The Wedding
When Lu Ying of Yang-chou married Chang Wu-ling of Hofei in 1906, her dowry procession stretched along ten streets, from Ssu-k'ai-lou to Lung-men-hsiang. It had taken Lu Ying's mother ten years to get things ready for this occasion, and when it was all over she died of exhaustion.
一九○六年（清光緒三十二年），揚州人陸英與合肥人張武齡成婚。陸府送嫁妝的行列從四牌樓一路連綿到龍門巷，長達十條街。陸英的母親花了十年時間置辦嫁妝，女兒出閣後不久，她就因操勞過度而過世了。
A grandmother in the family remembered Lu Ying on her wedding day, particularly the shock of meeting her eyes as her pearl-beaded veil came off. They were phoenix eyes with a phoenix glow, which foretold a life that would quickly be spent. Lu Ying died sixteen years later, after fourteen pregnancies and nine children.
武齡的姨娘記得陸英作新娘的時候，蓋頭一掀、鳳冠下的瓔珞一挑，大家看到新娘的眼睛，無不大吃一驚。那雙鳳眼光芒四射，隱約透露出不祥之兆-鋒芒太露了，怕不能長壽。果然，陸英在婚後十六年去世，總共懷過十四胎，留下了九個孩子。
In China's pre-republican society, a bride of Lu Ying's stature was something of a mystery. She spent a good part of her wedding day in a sedan chair, her face concealed. She appeared before her guests only toward the end of the ceremony, when she left the ancestral hall, in which she had paid obeisance to her husband's forebears, and was led to her nuptial chamber. Even then she remained demure and seemed reluctant to part with her maiden life and with her own family. Unlike modern brides who wave to their guests and smile for the camera, a bride in the old society seemed always on the verge of tears. She leaned on her escorts for support as she made her way deliberately into the nuptial room. Since it was not customary for the bride's side of the family to be present at the wedding, her escorts were relatives of the groom's family. They were married women deemed lucky because of the number of male children they had borne.
民國以前，有教養的新娘子是喜怒不形於色的，她的真情實感，別人很難捉摸。像陸英，結婚當天，她得蒙著蓋頭，在轎子裡待上好一段時間；到了夫家，先在家祠裡拜祖先，然後被人攙扶著走向新房；此時婚禮已近尾聲，賓客才有緣一瞻新娘丰采。到這時候，新娘還是神情凝重，彷彿很不甘心離開娘家、告別閨中歲月似的。現代女子會在婚禮上朝來賓揮手，對著相機笑，舊社會的新娘可總是一副泫然欲泣的模樣。她扶著喜娘姍姍步入洞房。照禮俗，娘家的親人不出席婚禮，所以伴隨新娘的人都是男方的親屬，個個都是多子多福、為人稱羨的好命婦人。
The bride had only one sure ally on her wedding day. This ally was not a relative or a best friend, but a bridesmaid her parents had hired to give her protection. The bridesmaid was, by training, a professional talker; she said clever things and was able to churn out propitious jingles. She was a foil for the bride, and her chatter was the shield she created for her young mistress at the time it was most needed. Before the wedding, the bride would have had a cloistered existence in the women's quarters, and so it was natural that she should be reticent. She was not used to being viewed, much less to being the object of everyone's curiosity. And she was nervous in her anticipation of the wedding night and of her life ahead, which she had to face on her own.
新娘過門那天，身邊只有一個體己人。這體己人不是她的至親好友，而是父母雇來照應她的伴娘。伴娘專習此業，伶牙俐齒，口彩連篇。她把新娘烘托得更出色，又施展口才，在新娘最尷尬的時刻滔滔不絕，及時替她解圍。新娘原本深處閨中，何曾見過這麼大的陣仗，保持沈默是再正常不過的反應。她不習慣露臉，更不習慣被這麼多好奇的人圍觀。想到眼前的洞房花燭夜和將來的生活，心情更加緊張，往後一切都得靠自己去應付了。
The women in the Chang household would talk about Lu Ying's wedding long after she was gone. They remembered the ditty the bridesmaid sang after Lu Ying and her husband were seated on their nuptial bed and the women guests had scattered coins and nuts all around the room to encourage fertility:
直到陸英去世後許久，她的婚禮還為張家女眷所津津樂道。她們記得陸英和新郎坐上婚床後，女客在房裡遍撒金錢和花生等乾果，祝福新人多子多孫，這時伴娘唱了個小曲兒：
A little stick, red and glossy, I shall use to lift the bride's veil. If it lands on her bed, She shall have a house full of children. If it drops on the ground, She shall be buying land and fields.
