Aphorisms of Tully Mars: Day 10

Day 10 – The Wedding

10/20/2009 03:13:00 PM Tully Mars

Sean was totally excited about his role as Best Man and a little unsure about what exactly his duties were going to be, which added to the thrill none the less. We meet “the sisters” at their hotel at 9:00 am and then walked over to Joel and Junjun’s home to be introduced to the new extended family. Joel and Junjun live above her parents in a newly renovated apartment that they all just purchased about a month ago. It was really nice and tidy, but very small by American standards. All four of them live together in about 900 square feet on the top floor (10th) in the Dao Hua District or neighborhood. It is a gated apartment complex with around 10 or 12 buildings of the same structure.

The introduction was not as formal as I expected with their family; we were greeted by Junjun’s father and mother at the door and seated in the living room. Joel came down and sat with us while the family scurried around getting ready for the day’s activities. The sisters had already been introduced and the three of us just made the group bigger. As we sat and chat with Joel, people kept appearing at the door and the 300 square feet we were in kept getting smaller and smaller. The videographer was already present when we arrived and the photographer followed after us, with a scolding from the videographer for apparently being late. (Listening to them fight and have fast discussions is pretty funny.)

We kept getting glimpses of Junjun in her “first” dress of the day as her bride’s maid moved in and out of the room. Tricia and I agreed that she is the most stunning woman we have seen in China so far and we are proud of Joel’s luck in landing her as his bride. You could see Joel’s pride beaming from him as we asked about his new family and future bride. He really is in his own element here in China; in fact a friend of his that sat next to us at the wedding said that he is more Chinese than he is American. (Tricia made comments at the beginning of the trip, saying she understands her brother more and his unique mannerisms by seeing those same gestures and habits here in China.)

Junjun wanted a more modern rather than an older traditional wedding, which meant that she would be wearing more western type wedding dresses during the ceremony. Yes, you are reading that correctly, dresses – plural! In total, she has three wedding dresses and one outfit for after the ceremony. We snuck a look with Joel at them all as she was getting ready.

After about an hour and a half, we were told to get ready and get out of the house! All of us headed down stairs to the courtyard area where the wedding car arrived and our car arrived. Junjun’s father, uncle and other men of the family had fireworks all set up in the courtyard ready to go off upon our formal arrival in the vehicles. So we all piled in the cars; Joel and Sean in the wedding car with us in trail in our car. We circled the courtyard and when we arrived at the building they set off the fireworks. The longest string was about 15 feet long and they lit off “big bangers” while the string was blasting away. It was the announcement of our arrival at the bride’s house.

Joel lead us up the elevator to their apartment where upon her family would not let Joel in the door until he begged, pleaded, and ended up singing some song thus earning the families respect or just getting harassed by her cousins and aunts. Once inside, Joel had to convenience Junjun to let him the room with more harassment and singing. He went down on one knee and held her hand to ask Junjun to come with him to be married. We all moved into the living room for the formal tea ceremony.

Joel and Junjun served tea to her parents and received their wedding gifts from them. In China, wedding gifts are not really gifts at all, but red envelopes with money for the bride and groom. The red envelopes have the symbols for double luck on them along with other wedding script and drawings. The amount of money is important too; it should be in increments of 8 or 9, for example $99 or $888. Both of these are considered lucky numbers, with avoidance of increments of 4 which is really bad because the pronunciation of the number 4 is close to the word death.

As the eldest family members here in China, Julie and Gigi were served tea for the groom’s family and exchanged the family’s gift to the bride and groom. After the tea ceremony, Sean served Junjun and Joel a cup of traditional wedding soup. The soup had dates and a large egg on top; and the first spoonful of dates both the bride and groom had to spit the seeds into a red envelope and keep it with them. The more seeds they could spite into the envelope from the one spoon represented the amount of money they would receive in gifts.

With the formal “tea ceremony” concluded, the entire group headed down stairs to the wedding car and family transportation to the restaurant. In China, couples must obtain permission from the government to marry and this process can be time consuming. Technically speaking, Joel and Junjun have been married for about 3 months prior to the event. So this ceremony really is a “coming out” party of sorts with no real religious rite or formal procedure, especially since the Chinese government has opened up the “freedom of religion” and most young adults in urban cities do not subscribe to any religion. What drives the ceremony is mostly tradition and the couples wants or wishes to proclaim their love in a public way.

As the wedding procession left the apartment complex it was accompanied by another round of fireworks from the men. We all took lots of photographs along with the professional team, especially when Joel had to carry Junjun from the doorway to the car. The wedding party headed off for another round of photographs at locations unknown to us and our drive took us back to our hotel for “the sister’s” clothing change. All the girls had to change from their nice dresses to formal wedding attire! (Don’t ask me because we noticed no one else did it, but they had too!)

