit-chat with relatives who had gathered. Behind them, enlarged copies of the couple's engagement photos and several red paper squares of calligraphy covered the walls. Everyone awaited the arrival of the couple. Standing in the middle of the chaos, my friend gave me the rundown of what was about to happen.
"Because the bride and groom are Hui, they'll have a short Islamic ceremony first," he began. "Then, the formal wedding will happen outside. That will be like a contemporary Chinese wedding."
"So, what's happening right now, exactly?" I asked him.
"We're waiting on the bride to change outfits," he replied.
Another five minutes or so passed. My presence in the courtyard began to attract attention. It seemed as if in the lull following the wedding party's arrival, people began to notice the foreigner in attendance. I was busy trying to explain my position as a visiting doctoral student to one of the guests, when the groom and the bride, now wearing a red qipao, descended from the second floor balcony and swept by me into the living room. At once everyone crowded in. The small living room was so crowded that overflow guests spilled out into the courtyard. I found myself being pulled towards the front by the guests I'd just been talking to, who seemed determined that, as a foreign scholar, I should really be given pride of place in the crowd. For my part, I tried to hang back. The couple stood in front of the imams, who rose and facing the crowd began to recite the Qur'an in Arabic. From outside, the pop music continued to blare. After reciting the "bismillah" as a invocation, one of the two imams began to say a few words in Chinese about the ceremony.
"Of course, we're here to have a traditional Islamic ceremony for the bride and groom," he said. He continued to offer a few more remarks about the role of a marriage in sustaining the faith, and building relationships with God. His words were hard to make out over the ruckus of everyone crowding in and the continued buzz coming from the courtyard, the kitchen, the children, and outside. In what seemed to be only the briefest of moments, the remarks came to an end. This time, the second imam began a second recitation in Arabic, though somewhere in the middle, without breaking his focus, he took handfuls of the peanuts, dates, and candies from the plate on the table, and began to toss them out into the crowd, who maneuvered to catch them.
"What's this about?" I asked my friend, standing there next to me.
"The words 'date' (zao 枣) and 'peanut' (huasheng, 花生 ), are homonyms for 'early birth' (zao sheng, 早生). It's a wish that the couple have children," he told me.
Almost as suddenly as it had begun, the ceremony ended. The bride and groom retreated yet again to the upstairs room, and the crowd dispersed back into the courtyard and then outside.
***
For many of the seculalrly-inclined Hui, their wedding day marks one of the very few moments where they will come into contact with their faith. Even those Hui who rarely (if ever) attend Friday prayers at the mosque will entreat an imam to come to their weddings to "nian jing" (念经) or read from the Qur'an. The connection that these Hui have to their Islamic roots may be distant at best. They may only come to the mosque duing the holidays, like the end of Ramadan, or the Eid-al-Adha (known in Chinese as, 古尔邦节 , Gu'erbang Jie). An imam in Yinchuan once described this as a "nian Hui" (年回) or "yearly Hui" problem, in which many Hui only attended the mosque once a year, on holidays. Yet despite such infrequent attentiveness to the faith, these Hui still choose to have an Islamic ceremony on their wedding day. Many of the younger people I've talked to in Jinan have admitted that their daily routines and their work schedules overtake their religious concerns. Though they may not be able to routinely attend Friday prayers, nor are they able to recite the Qur'an in Arabic, having an Imam preside over their wedding fits alongside abstention from pork as one of the primary expressions of their Islamic identity.
***
10:15AM: The master of ceremonies stood at the corner of the stage, fiddling with the microphone. He looked every bit the picture of a reality TV show host: dark suit, no tie, white dress shirt freshly pressed and open at the collar, hair meticulously coiffed. If I hadn't have known any better, I'd have sworn the ceremonies were being brodcast nation-wide. To the side of the stage, a member of the photography crew prepared a large camera crane exactly like the ones used for shooting network-quality live television. Finally, switching the mic on, the MC made an announcement. "We've got about 10 more minutes until the start of the happy event," he said, in a voice that rang with the carefully practiced sincerity and excitement of someone who has played this part a thousand times.