小小秤桿紅溜溜，
我替新人挑蓋頭。
蓋頭落床，子孫滿堂；
蓋頭落地，買田置地。
Lu Ying had come all the way from Yang-chou, a vibrant commercial city by the Grand Canal. Her dowry traveled more than a hundred miles down the Yangtze, across the Kiangsu border to Wuhu in Anhwei province, and another eighty miles along the tributaries and by land before it reached Hofei. We don't know how many men guarded the bride's entourage, or whether these men were sent from Hofei or hired by the Lu family in Yang-chou. We also don't know whether bandits along the way had given them trouble. The precious cargo that accompanied them was like spots on a leopard, the Chinese would say, making them an easy target for predators.
揚州位於大運河邊，是個繁華的商業城市。陸英從揚州遠道而來，嫁妝取道長江而下，航行兩百多公里，越蘇皖邊界，抵達安徽蕪湖；此後一百三十公里路先轉入大運河支流前行，再轉走陸路，最終抵達合肥。我們不知道一路上有多少人在保護陸英及其隨從，也不知道這些保鏢是從合肥來的，抑或是陸家在揚州雇的。至於一路上可曾遭土匪騷擾，也不得而知。帶著這麼值錢的物事上路，成語說「窺斑知豹」，想必易遭盜匪覬覦。
The Changs' home province, Anhwei, had never been a safe place to travel in. Frequent flooding of the Yellow and the Huai Rivers, alternating with drought and plagues of locusts, had created severe poverty and an unstable environment in the north, in an area called Huai-pei. The people of Huai-pei did very little to prepare themselves for disasters or to try to change their circumstances. They would move to cities south of the Yangtze when things were bad and return home when conditions eased a little. They continued this pattern of life throughout much of the Ch'ing dynasty. The local gazetteers described them as weak and violent, lazy and contentious: "too lazy even to weed after they've sown their seeds and to prepare for irrigation works in case of flood and drought," yet "quick to congregate and compete for small gains." The people of other parts of Anhwei and of the neighboring Chekiang and Kiangsu provinces referred to them as troublemakers. To them, the people of Huai-pei seemed to be everywhere, and wherever they went, they were either pillaging or in need - bandits or beggars.
安徽這地方一向不平靖，旅客安全堪虞。黃河、淮河經常氾濫成災，間以旱災、蝗禍，使淮北地區民窮財盡，風雨飄搖。淮北人少作防災的準備，也不積極改變處境，見到大勢不妙，就往江南城市遷徙，情況稍好，又轉回鄉來。有清一代，他們幾乎一直採取這種生活模式。方志上說淮北人既悍且惰，喜剽奪，「農苦而不勤。播種既畢，旱澇皆聽之於天」，卻又「動輒招群相鬥，錙銖爭較」。安徽其他地區及鄰省浙江、江蘇的人說淮北人盡會鬧事。他們覺得淮北人簡直無所不在，四處搶劫，要不然就是衣食無著，四處求告-非匪即丐。
During the nineteenth century, parts of Shantung and Honan provinces and much of Anhwei were ravaged by the Nien bandits from Huai-pei. The Nien were at first involved in ordinary crimes: murder, plunder, extortion, kidnapping, and smuggling. In the 1850s, their activities escalated into a major insurrection against the state. In 1868, the Ch'ing government, with the help of the local Anhwei army, brought the Nien rebels under control, but banditry continued to be a way of life for some. As a result, most of the well-to-do families in rural Anhwei employed their own braves and protected their living quarters with walls and moats. Life was relatively safe within, but outside, brigands could descend, demanding money, goods, or a fee for safe passage; they could also seize victims and exact a ransom from their family. Even as recently as sixty years ago, when gentry women or their young daughters wanted to visit relatives ten or twenty miles away, they usually traveled on foot, not in sedan chairs, and they dressed simply, to look as if they were one family with the men hired to protect them.
