A Lively Wedding

On the morning of 14 August in the thirty-ninth year of the Republic, a little past ten o’clock, a bridal car arrived at the gate of the Dingfanpo police station in Lukang. The black sedan had been lent by the enthusiastic district chief of Changhua District. Changhua was not yet a county then—only a district—so the district chief was the highest local authority.

The squad leader cared about face and public relations. He had my husband spend more than one hundred yuan (about a month’s salary plus allowances) to hire an eight- or nine-person brass band on a jeep, following behind the black sedan, playing and drumming all the way to fetch the bride.

Around half past eleven the bridal car brought the bride out. The band went on beating gongs and drums, playing joyful tunes, along Lukang’s largest road, Zhongshan Road, from one end of the street to the other. Household after household came out to watch; it was like a temple festival procession. After the parade they went to the district office hall to hold the wedding.

But a problem arose: the chief witness refused to come, so the wedding could not proceed. Father would not come because, in local custom, when a Taiwanese father gives away his daughter he has no reason to accompany her to the groom’s side—he did not know we were using a Western-style ceremony.

The car went to our home three times before they finally persuaded the old gentleman to attend; only then did everyone breathe easier.

Past noon the wedding finally began. The certifying witness was Lukang Township Chief Chen Peixi; the introducers were both sides’ superiors—the squad leader and the station chief. The ceremony was simple and dignified, six tables laid, the band playing the wedding march, and the wedding completed amid everyone’s blessings.

Who would have thought a marriage the family had firmly opposed would be completed in a bustle none of us had ever seen before?