The marriage and love life of the Yi people is unique and interesting. The most interesting thing is that only girls who have had a "skirt-changing ceremony" can make love with their sweethearts in the "playground", and the matchmaker talks about marriage and drinks and betrothal. , let the bride starve, relatives and friends cry all night, pour water on the bride-to-be, grab the bride, fight in the bridal chamber and other traditional wedding customs.
The Yi people are distributed in Yunnan, Sichuan, Guizhou Province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The Yi language belongs to the Yi branch of the Tibeto-Burman family of the Sino-Tibetan language family and has six dialects.
It has its own writing, which is the earliest syllabic writing in China, of which there are more than a thousand commonly used ones. In 1957, the Yi language standardization plan was adopted, 819 standardized Yi characters were identified, and trial implementation began.
There is a folk custom of "beating sheep" and "beating cows" to welcome guests. Whenever a guest arrives, he must kill the guest first, and treat him as a cow, sheep, pig, chicken, etc. according to the guest's identity and degree of intimacy. Before killing an animal, the live animal should be brought to the guests, and the guests should look at it before slaughtering it to show respect for the guests.
Wine is a welcome gift to guests. In Liangshan, as long as a guest enters the house, the host must first toast the guest with wine, and then prepare various dishes.
The food for guests is fat and fat. During the meal, the housewife should always pay attention to the rice in the guests' bowls and add more at any time before the guests eat it all to show their sincerity in hospitality. . When eating, the elders sit at the top, and the younger generations sit around the sides and below in turn, adding rice, vegetables, and soup to the elders.
After young men and women get engaged, they have to prepare for the wedding banquet. Wedding banquets mostly use pigs and chickens, but mutton is generally not used (mutton is used for funerals). The Yi people in Shiping, southern Yunnan, have the custom of inviting their male and female partners to have dinner and drinks before getting married; the Yi people in western Yunnan, when they marry a girl, they have to build a shed with branches in the courtyard or a dam for guests to drink, smoke, eat, and relax. People call this kind of temporary shed made of branches "green shed".
Marriage and love of the Yi people are strange and interesting. The most interesting thing is that only girls who have had a "skirt-changing ceremony" can fall in love with their sweethearts in the "playground" and arrange marriage with a matchmaker. There are traditional wedding customs such as drinking wine to get engaged, starving the bride, relatives and friends crying all night, throwing water on the bride-to-be, snatching the bride, and fighting in the bridal chamber.
Girls' skirt-changing ceremony?
When Yi girls reach adulthood (usually around 15 years old), a grand "skirt-changing ceremony" is held according to custom. During the dress-changing ceremony, the girl asks her sisters to change her original single braid into a double braid and tie it on the top of her head. It is also necessary to tear off the white pendants or old ear-piercing threads originally worn on the ears and replace them with red agate-like coral beads or silver sparkling earrings to show good luck.
Finally, the girl took off her original red and white children's skirt and put on a lace embroidered top and a pleated floor-length skirt in black, blue, yellow, white and other colors. After putting on a new dress, the girl can go to the "playground" to dance and sing, participate in social activities, and start looking for her sweetheart.
Carrying the Bride
According to Yi family customs, when the bride comes out of the palace, her feet must not touch the ground, otherwise there will be a risk of heirs being born, so the young man who receives the bride must carry the bride. , and helped her mount her horse. There are also various rules on the way back from the wedding: if the mountain is high and the road is narrow and it is impossible to ride a horse, the young men who pick up the bride must take turns carrying the bride on their back; when crossing a river, wading, it is even more necessary for someone to carry the bride across the river, and the bride's embroidered shoes must not get wet. ?
Splashing water to receive relatives
The Yi people believe that clean water can drive away evil spirits, send away demons, and bring happiness. Therefore, the Yi people must splash water when they get married. In order to withstand this test, when welcoming the bride, the groom's family must select an unmarried man to pick up the bride. To be able to complete the arduous task of "stealing" a bride, they often review and select the best candidates when recommending them. Some even travel long distances to select talented people. ?
The Yi people's wedding ceremony is completed by "robbing". On the first night of the "bride snatching", the girls started a fierce water fight with the young man. The girls violently attacked the young men by splashing, showering, pouring, and shooting in various ways, making it difficult for the young men who came to "rob the bride" to resist. So, the smart young man found a place to store water before dark and quietly poured out part of it to reduce the attack of "flood".
After a night of splashing, when morning comes, the "bride snatching" begins. At this time, the girls are hugging the bride, and the boys go to "fight for it." The girls are strict in defense, and the boys must be smart and changeable. They must take advantage of the loopholes that appear in an instant to snatch the bride and run away. They run straight out of the mountain road for a mile or two. Walk instead.
This shows how difficult it is to "snatch" the bride to her husband's house! However, the Yi people believe that this act of robbery during the wedding will drive away evil spirits and ensure that their lives will not be disturbed in the future.
Fighting in the bridal chamber
"According to the custom of the Yi people, if the bride does not resist and fight on the night of the bridal chamber, she will be laughed at: "This is a woman who will not resist!" "It is said that the children they give birth to in the future will not be recognized by their ancestors, and they will not be able to enter the "underworld" after death! Therefore, after the banquet dispersed, the newlyweds in the bridal chamber had a rough fight. They fell He was beaten and beaten, his clothes were torn and his face was scratched, and the banging sound coming from the bridal chamber was heard by all the neighbors.