Page:Chinese Life in the Tibetan Foothills.djvu/26

 CHAPTER III

婚姻 Hun Yin.

Betrothal may take place very early; friends will sometimes betroth their unborn children.

Marriage with one of the same family name is forbidden by law; but such marriages do take place when there is a different ancestry, 同姓不同宗 t‘ung hsing pu t‘ung tsung.

A male go-between is called 媒 mei, and a female is 灼 cho. Marriages are said to be arranged by 父母之命媒灼之言 fu mu chih ming mei cho chih yen, "Parents' will and middleman's words." The children are supposed to have nothing to do with the arrangements, but in fact their likes and dislikes count for a good deal.

Another name for the go-between is hung-yeh 紅葉 red leaf. The term originated in the T‘ang dynasty. A female palace-slave whose life was made bitter by her imperial mistress wrote her troubles on a red leaf and threw this into the moat. A young scholar got it and forwarded a reply in the same romantic way. Later some of the slaves were married off by imperial orders, and the girl fell to the lot of the scholar without their knowing till afterwards that they had been the corresponding parties.

Preparing the horoscope before marriage is called k‘ai pa tzū 開八字, preparing the eight characters. These characters give the year, month, day and hour of birth. The