The Problem of Superstition in Marriage
(November 28, 1919)
In studying the reasons why it is still possible to maintain the old marriage system,
I frequently think that it is because of one enormous superstition.
thread the fortunes of those about to be married. The term is also used, however, for the matchmakers
who claimed to be able to detect these links by casting horoscopes, etc., and should be so understood
here, and in its subsequent appearances in this and the next text.
175 Xincheng is Shu Xincheng (1893–1960), a Hunanese who was editor of Hunan Jiaoyu (Hunan
Education), a monthly critical of the existing education system founded on November 1,1919, and
suppressed after its fifth issue in March 1920. At this time he was teaching at Changsha Fuxiang Girl’s
School. The article to which Mao refers had appeared on November 23, 1919, in the Dagongbao.
176 Yuying is Long Bojian (1879–1983), a Hunanese who had been editor-in-chief of the weekly Xin
Hunan (New Hunan). His article entitled “A Question” was published in the Dagongbao on November
22, 1919.

Why do I say this? At the center of marriage is love. The power of the human
need for love is greater than that of any other need. Nothing except some special
force can stop it. Since love is an extremely important human need and is extremely
powerful, everyone should be able to find what he’s looking for, and after marriage, the
relationship between husband and wife should be full of love. Why is it that, carrying
a lantern as big as a house and searching the far corners of all of Chinese society, we
find not even the faintest shadow of love? The two phoney billboards of “the parental
command” and “the matchmaker’s word” are easily capable of completely blocking even
such a great power as this. Why?
Some reply that it is “because of China’s religion of the rites.”177 But how many of
our 400 million people really understand what the so-called “religion of the rites” is? It
goes without saying that all of China’s 200 million women are totally illiterate. All of
China’s peasants and all of China’s workers and merchants can recognize only a few big
characters. If we eliminate all of these, those who really understand the religion of the
rites are only a small portion of those self-styled scholarly gentlemen dressed in long
dark robes. Apart from the “scholarly gentlemen,” for the vast majority of uneducated
women, peasants, workers, and merchants, what controls their spiritual world, and
enables the two phoney billboards of “the parental command” and “the matchmaker’s
word” to block this surging tide of the need for love, is none other, I believe, than
“superstition.”
The greatest superstition is the theory that “marriages are determined by destiny.”
Of an infant who has just dropped out of its mother’s belly, it is said that its marriage
is already predestined. When the child gets a little older and develops its own need to
be married, it dares not propose a partner itself, but leaves it up to the parents and
a matchmaker to make arrangements. The child believes that making his own choice
and leaving it up to the parental and matchmaker intermediaries amounts to the same
thing, since it is already predestined and everything will be fine no matter what. The
wedding is held, and the husband and wife are united. Except for those who have
yielded to the irresistible
natural force of love, people either throw out everything and start a big ruckus,
turning the bedroom into a battleground of deadly mutual hostility, or find themselves
another world outside the home, among the mulberry fields on the banks of the Pu
River, where they carry on their secret amours.178 Apart from these, those numerous
husbands and wives who are called good couples with harmonious families have the
words “marriage is predestined” writ large in their brains. Thus they frequently commit
to memory such maxims as, “Each generation cultivates sharing the pillow as those
who cross over in the same boat have cultivated it for a hundred generations,” “The
old man in the moon knots the threads,” “A match made in heaven.” Such marriages
177 Borong is Li Borong (1893–1972), and Xitang is Li Youlong (1881–1953), zi Xiaoshen, hao Xitang.
Their articles on the incident were published in the Dagongbao on November 22 and November 24
respectively.
178 Li jiao, i.e., Confucianism.

that obey the theory of destiny probably account for 80 percent of Chinese society. For
these 80 percent of Chinese couples the flavor of love is an obscure mystery. You might
say their marriage is good, but then again, they are often known to sigh and moan.