十九世紀時，山東、河南兩省部份地區及安徽省多處遭淮北捻匪蹂躪。捻匪原先與一般盜賊無異，所犯之事不外乎殺人、搶劫、勒索、綁架、走私等等，到了一八五○年代（清咸豐年間）才壯大成叛亂朝廷的主力。一八六八年（同治七年），清廷靠淮軍平定了捻亂，但仍有人繼續以劫盜為生，以致安徽鄉間富戶大都自雇鄉勇，並築牆、挖壕溝保家。在宅裡過日子還算安全，但一出去，就可能與盜匪不期而遇。盜匪會向富人需索財貨、過路費，甚至擄人勒贖。直到六十年前，士紳人家的婦人、閨女出門到十幾二十里外走親戚時，通常還寧願步行，不敢坐轎，穿著也很樸素，希望外人把她們和雇來的保鏢看成一家人。
The period from 1905 to 1910 was difficult for nearly all the people of Anhwei, not just those of Huai-pei, and 1906, the year of Wu-ling's marriage, was a particularly bad year. Flood, drought, windstorm, and locusts arrived in turn. As many as forty counties suffered some form of natural disaster, and flooding visited over two-thirds of the province. Hunger drove people to robbery and looting. In the city of Hui-chou, for instance, peasants, working in groups, raided local grain shops. The most serious incidents, however, were reported around Wuhu: in April, a band of desperadoes foraged a shipment of rice as it was coming across the border from the east; and in November, thousands of starving peasants stormed into the residential compounds of the local gentry, taking food and whatever else they could get their hands on.
一九○五至一九一○年間（光緒三十一年至宣統二年），不只淮北，安徽各處的生活都不好過；武齡在一九○六年成婚，那年的景況特別糟。水災、旱災、風災、蝗禍相繼而來。受天災波及的縣分多達四十餘個，全省三分之二以上地區都遭洪水侵襲。人民為飢餓所迫，四出搶掠。例如徽州城裡，就有農民集群洗劫多家糧店。不過蕪湖附近傳來的消息最嚴重：四月，一幫亡命之徒擁上甫從東邊航入省境的運米船搜索糧食；十一月，數以千計的飢餓農民衝入地方士紳的宅院搶糧，其他東西也能搶則搶。
Lu Ying and her family were traveling through Wuhu around the time of these incidents. The journey must have been very difficult and dangerous. What is puzzling is that the marriage should have taken place at all. Why did the Chang family want to go to the trouble of having Wu-ling marry a woman from Yang-chou when for over forty years they had been pairing their sons and daughters with the children of the Lius, T'angs, Chous, and Lis in their own county? Yang-chou was not only two hundred miles away and in a different province, but the people there spoke a different dialect. And why would the Lus agree to such an arrangement? They knew that to transport a dowry of a size appropriate for the match across such a long distance would be extremely risky.
陸英一家人約莫就在此時途經蕪湖。這趟旅程想必十分艱險。最令人費解的是究竟為什麼會有這麼一樁婚事。四十多年來，張家一直安排子女與同縣的劉、唐、周、李姓人家通婚，這次為何大費周章，要武齡和一名揚州女子結為連理？揚州在江蘇省，距離合肥約三百三十公里，揚州人所說的方言也與合肥不同。而陸家又為什麼允婚呢？他們明知與張家聯姻得陪送可觀的妝奩，長途運送，風險不堪設想。
We know that Chang Wu-ling's grandfather, Chang Shu-sheng, had also married a woman from a Lu family. And we know that Lu Ying's family was originally from Hofei; her family moved to Yang-chou sometime during the Ch'ing dynasty. It is possible that the two Lu families were related. There is, however, another explanation. According to the women of the Chang family, Lu Ying was not an ordinary woman. At the age of twenty-one, she was already known for her intelligence, her managerial skills, and her sense of appropriateness. Her older sister, less attractive and dull by comparison, was passed over as a possible marriage partner for Wu-ling.
