Oct 16 2023, 09:04 AM, updated 3y ago
An ancient Chinese practice, known as mínghūn, or ghost marriage, has been around for centuries. Though unlike conventional marriage traditions, this one requires at least one of the parties to be dead!
Despite having been banned for many years, the ritual continues to take place in some parts of China, and with it the black market of criminal matchmakers who sell cadavers for this purpose continues to thrive.
In China, there is an ancient tradition known as mínghūn. This is a ghost marriage (or spirit marriage), where one or both parties are deceased.
The origins of the tradition are not exactly known. Some sources date it back to 3,000 years ago, while others say it goes back as far as the 17th century BCE.
The reasons vary, spending on whether it's a man or woman. Having an unwed daughter would be considered shameful for parents.
As for men, it was a matter of carrying on the family lineage. The wife of a deceased man could then adopt a child for this to occur.
Another reason why these weddings would take place was to ensure a younger brother wouldn’t get married before an elder brother.
"The basic ideology behind ghost weddings is that the deceased continue their lives in the afterlife," says Huang Jingchun, head of the Chinese department at Shanghai University.
"So if someone didn't get married when they lived, they still need to be wedded after their death," Huang Jingchun added.
For women who were previously engaged and their fiancé died, they would usually participate in the funeral, become celibate, and move in with their deceased fiancé's family. There are no records indicating that men would do the same.
In the case where one party is deceased, he/she will be represented by effigies made of bamboo, paper, or cloth. They would then wear traditional wedding clothing, as if they were real people.
In the case of two deceased people, both would be represented by funeral plaques (spirit tablets), and their bodies would then be buried together.
According to Ping Yao, a history professor at California State University, these marriages are carried out of a "parental duty to a lost child that reflected Confucian values about loyalty to the family."
The practice of ghost marriages was first banned in Imperial China, and then banned again by the Chinese Communist government in 1949.
They are, however, still practiced illegally in some parts of rural China, and indeed are commonly accepted by some communities.
Here is an example of a prayer said in afterlife weddings: "So and so, I hereby inform you: You died at young age and thus did not realize the great principle of marriage. You sleep alone in the dark world and lack the intimacy of man and woman. Just as living people long for companionship, the dead fear loneliness as well. Unexpectedly, so and so's family had a daughter who just passed away like an autumn leaf. We sent a betrothal for you so your souls might meet. We selected this auspicious day for the rite of your union. We also set out an offering next to your shrine tablet, furnished with all kinds of food. Please send your spirit down to the banquet and eat the meal."
Finding a suitable ghost bride is particularly hard because there are substantially more men than women in China.
And things get even harder for men who live in rural areas, where many women leave to study, work, and start a new life in the city.
In places such as the Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces, which primarily lived off coal mining and where women are scarce, female corpses became a sought-after commodity.
So much so that when one young woman dies, many families with deceased sons rush to bid for their corpses.
"Usually when the auction is over and the girl's family promises to deliver her body to the winning parents, the girl is still alive," explains Wang Yong, who works at a Shanxi hospital.
Reportedly, around 30 years ago, a female corpse would cost somewhere around 5,000 yuan (approximately US$742), but the price skyrocketed, leading to grave robberies and murders.
The South China Morning Post reported that in 2009, a grieving father from Shaanxi paid 33,000 yuan (US$4,896) for grave robbers to find a bride for his deceased son who had perished in a car accident.
In 2013, four men were arrested for stealing 10 female corpses, which were to be sold on the ghost marriage black market for around US$30,800 total.
In October 2014, 11 people were arrested in eastern China for digging up female corpses from a village in Shandong province.
“Years-old carcasses are not worth a damn, while the ones that have just died, like this one, are valuable,” said a man named Wang, the lead suspect of the crime.
In 2015, the bodies of 14 female corpses were stolen in one village in the Shanxi province of China.
According to research conducted by Shanghai University, the price paid for a female cadaver back then would be around 30,000 to 50,000 yuan (approximately US$4,451 to $7,418). Though it’s estimated that they could go up to 100,000 yuan (US$14,837).
In 2016, a man named Ma Chonghua killed two women and sold their bodies for 40,000 yuan (US$5,934) each for ghost marriages.
While most ghost marriages are performed in rural areas of northern and central China, the ritual has been reported among the Chinese community in other countries across Asia, including Singapore and Taiwan.
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The dark history of China's ghost marriages
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