Chapter 51: Harmonious Shoes, Growing Old Together

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Chapter 51: Harmonious Shoes, Growing Old Together

Regardless of what Yu Shenliu thought, after discussions between his sister and Sheng Kong’s mother, Huo Shu and Sheng Kong’s whirlwind marriage became a reality. Even Chen Yuan was surprised by it. Even if two people were each other’s proper romantic luck, there were plenty of couples who dated for years before getting married. For the two of them to have reached the point of discussing marriage so quickly was honestly hard to process.

“If you want it to happen as soon as possible, then it would be best to arrange it for the earliest possible date,” Chen Yuan told Yu Shenliu.

Yu Shenliu looked somewhat dejected. He was jotting down the important points Chen Yuan mentioned in a notebook, but still asked, “Can’t we put it off for a while? Somehow, I just can’t accept sending Xiao Shu off to get married like this…”

The relationship between an uncle and his niece could be very close, especially when Yu Shenliu and Huo Shu’s mother and her siblings had spent the past ten or twenty years interacting with him as both an elder and someone of their own generation. Naturally, Yu Shenliu cared deeply about her.

Thus, even though both of their actual parents had agreed to the marriage this time, Huo Shu’s uncle, Yu Shenliu, was still dissatisfied. He felt that Sheng Kong was not good enough for Huo Shu and was doing everything he could to delay the wedding.

“If you put it off any longer, you’ll have to wait at least two months,” Chen Yuan said, shaking his head.

Yu Shenliu was surprised. “Two months!? Why?”

“Because the sixth month of the lunar calendar is coming up soon. The sixth month is the middle of the year, and there’s a saying that marrying in the sixth month means becoming a half-month wife, which is considered inauspicious. After the sixth month comes the seventh month, the Ghost Month. According to Chinese customs, both months are considered unsuitable for weddings,” Chen Yuan explained.

Judging from what both families wanted, they were hoping to have the wedding as soon as possible. Under normal circumstances, setting a wedding date a year in advance was perfectly reasonable, but for Huo Shu and Sheng Kong, putting it off for two months did not seem particularly realistic. If they could not postpone it, then they would have to get married before the sixth lunar month arrived.

His original plan had fallen through. Yu Shenliu was somewhat disappointed, but since Chen Yuan had said so, what else could he do? He could only sulk.

“And then?” Yu Shenliu asked.

Chen Yuan thought for a moment before asking, “What I’d really like to know is, what time of day have you arranged the wedding for?”

“Of course it’s in the evening. What other time would you even get married?” Yu Shenliu asked in return. As far as he was concerned, this was perfectly normal. Why did Chen Yuan even need to ask?

“Besides, our family isn’t like those other families that are always trying out foreign styles, one time having a Western wedding, the next an Indian wedding, doing who knows what from one end of the world to the other. We’ve always stuck to more traditional customs. It’s just that wedding ceremonies have changed so much over the years that all sorts of strange elements keep getting mixed into perfectly good Chinese weddings. Even the professional wedding planners can’t figure out what they’re supposed to be doing half the time. That’s why I don’t feel comfortable without asking you.”

In fact, although Chen Yuan had read quite a lot of material during this time, he had not really looked into weddings. Strictly speaking, this world had diverged from the history of his original world starting in the Ming dynasty, so more of the ancient rites should have been preserved.

In ancient Chinese customs, what was called a wedding ceremony was actually a hunli , literally a ceremony held at dusk. Naturally, it should be held in the evening.

After all, unlike Fusang , where dusk was supposedly the time when spirits and demons appeared, in Huaxia, dusk was the moment when yin and yang met, which was fitting for a marriage. Weddings only began to be held during the daytime after the Qing dynasty.

Since the Qing dynasty had never existed in this world, it made sense that the custom of holding weddings at dusk had been preserved. And according to the system of metaphysics Chen Yuan knew, getting married at other times was also considered inauspicious. Hearing Yu Shenliu say that the wedding would be in the evening, he was relieved.

“Mm. Evening is good,” Chen Yuan said. If they ended up with some problem of excessive yin suppressing yang or excessive yang suppressing yin, it would not be something that could easily be fixed afterward.

“Actually, there aren’t that many details you need to worry about. Things are different from ancient times now, and many customs simply aren’t practical anymore.

“For example, in ancient times, you weren’t allowed to step over the threshold when entering a house. The main doorway threshold represented your parents-in-law, while the bedroom threshold represented your husband. Whichever one you stepped on was said to bring misfortune to that person. There aren’t even thresholds like that anymore.”

Although ancient wedding ceremonies had many detailed customs, from the perspective of metaphysics, many of them were merely customs rather than rules that absolutely had to be followed. That was why Chen Yuan could explain them so casually.

Seeing Yu Shenliu nod to show that he understood, Chen Yuan continued, “As I said before, the wedding should be held at dusk. As for weddings nowadays, the clothing is fairly casual.

“You don’t need to worry about whether there should be a phoenix crown and ceremonial robe or a red veil. Those styles weren’t fixed from the beginning anyway. They developed gradually over time.”

For example, when people thought of an ancient Chinese wedding, they almost always imagined the bride wearing the phoenix crown and ceremonial robe supposedly reserved for an empress, while the groom wore official robes, with everything dominated by the color red.

In the beginning, wearing clothing styles and colors reserved for higher ranks was actually considered a serious violation of the rules. It was only later, when the ruling class relaxed those restrictions, that things changed.

The rules concerning men’s clothing remained relatively strict, while women eventually became free to wear whatever colors they pleased, from red and orange to yellow, green, cyan, blue, and purple. The restrictions on phoenix crowns and ceremonial robes were also relaxed, while men could wear official robes and enjoy their moment of pretending to be officials.

