Messrs. Yunyuan, Wei wen, and Buping170 mostly vacillate back and forth on the issue
of parents interfering with the marriages of their children, and do not take a firm stand
against such encroachment. (Mr. Buping’s suggestion that parents act as participants
with a strong say in the matter goes even farther.) I have adduced physiological
and psychological evidence to prove that parents absolutely cannot interfere in the
marriages of their sons and daughters. On their side, sons and daughters should
absolutely refuse parental interference in their own marriages. This must be done, for
only then can capitalist marriage be abolished; only then can marriage based on love
be established, so that loving and happy couples may truly appear.
Smash the Matchmaker System (November
27, 1919)
Speaking of this thing called a “matchmaker,” this is another cheap trick of Chinese
society. Chinese society contains a great many cheap tricks. Things like those literary
essays, imperial examinations, local bandits, and bureaucrats are all nothing but a
bunch of tricks and games. The same is true of things like exorcizing devils, sacrifices
to appease the gods, dragon lanterns, lion dances, and even doctors treating patients,
teachers teaching classes, and men and women getting married. A society like that of
China should really be called a society of cheap tricks. This trick called marriage is
connected with the problem of men and women, and also gives birth to a bunch of
smaller games, such as “crawling in the dust,” “robbing the sister-in-law,” “raising the
hero,” “fighting the wind,” “wearing a green bandana,” “making the genie jump,” and
so on. But as regards marriage, standing above all these little tricks, so that it may
in all conscience be called the “ultimate cheap trick,” is that three-headed six-armed
ubiquitous demon, the “matchmaker.”
The Chinese matchmaker has the following strange features:
the basic philosophy is “successfully dragging them together”;
each marriage is at least 80 percent lies;
the “gods” and the “eight characters”171 are their protecting talismans.
In China, it is always said that the major power over marriage is in the hands of
the parents. In actuality, although the parents are nominally the ones in control, they
170 Mr. Pingzi is Zhang Pingzi (1885–1972), zi Qihan, like Mao a native of Xiangtan xian, Hunan. A
member of the Tongmenghui, he became in 1919 one of the chief editors of the Hunan Dagongbao. His
own article entitled “I Do Not Approve of Parents Controlling Marriage” appeared in the November 22,
1919, issue.
171 The identities of Yunyuan, Weiwen, and Buping are unknown. On November 20, 1919, the
Dagongbao carried an article by Weiwen, “The Problem of the Reform of the Marriage System,” as
well as a brief note by Buping under the heading “Public Opinion on the Suicide of Miss Zhao.” An
article signed Yunyuan, “My Views on Reform of the Marriage System,” was published the following
day.

do not really make the decision. It is in fact the matchmaker who has decision-making
power. In China anyone is qualified to be a matchmaker. Moreover, matchmaking is
recognized as a kind of duty. As soon as someone has a son who needs a wife or a
daughter who needs a husband, everybody and anybody around them, no matter who,
is eligible to step in and join the search. For this kind of matchmaker the first thing is
to have the basic philosophy of “successfully dragging them together.” Going around
selling both parties on the idea that she genuinely wants the marriage to be a “success,”
the matchmaker always says forcefully, you two families must make up your own minds.
In fact,
however, after all her badgering, even parents with iron ears have long since become
limp rags. I have seen a lot of matchmakers, 80 or 90 percent of whom have been
successful. The matchmaker thinks that if she can’t get the couple together it is her
own fault. In the event that they do come together, and the two parties go from
“unmarried” to “married,” she will have a meritorious deed to her credit. At the bottom
of such a philosophy of dragging people together, one thing is indispensable: “telling
lies.” Since the two families of the man and woman are not close to one another,
there are many things that they do not know about each other, and the girl is locked
away in the inner chambers, making it even more difficult to find out about her. So
the matchmaker rambles on, making up all kinds of stories, so that on hearing them,
both sets of parents will be happy. A marriage contract is written up on a sheet of
paper, and thus the affair is concluded. As a result, it is frequently the case that after
the marriage, the two turn out to be completely incompatible. This case of Fourth
Madame She bringing together Miss Zhao and Fifth Son Wu is a perfect example of
such lying. Some even go so far as to substitute another bridegroom, or switch the
bride. This constitutes “a match between unmatchables,” and not just “a few little
lies.” Totally incompatible marriages in which the matchmaker has simply “dragged”
the couple together and then lets out a futile fart to the heavens (country people call a
lie a “futile fart”)172 practically fill Chinese society. And why is it that one never hears
of the man or the woman picking a quarrel with the matchmaker, or that of all the
lawsuits in the courts, one rarely hears of one against the “old man of the moon”?173
On the contrary, such people get off scot-free, with money in their pockets from the
fee for their services. Why is this? Thanks to the blessings of the “gods” and the “eight
characters,” the responsibility is placed on the supernatural. Quite apart from the fact
that the parents as usual do not blame the matchmaker, even the son and daughter
can do no more than bemoan their sins in a previous life. The wrong has already been
cast in bronze, and all they can do is to make the best of a bad job. This is one of the
172 I.e., the characters representing the year, month, day, and hour of the birth of the prospective
bride and groom, which must stand in the proper relationship in order to create a favorable horoscope.
173 Baipi. This term is obviously related to another popular Chinese idiom, the use of fang pi (“to let
a fart”) to mean “to talk nonsense.” (For Mao’s use of this expression, see his “Hunan Peasant Report”
of 1927.)