But if you say it’s no good, they are, after all, a couple who live together in the same
room, eat and sleep together, give birth to children and raise them as if their marriages
really had been “made in heaven.” Following their periodic quarrels and fights, when
they have calmed down a bit, they recall that “each generation cultivates sharing the
pillow” and that “matches are made in heaven,” at which point they return to their
original state, and go on eating and sleeping as before. It is because of this theory of
predestination that the matchmaker is able to avoid responsibility. Any Chinese, even
the blind and deaf, is qualified to be a matchmaker. Marital predestination is implanted
in everyone’s mind, and when there is a wedding in some family, everyone always goes
along with it, whether or not the match is appropriate. You think that if you don’t
go along with it, you’re certain to be condemned by the gods. You hear the saying
everywhere “go along with marriage, don’t work against it.” Anyone who “investigates
the prospective spouse” by inquiring from the neighbors will never hear anything bad
from them. Once the bride enters the bridegroom’s house, it is considered “determined
by the trigrams qian and kun,”179 and “celebrated with bell and drum.”180 After that,
no one would dare back out, no matter how bad it is. All they can do is remember
that “marriage is determined by destiny.” It is this theory of predestination that gives
rise to such extremely irrational practices as “marriages decided in the womb”181 and
“choosing a partner in infancy.” Everyone thinks, however, that it’s all a matter of
“perfect destiny.” No one has even considered that it might be a big mistake. If you ask
someone for a reason, the reply will be that “marriage is determined by destiny.” Oh,
how powerful you are, “marital destiny.”
The theory that “marriage is determined by fate” is an overarching superstition, to
which many other small superstitions are appended:
179 In ancient times, the mulberries on the banks of the Pu River in the state of Wei were known
as a favorite haunt of men and women engaged in clandestine meetings. The “Treatise on Music” of the
Book of Rites declares: “Dans le pays des mûriers, sur le bord de la Pou, les airs 6taient ceux d’un litat
qui tombe en ruine.” (Couvreur, M&noires sur les biens^ances et les cfr&nonies, II, XVII, I, p. 49.) The
“Treatise on Geography” of the History of the Han Dynasty indicates, in its coverage of the state of Wei,
that the mulberries on the banks of the Wu were a place where men and women gathered for debauchery.
(Perhaps, for the ancient Chinese, the ruin of the state and the violation of family relationships were
much the same thing.) Thus the four characters used here by Mao, sangjian Pushang, had long been a
synonym for secret amours.
180 The four-character expression translated “determined by the trigrams qian and kun” is from the
chapter “Xi ci” of the Book of Changes, which is devoted to prognostications. Qian stands for heaven,
or the male principle yang-, kun stands for the earth, or the female principle yin.
181 The four-character expression translated here as “celebrated with bell and drum” is from the first
ode in the Book of Poetry (I, I, 3; Legge, Vol. IV, p. 4), in praise of the bride of King Wen. Legge renders
this and the preceding line of the poem as follows:
The modest, retiring, virtuous young lady—
With bells and drums let us show our delight in her.

1. “Matching the Eight Characters.”182 When arranging for the marriages of their
sons and daughters, it is not that Chinese parents are utterly unselective. On
the contrary, they waste a lot of effort worrying about the selection of a mate for
their sons and daughters. Their criteria for selecting, however, are not looks or
disposition or health or learning or age, but rather only whether or not the eight
characters match. So the first step in arranging a marriage is “matching the eight
characters.” There are two ways of matching the eight characters. One is to ask
a fortune-teller to match them, the other is to ask a “Buddha” to match them.
As long as the eight characters can be matched, even a demon can be dragged
into becoming a husband or wife. In society there are many cases of a young
girl being mated with an elderly husband, or of a young man taking an elderly
woman to wife. In our village there is a joke, “Eighty-year-old Grandpa produced
a baby, and the hundred thousand families of Changsha laughed themselves to
death,” which refers to the story of an eighteen-year-old girl, married to an eighty-year-old man, having a baby. In addition, there are frequent instances of an ugly
husband matched up with a beautiful wife, or a beautiful wife matched up with
an ugly husband, with the consolation that “happiness and wealth come to the
ugly.” None of the other factors, such as disposition or learning, are regarded as
significant criteria.
