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Text: Wen Shuyan
Edited by Wen Shuyan
Preface
Now there are more and more single people, and the age of singles has also shown an upward trend, after all, now we are in our 30s and do not get married, at most parents say a few words, and it will not become a strange event in society.
But modern society can be so friendly to singles because we are now open-minded, but in the previous feudal period, the fate of those bachelors who were not married was not as happy as ours.
And our current legal age for marriage is generally 22 years old for boys and 20 years old for girls, which is also considering that this age has three mature enough views to be able to decide whether to enter a marriage. At the same time, the physiological conditions of the body have also been developed, and the law allows men and women of appropriate age to enter the marriage hall.
But in ancient times, when physiology and medicine were not yet mature, the ancestors could not care about this, and the average age and life expectancy of ancient people were very short, so ancient people could marry much earlier than today, and even in some more remote and poor areas, boys and girls at the age of fourteen or fifteen were matched by their parents.
But the question arises again: In the ancient period when the etiquette law was strict, what if someone insisted on not getting married? In the 5,000 years of China, there must have been a few people who swore not to marry for so long, but the attitude of the ancient people in the past towards them was not as tolerant as that of modern people.
So, how did the ancient laws punish men and women who did not marry?
Government Medium
In ancient times, adult men and women did not get married, and the most anxious were the upper ruling class, after all, if the number of ordinary people below was getting smaller and smaller, it also proved that the country was becoming more and more turbulent, and then the ruling position of the upper ruler would naturally be unstable.
Therefore, in the matter of finding a spouse for men and women in ancient times, it is really the antonym of the phrase "the emperor is not in a hurry and the eunuch is in a hurry", which happens to mean that the eunuch is not in a hurry and the emperor himself is in a hurry.
Of course, the state distribution is not a joke now, but refers to the fact that the ancient government would pick the right day every year to marry men and women of the right age, and also advise their parents to set lifelong events for their sons and daughters as soon as possible.
And every year, the government will have officials come forward to act as matchmakers, gather the unmarried men and women of appropriate age in the whole village, and then concentrate on them to talk to the matchmaker, which is also one of the KPIs set by the central government for the local government every year.
Therefore, under the majesty of the official, the common people naturally did not dare to resist, so the possibility of the official matchmaker being able to successfully match is still relatively large, which can be regarded as a matter of peace for the emperor of Tiangao to a certain extent.
However, even if the government comes forward, there are always some hard-headed men and women who do not obey the command of the government and insist on engaging in singleness, and there are many precedents of this in ancient times, so the ancient government has to come up with other ways to stabilize these thorns.
After all, the government wants to have a good relationship with the people, and the major affairs of marriage and love cannot be forced to do, so they can only find some ways to save the country in a roundabout way, for example, in some dynasties, there are many families with unmarried men and women of appropriate age, and they have to pay an extra poll tax.
In the past, the tax burden of farmers in ancient times was very heavy, and the land tax itself could make many farmers bankrupt, and if an unmarried head tax was paid at this time, then it might force unmarried men and women to take the initiative to get married.
For example, in the Han Dynasty, if there was a school-age woman in the family who was unmarried and did not plan to marry and have children, then this year's tax would have to be levied an additional poll tax, and there was an unmarried head tax in the family that was six times more expensive, which was definitely a ruthless move in ancient times.
During the Han Dynasty, the tax was multiplied by six times, but in the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, the unmarried tax was more specific, as long as there was an unmarried person of appropriate age in the family, then an extra 600 yuan would be paid every year.
At this time, someone is about to ask, when the government comes to the census every year, isn't it okay to let the unmarried people hide first?
In fact, in ancient times, population control was still very strict, and generally someone in the family had to go to the government to register as soon as they were born, so the government's population book was clear about the age and marriage of the members of each family, and it was impossible to hide it.
Therefore, many men and women of school age in ancient times could only get married passively under the pressure of heavy taxes, although it was said that the use of taxes as a big stick to force people to marry and have children had a certain effect.
But the marriage forced in this way will not be happy, so it has created a lot of resentful wives and resentful husbands in ancient times, and this has become a new problem of social turmoil.
Prison time
But there is an ancient Chinese saying that "where there is oppression, there is resistance", that is, the government came up with 100 tricks to match marriage, and the official was a matchmaker and imposed additional taxes, but in ancient times, there were still some nail households who swore to die and did not marry, so the court could use the most ruthless tricks.
In the ancient Yue Kingdom, Goujian, the king of Yue, once issued such an order that sounded a little funny: if there are women over 15 years old in the family, if they are not married when they reach the age of marriage, they will not only punish themselves, but even go to prison together with their parents and fellow villagers.
The ancient people were so miserable that they would be treated as criminals if they didn't get married, and if the children of the family didn't get married, the relatives and the old folks in the family would be treated as a fish in the pond, so to speak, one person would not get married, and the whole family would be unlucky.
Therefore, at that time, if there was a thought of not getting married, they had to be locked up in prison, and they had to reflect until they voluntarily came out to get married.
The most important thing is that in the agricultural society at that time, as long as agricultural production was stable, the country's grassroots governance would be stable, and this was also a necessary condition for the stable rule of the upper-class rulers.
In addition, if some older unmarried young people are also one of the factors of social instability in society, they will probably form undesirable elements that endanger social existence, such as ruffians and hooligans or homeless people, and will also have a great adverse impact on the social atmosphere.
Marriage and love are not free
In these means of forcing marriage, in the eyes of modern people is already very painful, but in ancient society, young men and women have no freedom of marriage and love at all, they pay attention to a "parents' order, matchmaker's words", as long as the parents nod, regardless of whether the bride and groom agree or not, a sedan chair will let the two get married.
Although most men and women in ancient times did not see each other before marriage, this is not absolute, after all, during the Lantern Festival on the night of the Yuan Festival, those eldest ladies who were locked in the attic were still allowed to go to the street for a day.
It was at this time that young men and women in ancient times had the opportunity to meet, but the ancient etiquette system was strict, and even if two people fell in love, they could not spark when their parents did not agree.
But the society of the Tang Dynasty is also a kind of wonder, because during the Tang Dynasty, the folk customs were very open, and the shackles on women at that time were not strong, and women in the Tang Dynasty could dress up and go shopping.
Therefore, during the Tang Dynasty, if a young man and a young girl sparked a spark of love, and then forcibly married without the order of their parents, although the government at that time did not advocate it, but did not suppress this kind of behavior.
But this is just a special case during the Tang Dynasty, and in other dynasties, this is absolutely unlikely.
epilogue
Therefore, the marriage in ancient society has no love foundation at all, it is just a stable tool for social governance and rule, and ancient marriages are generally not happy, they are all forcibly brought together by their parents, and two people are generally just a partner to live a relationship.
But even so, under the premise of no happiness, this marriage must also be concluded, at that time there is no personal freedom, once a woman does not want to get married, not only affects herself, but even implicates her family, most people can't bear it, and they have entered the cage of marriage.
In today's society, we can fall in love freely, which is the freedom that our ancestors who broke through the cage of thought for thousands of years, so we can also see that modern civilized society pays more attention to people themselves than ancient feudal society, which is the progress of Chinese history and the progress of Chinese civilization.
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