Weddings Have Marched a Long Way in China Since Mao

Business was booming the other day at the Paris Marriage Plaza Photo Studio on one of this city’s major shopping avenues. A young bride swept across the room in what appeared to be a Scarlett O’Hara fantasy outfit--a rustling taffeta dress festooned with bright yellow ribbons. A groom entered, dressed like a drum major.

Upstairs in a small studio, chemical engineer Wei Lieyu, 30, and his betrothed, co-worker Hao Shuhong, 28, posed stiffly on the “library” set. Surrounded by bookshelves, the bride stood beside her future husband and gazed down respectfully as he assumed a classic scholarly pose reading . . . the Chinese-language edition of Cosmopolitan magazine.

“Great! Not bad! Super!” photographer Chu Kuo-Chi chattered, encouraging the nervous couple, who had paid several months’ combined salary for the photo session. Moments later they were posing on the “Garden of Eden” set.

The divorce rate is up in China. But the institution of marriage has never been more profitable for the proliferating array of photo studios, limousine services, banquet halls and starter furniture stores that cater to the soon-to-be-hitched.

After decades in which the Communist government stressed stark simplicity in marriage rites, the big, expensive wedding is back as one of China’s most potent status symbols. After 15 years of rapid economic growth, many Chinese families now have enough disposable income to stage lavish productions for important milestones, such as marriage, childbirth and funerals.

At least part of the explanation for the big-wedding trend is that the younger couples marrying today are the first crop of only children produced by the country’s “one child” population-control policy initiated in the 1970s. As a result, doting parents and grandparents are often willing to spend vast sums--by Chinese standards--to launch their precious progeny on the bridal path.

On fashionable Dongdan Street in Beijing, the Purple House Wedding Celebration Co. does a thriving business selling wedding packages for $500, including music, decorations and a videotape of the ceremony.

According to the Shanghai-based Liberation Daily newspaper, it is not unusual for families to spend 100,000 yuan ($12,000) for the big event and associated trappings. Included in the increasingly lavish packages are appliances and furnishings for the couple’s new apartment.

Radio comedians joke that the size of the dowry is measured in furniture “legs”--with “36 legs” from a family that supplies a modest collection including, say, a bed, armoires, chairs and a living room sofa. The size can go up to “72 legs” from a family that also supplies the newlyweds with luxury items such as televisions, freezers and the much-coveted microwave.

In bigger Chinese cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Dalian--the Yellow Sea port known for its high living and conspicuous consumption--no proper wedding is complete without a convoy of hired limos and a wedding banquet with exotic dishes where guests’ conversation is speculation on the amount their hosts spent for each course.

All of this is a long wedding march from the austere days of the Maoist era.

When Shanghai native Liu Kang married during the Cultural Revolution, in 1973, he did not inform even his closest relatives of the match. Shen Cuifang, who married in 1974, recalled: “The neighborhood committee would come to ask what kind of marriage we would have. If they thought it was luxurious, they would educate us to make it simple. One of my best friends gave me 40 renminbi [about $5]. That was all her salary for one month.”

By the time she married in 1982, Shanghai native Li Delin said, her gifts included pillows, a dress and a spittoon. “But what I wanted to get was quilts,” she noted, “because in 1982, the more quilts you had, the more limelight you got.”

For today’s wedding guests, the stakes are much higher. Those who cannot afford to bestow appliances and furniture on newlyweds are expected to give red envelopes containing the equivalent of $30 to $40.

A young, single Shanghai woman, Lu Yin, described her expectations in a recent interview. “I will make a list of everything I need, such as cosmetics and a hair dryer, and ask my close friends to buy them for me. I hope other people will give me money. I like to travel abroad. A honeymoon in Hong Kong or even Australia would be nice.”

Communist Party newspapers still huff occasionally over the rising costs. A story in the April 14 edition of the Workers’ Daily asked in a headline: “Is it necessary for ordinary people to spend luxuriously on marriage?”

After attending a ceremony for a relative in the eastern port city of Qingdao, a Workers’ Daily reporter described his dismay over the vast sums expended and the family debt incurred to celebrate the nuptials of a cousin. “Since the economic reforms, people’s standards of living have been raised,” the reporter noted. “Simple wedding ceremonies are no longer appreciated. People feel they have to spend lavishly.”

To provide a proper wedding, he reported, the groom’s parents borrowed more than $4,000 to buy appliances. This resulted in a family argument and wordplay from the bridegroom’s father. “My son got married and I feel dizzy,” he said, turning a trick with the Chinese words for marriage (jie hun) and dizziness (fa hun).

In another attempt to limit the nuptial extravaganza trend, Communist Party leaders in some cities have banned the practice by senior officials of making extra cash by leasing their imported cars to wedding parties.

But neither the government scorn nor the newspaper hectoring has done much to cool the marriage fever.

“It is characteristic of this society,” said one successful wedding shop operator, “that officials have one attitude and the citizens find a way to get around it.”

Among the biggest expenditures for newlyweds are the elaborate photo albums produced for the occasion. Some couples pay for as many as 20 poses in costumes that range from traditional Chinese red silk brocade outfits to slinky evening gowns; some of the shoots produce scenes that look as if they were lifted from magazine perfume ads.

Yeh Ta-yung, 38, a Taiwanese former fighter pilot who runs the Taiwan-owned Paris Marriage Plaza, said the two-story operation in central Beijing services an average of 1,000 couples a month with photo sessions that cost from $200 to $800 each. The company opened its first Beijing bridal photo studio in 1994. Today it operates three in Beijing, three in Dalian and two in Shanghai. Two more studios are under construction in Shanghai.

At the main Beijing studio, which draws customers from as far away as Inner Mongolia and Tibet, Yeh said there is a monthlong waiting list.

As a mellow rock CD played in the background, the stylishly dressed entrepreneur said he has confidence that the fantasy wedding-photo business will take off in mainland China, based on the success his company had in Taiwan beginning in 1986.

“Traditional Chinese families place a lot of importance on the different milestones in life,” Yeh said. “In Taiwan, we learned that young people wanted individuality. They wanted their photos to be different so they could compete and compare with other people.”

After posing on the “Garden of Eden” set, chemical engineer Wei was blushing and sweating through the collar of his tuxedo. Incited by the photographer, Wei had planted a kiss on his future wife’s cheek, causing her to giggle.

Gathering himself, Wei explained that the 3,000 yuan--$360--the couple gave for 24 fantasy wedding poses was money well spent.

“We knew we would only go through this once in life,” he said, glancing over at his smiling fiancee. “We wanted to have some special souvenirs.”

Bao Lei of The Times’ Shanghai Bureau and Wang Jilu of The Times’ Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.