Two Americans Crash a Traditional Chinese Wedding

It has been a very fun and exotic experience in China so far, but we will not stop here. Since we are now used to a life in Nanjing, or the southern capital as it translates into English, we took advantage of the national holiday week and hopped on a train to take us far away.

Our first stop was four hours away with the high-speed rail. The reason for this stop was the Chinese wedding ceremony of my (Daniel's) cousin Jonny and is wife Amy, who is native Chinese. The ceremony was to be held in Wuhan, a small Chinese town of 8 million people, west of Nanjing down the Yangtze River. Amy’s Family was so kind as to formally invite us to the wedding, and also paid for a hotel there and the train ride. It was one of the nicest train rides we have been on thus far, as the tickets were business class. We were served a complimentary dinner, got cookies and drinks and were able to lay our seats back all the way to the horizontal. The ride was fast and pleasant, and the gentleman sitting next to me was kind enough to have a conversation with me. He is an investor who works in Shanghai, but is visiting family in Wuhan over the holiday week. He asked my reason for being there and before long we were talking about the horrible situation of the Chinese medical system and lack of basic sanitation. He left me with his card and took down my phone number. “If you’re ever in Shanghai, give me a call!”

In Wuhan we checked into our hotel right next to the university where Amy’s father teaches mechanical engineering and Amy did her Bachelor’s in Electrical engineering. 

The ceremony itself was very nice. It was held in a restaurant, which one has to book months in advance, which Amy’s father indeed had done. The inside mimics a Chinese garden, with lush vegetation and always-comfortable temperature. It’s really more of a rainforest. The place was gigantic and the ceiling was full of air conditioning units that assured comfortable dining. We were given a tour of the facility by Amy’s father, who also showed us the European part, which featured plenty of naked Greek statues with arms cut off.

The ceremony started a while later. Three weddings were happening that night, with the other two parties being quite a lot larger than our humble group of about 80 people. Jenn and I were sitting and the foreigner table, with Jonny’s Mom and Dad and a local Elders Quorum president (African descent, speaks French originally, now also English, Chinese and who knows) and his Korean wife. Very nice people. The party was LOUD. The loudspeakers were next to a little stage, to which our table was rather close. Additionally, another wedding party apparently tried to rival most Las Vegas shows by boasting a multi-media show with full sound effects. The three parties in the room did there best to outdo each other with the volume and the effect was ear numbing. Our MC tried his best to yell into the microphone but was ultimately defeated by Las Vegas next door. Nonetheless, we could understand him. The ceremony was done in traditional Chinese Wedding style, and even Amy’s father admitted that he was not familiar with many of the things that were done. Amy was dressed traditionally, as was Jonny, with her face veiled. Jonny led her by a red rope along a small path, where she had to step over a fake fire, walk over a pad of plastic and break a small tile with her shoes, all accompanied by loud announcements from the MC, traditional Chinese music (cymbals and drums mainly) and essentially blindfolded by the veil. She was led to a little podium and more traditions followed. Jonny cut off a piece of her hair and she cut off (still veiled: Jonny had left a long patch on the side of his head uncut just for this purpose) some of his hair. He then took a long stick and lifted up her veil, just to get a peak. In traditional Chinese Weddings, this would have been the first time the husband would have seen his wife.

After this the ceremony concluded with some speeches, ceremonial tea drinking and an invitation to enjoy the food. At this point we had lost most of our hearing capabilities, so we had gotten accustomed to the noise and could enjoy the meal. The meal, or feast rather, descended upon us with unrelenting force. At first some appetizers were served. Two seconds later, a plethora of main dishes followed. We started to eat, but could in no way keep up with the flood of delicacies. The waiters had to push our food together and pile it up on each other’s plates to make room for more dishes. The food was delicious and pretty to look at. We ate fried aloe, turtle, shrimp, fish, yam with blueberry sauce, tripe with spicy sauce, rice noodles, dumplings, more fish, mushrooms with peppered beef, grilled duck, raw tuna, mystery meats and many more things which I cannot remember at this time.

The happy couple!

The veiled bride

Just a peek

Meet the respective In-laws

It was a great evening. Jonny and Amy had little time to sit and eat with us, as they had to make a few rounds and attend to other guests. Jonny believes that at one point he swore an oath of eternal brotherhood to some drunk cousins. We got to talk a lot to my aunt Kathy and uncle Mark, which was nice as I have not had much chance to talk to both of them. After this fun night we retired to our hotel.

Just the beginning...