"Ten minutes?" I said to my friend, who stood alongside me, "Well, at least it's not so cold now that the sun's up." The bright mid-morning sunlight managed to warm up the air enough for standing outside through the remainder of the wedding to seem tolerable. Standing near the side of the low stage that has been set up for the next portion of the event, I noticed that the loudspeakers shifted from blaring syrupy-sweet Mandarin-language pop to blaring a Taylor Swift song (which a friend of mine will later help me to identify as "Speak Now") which is premised upon the singer trying to convince the groom to run away with her instead of going through with his vows at the altar. I smirked, wondering if I was possibly the only person in attendance who realized just how bad a match the song was for the occasion. The song played on repeat, often enough for me to hear Swift sing the line, "You are not the kind of boy/ Who should be marrying the wrong girl," a few times over.
At last, the bride emerged, now wearing a white, billowing wedding dress like the ones that are more familiar in the U.S., and bright red shoes. The groom joined the MC on stage, and the bride stood at the end of the aisle. Suddenly, the program was underway, with the MC beginning his schpeil in the manner of every television host in the country, "各位朋友们, 同事们, 你们好, 欢迎你们" ("My friends and colleagues, hello and welcome to you"). Then began a soliloquy about, of course, True Love. "What is love?" the MC asked, before rambling off a rather boilerplate account of how love involved being willing to put up with doing dirty laundry and the mundane routines of daily life. The bride and groom stood in the midst of this monologue, but to my mind, no traces of their lives could be found in it. The presentation, slick and managed, didn't tell their stories. After more of this rambling banter, the father of the bride was urged to bring his daughter up on to the platform as a MuZak version of Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence" played (another strange musical choice to my mind). Vows were exchanged, mostly through a series of questions thrown at the couple by the MC. Amongst the malestrom of chattering banter from the host were jokey questions about whether the couple would still love each other in the future after 50 years of raising kids and living together. The couple said their "I do"s and the parents were invited to sit on opposite sides of the stage. In each case, the MC presented the new couple, made them kowtow to their parents three times, and urged them to greet the new in-laws as "Mom" and "Dad." Likewise, he entreated the in-laws to accept the couple's wedding, and to provide them with the traditional red envelope of cash given at weddings.
To the father of the groom, he asked "Sir, isn't the bride so beautiful on her wedding day?"
"So beautiful" came his response.
"And when she called you 'Dad' didn't she have the sweetest voice?"
"The Sweetest."
"Then why not give her that envelope full of cash you're holding there?"
And to great applause, he joyfully handed it over. After the scene played out in front of both sets of parents, the couple and their new in-laws took center stage, presented one last time for a round of congratulatory applause from their audience. And then, the ceremony ended, and everyone headed inside to dig into the wedding feast to follow. My friend, who had to return to the city to work in the afternoon looked over at me, and said "Ok, let's go." And with that, we strolled through the inflatable arch, and back down the road towards the spot where we'd meet our return bus.
***
In the end, the morning concluded by 11:15AM, but in the span of those few short hours, I felt as if I had gained an immensely important understanding of contemporary Hui life. In the wedding ceremony, all of the tensions, or points of conflict present in everyday life for many Hui in east China were laid bare: the pull of tradition vs. the obligations of faith, the desire for contemporary customs vs. the urge to preseve traditional practices, life in the countryside vs. life in a rapidly developing city. In effect, the morning felt like two, very separate moments that happened almost simultaneously. The presence of the imams, and the celebration of the traditional ceremony provided a reminder that the wedding took place in a Hui household, and proper deference to Islamic tradition would be observed. However, the flashy, contemporary ceremony-- complete with reality TV backgrounds, the Taylor Swift soundtrack, and the suave Master of Ceremonies-- represents the increasing popularity of new, modern weddings. In this sense, weddings in rural Jinanese communities act as a cite for the resolution of all kinds of contradictory forces: rural vs. urban, traditional vs. modern, Han vs. Islamic, etc. Watching the ways in which the wedding ceremony both accomodated Islamic tradition, while also allowing for a contemporrary wedding, which still managed to invoke the themes and customs of a traditional Chinese wedding provided a fantastic lens through which much of the Hui community of Eastern China can be interpreted. Here on this most important of days in the life of a young couple, the wedding ceremony became an avatar for most, if not all, contemporary Hui weddings, as the struggles and compromises of everyday existence as Hui were distilled into ceremonial practice. So, to my collegues and readers, I urge you: go to the weddings, the funerals, and all the other random community celebrations. You just might learn something in the midst of it all.