我們知道，張武齡的祖父張樹聲也娶過一位陸姓女子。我們又知道，陸英家原籍合肥，清朝才遷往揚州。或許這兩個陸家是有關係的？不過還有別的說法。張家女眷說，陸英是位不凡的女子，二十一歲時，就以賢良能幹、進退合宜著稱。相形之下，她姊姊的姿色才情就落了下風，沒能成為武齡的對象。
In the old world, it was not only the bride's family that lost sleep thinking about their child's impending marriage; the groom's family, too, had their worries - about handing over the household responsibilities to a near stranger and about "the question of progeny," that is, whether the new daughter-in-law could produce sons. In the case of the Changs, the elders had to give extra consideration to Wu-ling's marriage because he was the heir to the primary descent line. Wu-ling's grandfather, Chang Shu-sheng, had eight younger brothers. Together they formed the nine branches of the Chang clan. Wu-ling was the heir to Chang Shu-sheng's branch. Even though he was adopted from the fifth branch, within the lineage organization he was considered the grandson of Chang Shu-sheng, and a descendent of the senior branch, the day he entered their door. His adoptive father, the oldest of Chang Shu-sheng's three sons, had no children with his principal wife and only a daughter with his concubine. He died at forty-nine, when Wu-ling was only eight. Wu-ling's adoptive mother was naturally anxious for him to begin producing heirs early, which also meant that his wife would have to be able to look after him - he was only seventeen at the time of his wedding - and to help him manage his enormous landholdings. Moreover, in 1906, the families of Chang Shu-sheng's sons were still living together; the men had all died sometime before, but their wives and concubines - five widows in all - were alive. Chang Wu-ling's wife would have to look after them as well, plus a large staff of accountants, nursemaids, servants, cooks, gatekeepers, and gardeners.
在舊社會裡，不僅嫁女之家想到吉期將近就輾轉難眠，取婦之家也一樣心煩意亂，既不放心把家務交給一個幾乎完全陌生的人，又怕媳婦入門後不能多生兒子-想到了「嗣親」的問題。就張家的情形而言，因為武齡是長房世系的繼嗣，所以長輩對他的婚事特別操心。武齡的祖父張樹聲有八個弟弟，因此張家在張樹聲這一世共有九房。武齡是張樹聲這一房的繼嗣。雖然他是從五房過繼來的，但在宗族組織裡，從他進入長房那天開始，他便是張樹聲的孫子，也是長房長支的後裔了。他的嗣父在張樹聲三個兒子中居長，正室無所出，妾僅育有一女。他逝世時四十九歲，武齡年僅八歲。武齡的嗣母自然希望他早早傳宗接代，這也意味著武齡的妻子要有能力照顧他（結婚時他才十七歲），並協助他管理可觀的田產。此外，一九○六年時，雖然張樹聲的兒子均已先後故去，他們的妻妾（總共五人）可都還在，亦未分家。張武齡的妻子也得照料她們，並管理為數眾多的帳房、保母、工人、廚子、門房、花匠等等。
It was the custom in Hofei for the bride to be older than the groom. Lu Ying was four years older than her husband. Their two families were compatible in money and status, and her dowry reflected the seriousness with which her parents had treated her marriage. The women in the Chang family recalled that nothing was amiss in this abundant load: gold, silver, pearl, and jade, all the luxurious goods and household items imaginable; even the dustpan had a silver chain dangling from it. The servants also received lavish amounts of gift money from the bride's family when Lu Ying's brothers came to call three days after the wedding ceremony. By all accounts, Lu Ying's parents outdid themselves from beginning to end. Their splendid display of generosity seems to have pleased everyone in the groom's family. One could say that Lu Ying's grand send-off was her parents' last attempt to look after her. It was their way of making sure that she would begin her new life under the most favorable circumstances.
新娘比新郎年長，是合肥的風俗。陸英比她丈夫大四歲。陸張兩家不論財富或地位都不相上下，從陸英的嫁妝就可看出父母多麼重視這樁婚事。在張家女眷記憶中，嫁妝實在豐厚，無所不包：從金銀首飾、珍珠、翠玉，到各式各樣奢華的物事、家居用品等，凡是想得到的東西都一應俱全，連簸箕上都掛了銀鏈條。婚禮後三天，陸英的兄弟來訪，也代表女方發給僕人豐厚的賞錢。大家都說，自始至終，陸英的父母都使出了渾身解數。這番豪舉看來確實博得了新郎全家的歡心。不妨說，父母的護犢之情在隆重的送別式裡展露無遺-此後再也沒有機會了。這樣做，無非是想為女兒的新生活打下最有利的基礎。
In the Chang family history, Lu Ying remains an elusive figure. She was the anchor of the household, an example for all, yet no one could describe her precisely. Her children could recall the feel of the house when she was alive; they say that she was the sole maker of its climate - harmonious and calm, without a trace of discontent. They remember the mood she created but not her person, not her words or her features, nothing exact. Lu Ying was what the eighteenth-century historian Chang Hsüeh-ch'eng would have called a "quiet woman." Her strength lay in her refraining, a holding back out of propriety and a reining in for balance and equilibrium. "[Quietness] is the finest appellation that can be given to a woman," Chang declared, "because it implies learning."
