Honggaitou

Honggaitou
Traditional Chinese wedding ceremony (Honggaitou)
A Chinese bride wearing honggaitou to cover her face and a red wedding cheongsam.
Chinese name
Chinese红盖头
Literal meaningRed cover head
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinHónggàitou
English name
EnglishRed veil

A honggaitou (Chinese: 红盖头; pinyin: hónggàitou), also shortened to gaitou (Chinese: 盖头; pinyin: gàitou; lit. 'head cover')[1] and referred to as red veil in English,[2]: 37  is a traditional red-coloured bridal veil worn by the Han Chinese brides to cover their faces on their wedding ceremony before their wedding night.[2]: 37  The honggaitou is worn along with a red wedding dress.[a][3]: 560  Veils have been used in China since the Han dynasty.[4]: 202  The custom of wearing the honggaitou for wedding ceremonies can be traced back to the Song dynasty period.[4]: 202  The custom of wearing the honggaitou, along with the traditional red wedding dress, continues to be practiced in modern-day China. However, under the influence of Western culture and globalization, most Chinese brides nowadays wear white wedding dresses and a white veil, an imitation of Western Christian weddings,[5] instead of the red wedding dresses and honggaitou.[6]

  1. ^ Cohen, Myron L. (1998). "North China Rural Families. Changes during the Communist Era". Études chinoises. 17 (1): 59–154. doi:10.3406/etchi.1998.1267. ISSN 0755-5857.
  2. ^ a b Lu, Jie (2013). China's Literary and Cultural Scenes at the Turn of the 21st Century. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis. ISBN 978-1-317-96974-7. OCLC 870591843.
  3. ^ Perkins, Dorothy (2013). Encyclopedia of China : History and Culture. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis. ISBN 978-1-135-93562-7. OCLC 869091722.
  4. ^ a b Zhu, Ruixi; 朱瑞熙 (2016). Bangwei Zhang; Fusheng Liu; Chongbang Cai; Zengyu Wang; Peter Ditmanson; Bang Qian Zhu (eds.). A social history of middle-period China: the Song, Liao, Western Xia and Jin dynasties (Updated ed.). Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-16786-5. OCLC 953576345.
  5. ^ Cao, Nanlai (2011). Constructing China's Jerusalem : Christians, power, and place in contemporary Wenzhou. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-7642-4. OCLC 714569448.
  6. ^ Long, Yi (2019). "Cultural Differences between Chinese and American Weddings". Proceedings of the 2018 International Workshop on Education Reform and Social Sciences (ERSS 2018). Vol. 300. Atlantis Press. pp. 634–640. doi:10.2991/erss-18.2019.126. ISBN 978-94-6252-664-8. S2CID 166851183.


Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).