WARNING: THIS TUTORIAL IS CONFIDENTIAL TO THE BRIDE AND HER FAMILY MEMBERS AS WELL AS HER BESTMAIDS. :), just don’t ask why now and keep reading, you will get the idea.
Introduction
Firstly, congratulations for becoming a bridegroom and about to have your Cantonese girlfriend as your wife. But wait, you still need to go through the last big-big step before becoming a husband, that is the Chinese Cantonese Wedding. Surviving in the Cantonese Wedding is not easy, it is not about church or the green grassland, but on quiz and even plot. In this tutorial, I will help you walk through some of the key steps in the wedding and you will gain the confidence of surviving in such a wedding. Yes, I don’t even have a girlfriend currently and don’t have the experience of getting married, but previous observation is the best teacher. Now we shall begin.
Background
This is not a wedding research paper and we are not interested in those cultural jargons, but it is still worth mentioning about the theme or backbone spirit in traditional Cantonese wedding, which will help you understand the rest of the tutorial. In ancient time, the wedding in China is simply a process called “Jie Qin” and it means “picking up family member”, in which the family member refers to the bride. In the early morning, the bridegroom departs from his family place(house) with his best-men and goes to the bride’s house to “take” her back home as his wife. Apparently, taking a girl away from her parents and friends(bestmaids) is so so “cruel”, and the bestmaids will try every-effort to “prevent” you from taking the princess away, including pulling pranks, carrying quiz and making you to do some challenge. Your task is to break all those barriers and achieve your final goal ! Now you have a basic understanding of the plot and it is time for the methodology part for detail tasks !
Methodology
STEP 1: Breaking the door
No, you are not required to use a shot-gun to break the lock as you did in Call of Duty since you don’t have a gun license in China. Basically, you will need to “break” two doors, namely the door of the apartment and the door of the bride’s room, we simply refer them as A-door and B-door respectively in the context. Now you and your best-men arrive at the A-door, it is closed and those girls are standing behind the door to “defend against” you. Most commonly, they will ask for lucky money, which are the red-envelopes with RMB, as the condition for opening the door. As a brave man, you should reject them at the first place and start to negotiate with them. I beg you are more good at negotiating in English than me, so the negotiation words are all on you. However, those girls are too stubborn and you need to make some compromise, so you need to insert one or two red envelope through the door seam. Right, time for entering the house. No, trust me, those girls are “greedy” and they ask for more. You have to repeat the rejection, negotiation and compromising and the girls open the door at a certain point. Don’t hesitate to ask for help from you best-men if you have no idea in the “battle”, they are your comrades in the wedding !
You enter the house, possibly overwhelmed by bunches of family members, and have no sight of the bride. She is in her room and those girls are standing at the B-door to prevent you from breaching ! Now it is time for challenges with pranks and quiz. Those challenges have a wide range of category and it is impossible for me to list all of them here. Some of the typical challenges are listed below:
A
Singing. This is the most mild one and I believe you can do it as long as you are not shy to show your singing.
B
Push up or other basic physical exercise. This is not hard and I am pretty sure you can achieve it. Be careful with your suits, don’t tear them up when you do the exercises.
C
Imitating the animal’s sound. That is easy.
D
Drinking weird beverage. Yes, that’s a little bit tough. You can ask your best-men for help or if you want to take a try, simply take a sip from the strew at the very first time to ensure that you are not exposed to the weird smell or taste immediately.
E
Doing A to D simultaneously. God damn it, that is embarrassing. But I believe you are about to do such a sacrifice to break the B-door !
A little reminder: If you feel uncomfortable about some of the challenges, just speak out peacefully. Cultural difference or specific personal situation are common and we all want a happy wedding. It does not make sense to force our bridegroom to do something that breaches his bottom line. :)
STEP 2: Finding the shoe
You enter the room and see your future wife sitting on her bed. You are about to take her out of the room but surprisingly find that one of her shoes is lost. Your job is to find the shoe and help your wife to take it on. The shoe is hidden somewhere in the room and you and your best-men will need to search every corner of the room. Typically, the shoe may be hidden behind the curtains, below the bed or wardrobe. But girls always prank us on surprise so you need to carefully search all the places. You can also try to talk with the girls and get some hints. Once you find the shoe, you are the winner !
STEP 3: Yum-cha
Now you win the game and it is time for expressing thankfulness to your father in law and mother in law by proposing a cup of tea for them, as shown in Figure 1. Basically, you and your wife knew down in front of her parents in the living-room and pass the cup with tea to them. Remember, hold the cup with two hands when you pass the cup. When you pass the cup to your father in law, simply says: “Ngoi fu, yum-cha”, it means “please drink the tea, father in law”. You are such a smart gentleman and just take a guess of the meaning of “Ngoi mow, yum-cha” and when to use this phrase(ask me if you have no idea before the wedding). After taking the tea, your father in law and mother in law give you a red envelope of lucky money and you need to accept them by using two hands. Remember to say “door zac”, which means thank you. Also, there might be some details that I haven’t mentioned and just ask if you don’t know what to do.
Conclusion
You did it. Congratulations ! I am also sure that you know the meaning of the warning, we need to “win” the game by surprise.