Arriving at the restaurant, we were told to be early so “the sisters” could help set up the wedding tokens and guest gifts at the tables. Everything was quickly done and readied for the wedding, so Tricia and I explored the restaurant. The party was set up in one of the main dining areas so all of the other patrons coming for dinner could also see the wedding. Behind the main area was what I describe as the “dinner selection room” where all of their dishes were laid out for your selection. A waiter or waitress would follow you around as you viewed all the different choices, wrote down your selections and then seated you and your party for dinner. This was a seafood restaurant and they had every manner of seafood from crabs and fish, to squid and octopus, to clams and scallops. Everything looked absolutely delicious and I of course wanted to try everything!

Back to the wedding, all the “crazy Americans” were seated right beside the wedding table and up front for the best viewing. We were joined by one of Joel’s soccer friends who spoke perfect English, thus Mack became our translator for the evening. I’m not sure if Joel did that on purpose or not, but he really helped us understand some of what unfolded in front of us. The ceremony was broken into 3 sections and each had its own special meaning or purpose.

The first was what you might consider a western wedding without the religious twist or priest running things. They had a master of ceremonies who ran everything including the programmed music (the Theme to Star Wars started things off) and the direction of the lighting. By this time my camera battery was dead and I started taking pictures with Julie’s camera (one of “the sisters”), so photos will be posted later of the ceremony. During this part of the ceremony they exchanged rings, which first had to be found in a block of ice. Yeap, they froze the wedding rings in ice carved like a pig and Joel had to take a big hammer and break up the ice to find the rings.

After Junjun changed into her second dress for the evening, the next phase of the wedding took place. Joel and Junjun honored her parents and Julie & Gigi with formal toasts at their respective tables. Sean followed with the wine as they went around to all the tables toasting all the guests that had come to the wedding. There was some ceremony of which we are not sure what was said but Joel and Junjun ended up cutting the wedding cake and toasting with Champaign. At this point Mack, our friendly interpreter has “hitting the sauce” pretty good and he and I were having fun making comments about Joel and others at the wedding. Turns out Mack is a pretty funny guy especially after getting some drinks down!

The third part of the wedding started off the funniest! Junjun of course had changed into another gorgeous dress and Joel had donned a pig mask. He was carrying Junjun on his back, back into the party while spouting off something that must have been just a funny as his outfit, because everyone was laughing at him. There is a story about a monk who lost his way and was turned ugly (like a pig) and once he found true love, he got to marry the prettiest girl in the village. So he had to carry the pretty girl thru the village showing his love a dedication to her before their wedding, and of course once they were married the ugly monk was transformed into a handsome young man.

Also during this portion of the wedding, Joel had to present Junjun with a “surprise” gift. For days before the wedding he racked his brain trying to figure out what he was going to give her. When “the sisters” arrived they helped him with his decision and worked out a deal to get her a new poodle puppy. When we were dropped off at the hotel, they made arrangements to meet the delivery person with the puppy and we had to bring the dog to the ceremony. Up to this point the dog either was under our table in the carrier or in Tricia’s lap. It kept yapping every once in a while and Tricia would put the thing in her lap to keep it quiet.

The “real” surprise of this gift was to the parents! Remember that they live above her parents in a small apartment and Joel did not discuss any of this with them prior to getting the puppy. The real good photographs were of her mother’s face and the look on her father’s was simply priceless. I would have snapped their picture, except I think it would have been considered “bad form” to get their reaction opposed to Junjun’s smiling face after receiving the puppy. I guess they will have to work out this family arrangement at a later time. (ROFL)

During all of this the food literally kept coming and coming. There were 7 of us seated at our table for 10 and after the 7th dish we were all full. In total I counted 13 dishes on our table, all incredibly good to eat and with some interesting ingredients to say the least. Put it this way, they waste no parts of an animal when preparing food. I think the last dish (you know the one right before the watermelon) only Mack and I tasted from. We noticed other guests stashing food to take home after the wedding and had to laugh at that one. We’ve been to lots of weddings and this one really ups everything we have ever been to with the food and the fun.

After the last part of the ceremony, Junjun made one more clothing change into an outfit I liked the best. The top was a more traditional Chinese red blouse with black pants and red flares running vertically down from the knee. I can’t wait to post pictures of this one so everyone can see what I mean. Sean really liked the second dress and I think Tricia was partial to the third. So she really hit it for all of us!

The evening came to a close around 10:00 and we ended up back at our hotel around midnight. We were told to sleep off our hang-overs and meet them in the morning around 11:00 for the family lunch.