Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/371

Rh In the village of Kim Kong, in the Nam Hoi district, Kwangtung Province, males marry at the age of twenty, and girls at the age of eighteen. A few days after the marriage the bride returns to her mother’s family, and during the first and second years of the marriage returns to her husband’s home on four nights only. On the 14th of the eighth moon and the 30th of the twelfth moon she goes to her husband’s house, returning on the mornings of the 16th of the eighth moon and 2nd of the first moon. In the third and fourth years of the marriage she also sometimes visits her husband for two nights at the Ts’ing Ming, or winter festivals. On the occasion of a marriage or death in the husband’s family, the husband sends for his wife, and she lives with him for a night or two. If the wife has no child she will not live with her husband for good until five, six, and even eight or ten years have elapsed. It is stated, as a result of this custom, that the men of Kun Kong are long-lived, any person dying at fifty being considered short-lived; that the affection between man and wife is very strong, a wife refusing to marry again if her first husband dies before her; and that concubinage is almost unknown.

In the prefecture of Ug Chan and the district of Ts’am, in the province of Kwongsai, the women arise early in the morning and go to the hills to cut wood, afterwards selling it in the market, while their husbands remain at home attending to the household and children. As a consequence of this a widow is prized more highly as a wife than a maiden, as she is more experienced and able to do more work. If a woman loses her husband and marries again, the parents of her former husband have no scruples about receiving betrothal money when she marries.

When the bride ascends the bridal sedan she wears a hat of paper, and an old woman who has sons and grandsons holds an umbrella over her. A man carries a bamboo