Dong nationality's peculiar custom of grabbing chicken heads and breaking off marriage

I don't think anyone would have thought of such a custom. In the east of the slopes of three provinces in my country, the unique custom of breaking off marriages of the Dong people is still preserved. Xiaobian will take everyone to the Dong people to see their breaking off marriages!

The marriage customs of the Dong nationality are very strange. In the past, girls were free to play with mountains and talk about love, but marriage was not free. Dong marriage honors "the mother and uncle grow up, and the daughter returns to her uncle's home." The cousin marriage of an uncle in which "the woman returns to the uncle's door" is a traditional form of marriage that has long been followed by the Dong people. The uncle's family has the right to give priority to marrying his niece as daughter-in-law. If the uncle's family has no children or the son is of a different age, the woman can choose another marriage, but the consent of the uncle's family must be obtained, otherwise the marriage cannot be entered into. In the old days, this was an unwritten system and no one could disobey it.

For thousands of years,"returning a woman to her uncle's home" has caused countless marriage tragedies. The system is extremely unreasonable, and the ancestral will cannot be violated. In order to solve this problem, the Dong area has established a compromise solution in the long process of social development, namely "seizing the chicken's head".

The

"snatch the chicken's head" means that if a young man can bite off the head of the big live cock in the girl's hand with his mouth, or bite out blood and bite it to death, he can marry this girl. In the Dong area, if the daughter of the aunt's family is unwilling to marry into her uncle's family, she can follow the old rules and let the girl's parents come forward to carry out the best rice wine in the family, put on glutinous rice cakes, and invite the "Gala"(the most respected elders) from the mother's uncle's village to serve as arbitrators. They set up a battle on the front floor of the Drum Tower in the woman's village or at festival activities such as Lusheng Hall. The girl raised a live cock and waited for her cousin and other young men who wanted to marry her. Come together to snatch the chicken head.

Whenever this kind of thing happens in the

, not only do the neighbors of the woman's village and the uncle's village come to cheer and watch the fun like a festival, but people from the four villages also come to join in the fun when they hear the news. The young men and young men from the outer village who usually had fun with the girl and wanted to become the best friend of the Qin and Jin Dynasties all seized this rare opportunity and came from all directions to gain a hand.

Generally,"stealing the chicken's head" is carried out in a cheerful atmosphere. As the saying goes, enemies should be resolved rather than formed, and my uncle's family has nothing to say about this. This method of mediating marital conflicts in the form of festivals and entertainment is really a unique folk custom of the Dong people.

At the Dong people's divorce ceremony, grabbing the chicken's head was not a sad thing. They did it in a cheerful atmosphere, which shows the optimism of the Dong people.