Marriage of the Miao

The young people enjoys enough freedom to be courted and to love each other. In every area there is a series of activities to promote the meetings between the young people, in the daytime or at night. The musical meetings and dances are excellent pretexts to unite friendship with the people of the nearby villages, especially during the holidays and festivals, when many people meet desire of amusing itself.
In Chuxiong there were houses for the young people where these were meeting to the evening.

In spite of this freedom to love each other, the parents end up by arranging the marriage. The matchmaker plays an important role in determining the gifts exchanges between the families, and the fortune tellers in deciding the suitable date for the wedding. The Miao are monogamous. The smallest of his children remains at the parents.

The Miao do not marry those who dress in a different way, since between them the garment is an important sign of ethnic identification, and those who dress of different form, still named also Miao for the authorities, have a language and culture different. Neither they marry those of different classes.

The wedding there does not go the fiancé to gather it, but the fiancée comes with his company. The ceremony and a banquet is celebrated and it returns to house. Then little by little it is remaining more time at the fiancé's, and when the age comes, is embarrassed or wishes it, it remains already.

Also the marriage exists for abduction, which is in fact the flight of the lovers to reappear soon presenting his families and the society, before the perfect fact.

The widows had freedom. Scarcely concubinage existed. There were some divorces, especially when the parents were deciding the wedding.

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