Cai Yuanpei's five major requirements for marriage, why scare away many relatives?

Because Cai Yuanpei's five criteria for choosing a spouse were put forward in 1901, when the Qing Dynasty had not yet perished, these five criteria for marriage were very special, and very few people met them, so they scared away many people who proposed relatives.

Cai Yuanpei, the character Heqing, Xiaomin, born in 1868 in Shanyin County, Shaoxing, Zhejiang, which is one of the places with the most cultural people and cultural masters in Chinese history, due to the influence of family learning and regional customs, Cai Yuanpei has the innate conditions to become a material. The Cai family is a merchant family, his father runs a money bank business, and the rich side is a party. The family has money and was born in the land of culture, so Cai Yuanpei has received a good education since he was a child, familiar with the Four Books and Five Classics, and the cultural foundation is very solid.

In 1883, Cai Yuanpei was admitted to the Qing Dynasty Xiucai at the age of 15. In 1889, the 21-year-old Cai Yuanpei took the Hangzhou Township Examination and was admitted to the Lifting. It was also this year that Cai Yuanpei married Wang Zhao and organized his own family. Subsequently, he went to Beijing to participate in the examination, passed five levels and beheaded six generals, successfully passed the jinshi examination, and was appointed by the imperial court as a Shujishi of the Hanlin Academy.

In 1895, after the defeat of the Qing government in the Sino-Japanese War, it signed the "Maguan Treaty" with Japan that humiliated the country, the corrupt and incompetent government, so that Cai Yuanpei was very disappointed, he began to contact Western culture, explore the new idea of saving the country and saving the people, and later the Guangxu Emperor launched a reform of the law, Cai Yuanpei was very supportive, but the restoration with the head of the restoration people fell to the ground and failed, Cai Yuanpei was completely disappointed in the Qing government, resolutely resigned from his official position, returned to his hometown Shaoxing, founded a new school, hoping to change the people through new education. But it also ended in failure.

In the autumn of 1901, Cai Yuanpei arrived in Shanghai, a bustling capital and where new thinkers gathered, and taught at Nanyang College. Previously, Cai Yuanpei's wife Wang Zhao died of illness, he was alone, and many people did his ideological work and asked him to find another Xiannei helper. Soon, a large number of matchmakers came to Cai Yuanpei's residence one after another to act as a matchmaker for the 33-year-old him, and Cai Yuanpei was overwhelmed and simply posted a notice at his door, which is his mate selection standard.

The notice is as follows: first, the woman does not tie her feet; second, it is a literate woman; third, a man is not allowed to marry a concubine, cannot marry an aunt and a wife (this is a bit puzzling, is it self-confession and commitment?). Fourth, if the husband dies first, the wife can remarry another person; fifth, if the two disagree, they can divorce at any time.

These five points, now any adult woman is in line, but in 1901, it was the Qing Dynasty, women do not tie their feet, it is an outlier, women are talentless, literate, there are very few, moreover, women talk about "festivals", the husband dies and remarries? Truly shocking, it scares away a whole bunch of people. So, his notice scared away those who came to the media.

Although it scared away the matchmaker, and although it was in the Qing Dynasty, but such a woman still existed after all, later, a friend introduced Huang Zhongyu to Cai Yuanpei, this woman was born in Xiangmendi, did not wrap her feet, and was literate, everyone was beautiful, proficient in calligraphy and painting, in line with Cai Yuanpei's mate selection standards, so it was a coincidence. Therefore, in 1902, Cai Yuanpei and Huang Zhongyu held a wedding in Hangzhou and married each other.

It is not so much to scare away the promoters as to say that the capitalist ideology in China at that time was a difficult journey, a long process of conflict with feudal ideas.

We know that Cai Yuanpei devoted his life to the struggle against feudal ideas. Cai Yuanpei has been married twice, and his first wife is because the feudal ideology is too strong, and in the case of two incompatible situations, it is doomed to the twists and turns of this marriage.

Let's take a look at what are these five requirements?

1. Women who do not wrap their feet;

2. Literate;

3. Men are not allowed to marry concubines or wives;

4. If the husband dies first, then the wife can remarry;

5. Disagreement can be divorced.

All of them were against feudal ideas, and feudal ideas were still popular in society at that time. This kind of thinking has always existed until after the founding of New China, and the feudal society and feudal thinking on the mainland for more than two thousand years have long been deeply rooted, and it is definitely not something that can be solved by a generation, until the current society in China, in some remote places, there are still more or less remnants of some shadows of feudal ideas.

In 1889, Cai Yuanpei's first wife unfortunately died, that is, at this time he made a request for marriage, which was the time when the Qing Dynasty was crumbling, and the whole of China was in a process of seeking change, and the capitalist ideas at that time could only be accepted by people like Cai Yuanpei, Lu Xun, and others who had studied and contacted Western society. China's society at that time was still a feudal society as a whole, and the status of women in the society at that time was extremely low, and the western kind of thinking of pursuing freedom and equality was even more unattainable. That is to say, the great contrast between these two ideas caused a great sensation at that time, and there were several women in China at that time who were not foot-binding women, and this requirement alone doomed the difficulty of this marriage.

Feudal thought has left too many drawbacks to society, but society is always moving forward, and anyone who is not suitable for social development will eventually be eliminated!