Marriage Establishment
4 min readThe marriage forms of each minority in Xinjiang mainly include the arranged marriage, the matchmaker introduction, the exchanged marriage, the prenatal betrothal, uxorilocal marriage and the free love marriage. In the past, the marriage of the youth of the ethnic minorities in Xinjiang was usually arranged by parents, but in some groups, the situation that the young men and women admired each other and married with each other after the agreement of the parents also existed more or less.
Among many groups, carrying out the marriage for the children was regarded as a sacred duty of the parents. Therefore, in the past, children thought that their marriage was at their parents’ beck and call and exclusively controlled by their parents. Some children were engaged even in their mothers’wombs, which is called the “prenatal betrothal”or the “child marriage”. The prenatal betrothal of the Xibe usually means that the pregnant wives of both families state that the two families form an in-law once they give birth to one boy and one girl. The engagement way is commonly known as “egg marriage”among the Xibe and known as “prenatal betrothal”among the Khalkhas.A long love poem Elip and Senem widely spread among the Uygur people narrates a story about the prenatal betrothal:a king and a prime minister once vowed that they would form the in-law if they respectively had one boy and one girl. The prime minister died afterwards and the family was in straitened circumstances, so the king wanted to break off the engagement.
However, the two children loved each other deeply and broke through barriersto get married. The story praises ideal marriage vows and manifests the love between the young man and the young woman. In recent years, the marriage arranged by parents has been obviously reduced. However, the arranged marriage still occupies a certain proportion in some minorities in Xinjiang till now, and the proportion is larger in remote agricultural and pastoral areas. In the past, the mate selection for the children in the ethnic minorities in Xinjiang mainly stressed on the social status and the economic condition ancthen they also paid attention to the character, temperament and life style of the mother. As a Kazak proverb goes,”The mother is the reflection of the dauahter; the family of a daughter is aood once the mother is aood.”A Xibe proverb says,”Observe a cow to purchase a calf, and observe the mother to marry a daughter-in-law.”The moral character of a daughter is measured usually according to the personality and the character of the mother. The female is a manager of one family, so people hope their son to marry an intelligent wife who has good character.
Early marriage also exists among the ethnic groups such as the Uyqur, the Hui, the Khalkhas, the Tajik and the Ozbek in Xinjiang, which is influenced by the Islam to a certain degree. According to the Islam,a boy of or over 12 yearsold or a girl of or over 9 years old is adult and can get married. According to The Bridal Bed written by American scholar Joseph Braddock, the Islam considers that the girls are inherently weak and unable to protect themselves, so the early marriage can help them to avoid the virginity hit before the marriage.A common saying “one girl who cannot be defeated by a hat can get married”is popular among the ethnic minorities. In the past, the parents arranged the marriages for the children usually once the boy was 16 or 17 years old and the girl was 14 or 15 years old. If the daughter was slightly older, the parents and the daughter herself would encounter the pressure from the social opinion. The virginity of the female was mentioned for multiple times in “the Theory on How to Take a Wife”in the Chapter 62 of the famous long poem Happiness and Wisdom in the 11th century:”She must be born in a goodfamily, having a pure background, being virtuous and having shame awareness and piety”,”the female is noble once she is pious and virtuous, and the leftthree items(fortune, family status and beauty) are contained in the piety and the virginity without a doubt.”Carrying out the marriage for the children is regarded as a responsibility and obligation of the parents. Thus, for providing for the elderly as well as seeing that the children get married and start their career early, give birth to and raise the children and learn run their household, the parents like their children to get married early. After the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, the Marriage Ordinance for the Xinjiang autonomous region provides that no marriage may be contracted before a man reaches 20 years old and a woman reaches 18 years old in consideration of the early marriage tradition of the ethnic minorities. With the implementation of the Marriage Law, the early marriage phenomenon of the ethnic minorities is basically eliminated today.
