Wedding Dinner Conversation
You guys know how Chinese wedding dinners frequently serves roast porks? Im talking about the dish which the pig's skin gets fried till it turns brown and crispy, and you eat it with sweet sauce or something like that. Well yeah ... I was discussing this tradition with my mom and ah mah during the wedding banquet i had a few days back, and I thought I might share what i learned. Its pretty interesting, really.From what i heard, the pork dish is kinda a gift from the groom's family to the bride's family. It is only presented on the day after the marriage, after the couple consummated the night before. The roasted pig must be presented on a large plate together with the pig's head, usually in a layout that resembled the living pig itself (head in front and tail behind, sometimes with the 4 legs sticking out from the side). The pig's head is actually an indicator of whether the bride is a virgin before her wedding. On the wedding night, the bride is required to wear a white coloured panty, and you people know what happens after the sexual intercourse if she is indeed a virgin.
If she isn't, the pig's ears are sliced off when the dish is presented to the bride's household. Otherwise, the ears remain on the pig's head, and the dish is presented together with the stained panty ( I think ). In olden times where asian values are strong to the core of the Chinese traditions, losing your virginity before marriage is somewhat the equivalent of losing your purity, and the bride will likely be looked down by most people, including the groom's family. This is why relatives and friends all tend to flock around the dish when it is presented, to take a good look at its ears.
But well ... ... with the advancement in surgical technology and all, this custom gradually loses its meaning. Virgins can now be "recreated" as long as you got the dough to pay for it. Haha, anyways, if this custom is practiced in the US, the rubbish bin will probably be full of trashed ears.
posted by JaNuS @ Monday, May 09, 2005