Otherwise, why would the four great joys of life include coming first in the imperial examinations and the wedding night? In reality, however, there were still some metaphysical taboos. Patterns such as dragons and phoenixes, for example, could be too much for someone with a weak destiny to bear, and might even diminish their own fortune.

“Regardless of what clothes she wears, a woman shouldn’t have a bag or pockets. That’s a folk custom. Apparently, if she has pockets, she’ll take her family’s wealth away with her.” Chen Yuan shrugged, looking somewhat unconcerned.

“Another folk custom is that the bride’s family isn’t supposed to treat sending their daughter off to marry as a happy occasion. So when a girl gets married, she’s supposed to cry. The harder she cries, the better.

“As for stepping over a brazier or setting off firecrackers when she enters the groom’s home, those are both meant to drive away any bad sha the bride might have encountered on the way from her family’s home to her husband’s.

“A brazier is rather dangerous, so setting off firecrackers is better.” If they really did this, it was not unheard of for a bride’s skirt to catch fire. If something like that happened to Huo Shu, it would be a disaster.

Chen Yuan said, “As for the bride’s side, no one born in the Year of the Tiger should accompany her when she leaves her family home. This is what’s known as the ‘Tiger Auntie,’ and it’s said to lead to an unhappy marriage.

“For much the same reason, aunts (gugu) and sisters-in-law (saosao) aren’t supposed to go either, since the words for them sound like gūdu and sǎoxìng , ‘loneliness’ and ‘spoiling the mood.’ But this one is up to you.

“Pronunciations have changed so much from ancient times to now that who knows whether aunts and sisters-in-law were even called that back then? It’s just a folk custom.”

For some reason, when Chen Yuan said this, Yu Shenliu secretly felt relieved that he was an uncle. Otherwise, would he have to miss Huo Shu’s wedding? That would be too bad, wouldn’t it?

If it were Chen Yuan… Uh, he wasn’t an aunt or a sister-in-law. He would count as an uncle-in-law . Perfect. No problem.

“As for Huo Shu herself, there are two things she needs to be careful about. First, once she enters the bridal chamber, she can’t lie down on the bed by herself before nightfall, or she’ll be prone to illness. Second, she needs to be careful not to step on the groom’s shoes.

“ Shoe is xié , which sounds like xié , meaning ‘harmony.’ Even in The Peacock Flies Southeast , before Liu Lanzhi takes her own life, she ‘gathers up her skirt and removes her silk shoes before throwing herself into the clear pond.’ This suggests that the marriage had ‘lost its harmony’; it wasn’t that the man she married had mistreated her.

“Come to think of it, if you’re interested, why not give her a pair of shoes as a wedding gift?” Chen Yuan grinned at Yu Shenliu as he showed off the knowledge he had picked up. Shoes were practically the perfect wedding gift.

“I’d actually like someone to give me a pair of shoes at my wedding,” Yu Shenliu muttered, his eyes casually drifting toward Chen Yuan.

Chen Yuan lowered his eyes, thinking about whether there was anything he had forgotten to mention, completely oblivious to the meaning behind Yu Shenliu’s words. He jokingly said, “Then how about I give you a pair when the time comes?”

“Ah, well, that depends on whether we can give them to each other.” His voice grew quieter and quieter until the rest of the sentence was little more than an indistinct murmur.

Yu Shenliu himself had no idea what had possessed him to blurt that out on impulse. Halfway through, he realized he had said something he probably shouldn’t have, so he swallowed the rest of his words, leaving them barely audible.

By now, Yu Shenliu finally understood what he had been struggling with all along. On the one hand, he genuinely wanted Chen Yuan to understand how he felt. At the very least, he did not want to keep suffering in silence while Chen Yuan remained completely oblivious.

On the other hand, he was afraid that making his feelings clear would cause problems. After all, although Huaxia had allowed same-sex marriage for hundreds of years and same-sex marriage was completely commonplace, looking at Chen Yuan, there was no way around it: he seemed like someone who had never even considered the possibility.

Chen Yuan was a little confused by Yu Shenliu’s indistinct words. What had he just said? Something about being able to give each other gifts? “Hmm?” The wording did seem a little strange, but perhaps Yu Shenliu simply meant that the two of them could give each other gifts when they each got married in the future?

Ultimately, your environment shapes everything. Chen Yuan had spent so long living in a world that did not recognize same-sex marriage that his thinking had become deeply ingrained.

Even after hearing Yu Shenliu say something that blatant, he still failed to realize that the man was confessing his feelings in a roundabout way.

“You’re probably at the age where you should be getting married, otherwise you don’t seem quite mature enough, and it’ll make it harder for you to move further up,” Chen Yuan said with a smile. “As for me, I still have plenty of time. I’ll see if I happen to meet someone.”

To be honest, Chen Yuan had never really considered the possibility of getting married. In his mind, he would probably just take on a disciple and leave it at that. For a physiognomist, marriage simply didn’t feel particularly realistic.

Yu Shenliu silently sank into gloom. It was obvious that Chen Yuan had heard what he said, yet his mind had instinctively refused to interpret it in the direction Yu Shenliu had intended.

And what did he mean by saying that Yu Shenliu would probably be getting married soon, while he himself still had plenty of time? That inexplicable feeling of having just been rejected was really unpleasant.

However, saying what he had just said had already pushed Yu Shenliu to his limit. He simply didn’t have the courage to make his feelings any more explicit.

When all was said and done, the man was still an utterly inexperienced romantic. Even when he fell for someone, he approached it with the purest, most innocent sort of affection, leaving anyone watching with the peculiar urge to step in and do it for him, just to save him from himself.

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