2. “Registering the Dates.” After the eight characters are matched, the second step
in the marriage procedure is “Registering the Dates,” in which the eight characters of both the man and the woman are written down in the Book of Dates in
the presence of “the illustrious spirits.” Incense is burned and prayers are invoked
that the couple may “live together to a ripe old age.” From this stage forward, the
marriage is considered an ironclad case. Registering the Dates originally meant
sealing the contract, but in the Book of Dates itself nothing is said about contracts. The only thing that is written down is eight big characters indicating the
year, month, day, and hour. All the many really essential conditions of marriage
count for nothing. How can this be considered anything but superstition?
3. “Selecting an Auspicious Day.” After registering the dates, and the exchange of
presents, it is necessary to select a lucky day. It must be a day of no “evil spirits”
or “taboos.” The almanac is commonly consulted for “suitable” and “impropitious”
days. Next, a fortune-teller is asked to calculate the position of the stars. Then
the Buddha’s permission is asked. It was at this point that Miss Zhao begged her
parents to change the wedding date, to which her mother replied, “The auspicious
day has already been determined and is virtually impossible to change.” Had they
agreed to change the date, and waited for her elder brother to return home, it
might not have been necessary to bury her on this “most auspicious day.”
182 Zhi fu wei hun. For an anecdote illustrating the origins of this practice, see the biography of
Wang Yuxing in the Wei shu (History of the Wei Dynasty).

4. “Sending the Sedan Chair.” This is even stupider. There is some tale to the effect
that when King Zhou of the Shang dynasty was receiving his concubine, Daji,
a fox-spirit changed places with her during the journey. Ever since, whenever a
bride is on the way to her groom’s house, it is feared that she might become a
second Daji. First, therefore, a heavy closed sedan chair must be used; second,
its door must be locked tightly; and third, the “god of good luck” is entreated to
offer proper protection. Some say that if on this occasion Miss Zhao had been in
a light open sedan chair, not tightly locked and sealed, so that she could have
been seen from outside, she might not have committed suicide.
5. “Greeting the God of Good Luck.” Seated in the dark inside a sealed sedan chair, a
bride is already very depressed, but when she arrives at the bridegroom’s house
and the sedan chair is set down, she must also calmly greet the “god of good
luck,” requesting him to “ward off unlucky influences.” On this occasion, when
Miss Zhao arrived at the Wu family home, she was already about to expire, but
the Wu family was just getting ready to greet the “god of good luck,” in order to
“ward off unlucky influences.”
6. “Worshiping Heaven and Earth.”183 Worshiping heaven and earth means being
presented to the ancestors. It is said that when a new bride is added to a household it is necessary to ask the ancestors to protect and assist in “giving birth to
many heirs,” so that “abundant descendants may glorify the ancestors.” In the
West, they do not report to their ancestors, but they do thank some God, and
say that the love of the bride and groom is a gift from God, and their marriage
relationship has been put together by God.
These superstitions are really just so many cheap tricks of marriage, and have
no other purpose than to be the rope that tightly binds a man and woman together.
Between the matchmaking and the exchange of gifts, the bride and groom are so tightly
bound by the bonds of superstition that they can’t even breathe, and afterwards, they
become a stable, proper, and very harmonious good couple. Miss Zhao’s marriage had,
of course, gone through all the “big ceremonies” except that of “worshiping heaven
and earth.”184 Her choice of death was certainly closely related to these superstitions.
As we put forward our call for the reform of the marriage system, it is first of all
these superstitions about marriage that must be demolished, above all the belief that
“marriages are decided by destiny.” Once this belief has been demolished, the pretext
behind which the arrangement of marriages by parents hides itself will disappear, and
“incompatibility of husband and wife” will immediately start appearing in society. As
soon as incompatibility between husbands and wives manifests itself, the army of the
183 See the note to the previous text.
184 Baitang (literally “worshiping the [ancestral] hall,”) designates the ceremony in which the new
husband and wife first worshiped heaven and earth together, and then presented their respects to the
groom’s parents.