A little emotion at a wedding is expected.
A dramatic solitary tear, a quiet sniffle, even the occasional nose honking into a tissue is acceptable.
But brides in Southwest China’s Sichuan Province take it to a whole new level. For one thing, they start crying a full month before the wedding. Every night, for about an hour a night. Like, they totally pencil it onto their calendars.
Ten days into the ritual, things start getting really surreal. That’s when the bride’s mom joins the act, sobbing it up every night with her daughter. Ten days later, grandma enters the picture. By the end of the month, every female member of the family is wailing away like a very bad scene from a very bad romantic comedy.
The custom is called Zuo Tang, or “Sitting in the Hall.” It doesn’t really matter what they cry about, but maybe some brides take the opportunity to curse the jerks who arranged her marriage to the ugliest dude in the village.
But apparently, because she did it, everyone thought it was tres chic, and a thousand year fad was born, only it was the brides who were expected to do the crying, and the more tears the better. Those who didn’t get the job done were often beaten by their mothers.
Fast-forward a million or so years and brides in the province are still performing a version of the ceremony, singing their cries in mournful “Crying Marriage Songs,” which probably sound every bit as horrible as we imagine.
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