在張家家族史上，陸英像個神龍見首不見尾的人物。她是全家的支柱，是大家的榜樣，但沒人能精確地形容她。子女記得她在世時，家裡的氣氛總是那樣和諧寧謐，從來沒人發半句怨言；他們說，那全是母親的功勞。子女記得她塑造的氛圍，可記不清她這個人，對她的模樣、她說過的話，印象都不真切。十八世紀史學家章學誠想必會稱陸英為「靜女」。她的長處在於貞靜，嚴以律己，待禮而動，謹守法度。「女子佳稱，謂之靜女。」章學誠如是說，因為「靜則近於學矣」。
During Chang Hsüeh-ch'eng's time, it was fashionable for men of letters to encourage women to write poetry and to help them have their works published. Chang called these men "shameless hypocrites" and their protégées "women of activity," and he characterized their venture as a grand delusion, men deluding women and women deluding themselves. The men were hypocrites, he wrote, because they disguised lust as appreciation. "The intentions are unspeakable. Alas! They think that they are praising a woman for her talent when the rest of the world knows that it's sympathy born out of lust." The women they spur on are "busy scribbling away even though what they say has no range, no more than a woman's 'private sorrows in spring and fall' and the sentiments of 'flowers flourish and fade.'" The women Chang Hsüeh-ch'eng respected were the "quiet women," women who knew when to desist.
在章學誠那時代，男性文人鼓勵婦女吟詩作賦、幫她們刊行作品，蔚然成風。章學誠稱這些男人為「無恥妄人」，說他們的女弟子「何其動耶」，並稱女性進軍文壇是受到蠱惑的結果-男人欺騙女人，而女人又欺騙自己。他在文中稱這些男人為偽君子，看似愛才，其實暗藏色心：「彼假借以品題，不過憐其色也。無行文人，其心不可問也。嗚呼！」為他們所鼓動的女子則汲汲於「踰閒盪檢」，所寫雖不外乎「春閨秋怨，花草榮凋」，仍然樂此不疲。章學誠敬重的女人清一色都是「靜女」，是知所當止的女人。
The earliest reference to the "quiet woman" is found in the Classic of Odes, an anthology of poetry from two and half millennia ago. The first stanza of Ode 42 in "Airs of the State" reads:
Lovely is the quiet woman. She was to await me at a corner of the wall. Loving and not seeing her, Scratch my head, pace up and down.
For centuries, commentators could not even agree on the character of this woman, whether she was virtuous or not. The poem says that the woman waits by the city wall. One commentator explains that she waits and does not appear to her lover because she feels that she is not ready: "She must wait until she is cultivated before letting herself become his wife." Another insists that the poem "describes a tryst" and that the woman must be morally lax because no respectable woman would wait by the city wall for a man. Over time the first reading became orthodox, and by Chang Hsüeh-ch'eng's day, the idea of a quiet woman had lost all its ambiguity.
Chang believed that the tradition of the quiet woman began more than twenty-five hundred years ago, in the Chou dynasty, when women worked as court historians and ritualists. Such women were restrained in speech and writing because what they said had to be fit for diplomacy. Reticence was, therefore, a reflection of their learning and proof of their integrity. But as rulers ceased appointing women to offices and as women withdrew more and more into the domestic world, few people understood what the ancients meant by learning for women, and even fewer appreciated the power of reticence. Chang wrote that any woman of his own time who showed some refinement and quickness and had some knowledge of literature considered herself an expert. She flashed her abilities and wore them like makeup, unaware that women once had their own learning and that this learning was rooted in the practice of rites. In Chang's view, these women took their limited talents too seriously, not realizing that writing poetry was no substitute for the profession women once had.
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Excerpted from Four Sisters Of Hofei by Annping Chin Copyright © 2002 by Annping Chin
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
