Analysis On Phenomenon Of Marriage And Tea Customs

among so many phenomena of traditional folk custom, marriage between man and woman, as an importance event for the family and a great event in one’s life, is a topic that is concerned by the society for a long time and a subject that is worthy of further study. There is an old saying that "tea creates romantic atmosphere, and wine acts as a matchmaker". Since the Tang and Song Dynasties, tea gift and tea custom have been closely connected with wedding customs and play an important role. Moreover, the tea gift has gradually changed from a common gift into a wedding gift with special symbolic significance in matchmaking, offering bride prices, engagement and marriage.For the marriage customs in many places of Shiqiaoyi Town, Jingmen, Hubei, tea gift and tea custom have many wonderful connotations, and have transformed from the traditional etiquette of serving guests with tea into a fixed wedding etiquette called "four lots of tea and six presents"(called "four Cha Liu Li" in Chinese), and "drinking the tea"(called "Chi Cha" in Chinese) means meeting and"making the tea"(called "Xia Cha" in Chinese) means getting engaged and "drinking the tea"(called "Ding Cha" in Chinese) means getting married. And only when the bride and the bridegroom have served tea to their parents (called "He Cha" in Chinese), a happy wedding ceremony is completed and the couple can be sent to their room for self-enjoyment. As the change of times and environment, at the local wedding ceremony of Jingmen, Hubei, people also create a widely recognized and abided a custom of "tea money"(called "Cha Qian" in Chinese), which evolved from the tea custom. At some times, the "Cha Qian" custom becomes the most exciting and meaningful part of the whole wedding ceremony.This paper takes tea custom from the wedding custom as a study object, and makes in-depth discussions about the causes, roles, contemporary changes and trends of the "tea ceremony and tea money"(called "Cha Li Cha Qian" in Chinese) in weddings. This paper is divided into three parts:the first part is the preface, introducing reasons for choosing this topic, the methods and contents of this study, the innovative meaning and overview of the research status of the wedding custom and tea culture at home and abroad; the second part is an introduction about tea and wedding customs; and the third part is for interviews and surveys on the topic, focuses on describing and finding out the contents and roles of the tea and wedding customs of the places researched, and analyzes the causes of tea money and its future trend and so on.At present, domestic and foreign scholars have made a lot of researches on the traditional marriage customs and folk culture of tea and have achieved a number of fruitful results. However, many of such researches are just superficial descriptions and formalistic introductions, and do not really combine the two customs together. Specially, it is rare to see them to put the perspective to the in-depth discussion and research on the phenomenon of "Cha Qian" that has been existed in real wedding customs. The study on this perspective is still in blank.In the development history of folk marriage culture, tea custom and tea money have gotten great attention and received general recognition from people. Their appearance, development and evolution have all reflected the times characteristics, economic status, cultural life and folk customs at different stages of the society; meanwhile, they also change with the time.In respect of the marriage and tea customs in middle region of Hubei, this paper researches and studies the "tea money" custom, which can be also seem as an inheritance protection to such custom.