| The changes of marital culture during the 17 years (1949-1966) after new China's foundation, was one important part of Chinese social and cultural evolution. It was not only closely bound up the individuals, but also reflected the changes of politics, economy, and culture and so on at that time. Therefore this paper is aimed to put the constitution of superstructure and policy and the changes of folk life together to do some researches, trying to show the complicated relation between policy's guide and changes of marital culture, exhibiting Chinese people's daily lives and spirits and understanding the foundation of a new government which had different influences to society and ordinary people's marital life.There are four aspects in this paper, which are: the evolution of marital concept, the changes of marital etiquette and custom, the new style of marriage and its limitation and the characters and historical analysis of the changes of marital culture.The researches on the evolution of marital concept try to draw the outline of its main content and tendency and to conclude the people's attitudes to marriage. For the evolution of marital concept mainly behaved marital freedom, choosing attitude, marring at a mature age, divorce, remarriage and military marriage and etc. Among these, marital freedom is the hard core of marital culture, which radically broke away from the parents' choosing power in the traditional marriage, blazoning forth the self-awareness and courage for pursuing the freedom, and thereby becomes the main stream of China's marital concept. In addition, people gradually get better understanding and have the martial concepts such as marring at a mature age and protecting the military marriage during their study and work; divorce and remarriage are no longer unaccepted.This paper discusses the changes in martial customs chiefly from three aspects, namely, the way to choose the partner, martial registration and wedding ceremony and does a close analysis and study based on the historic records of newspaper and magazines as well as the social surveys. The profound change in choosing a partner is that the traditional agreed marriage by parents is abrogated and a new group of matchmakers comes into life. Meanwhile, the free marriage of young man and woman in their lives takes a certain proportion. Martial registration system is the only legal way to establish marriage in New China. Its implementation turns the traditional factual marriage to the lawful marriage, serving as an important means to protect the martial freedom. For wedding ceremony, the economical group wedding takes place the traditional marriage portion and sedan chairs. The new style of wedding has been publicized and encouraged.The changes in martial concepts and customs bring about the new style of martial life with freedom in marriage and divorce, acceptance of remarriage, encouragement of marrying at a mature age and protection in military marriage as its main content. The new style of martial life is surely progressive. Owning to the uneven development between urban and rural areas, the traditional backward martial concepts and styles still exist in remote areas, but this will not constitute a barrier to the new style of marriage becoming the main stream of martial culture at that time.From the description of the changes in martial concept, customs and new style of martial life, we can see that the changes in martial culture are endowed with political colors and features of that time and characterized by phased and historic features. Besides, The Peoples' Commune Movement plays an important role in their formation. |
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