Nowadays, the matter of marriage urging has become a common phenomenon, and almost every "elderly" young person will be "cordial greetings" by the elders day after day.
Some of the older generation even regard feudal concepts such as "men should marry, women should marry", "no filial piety has three, no queen is great", etc., as a matter of course, believing that this is the law of the ancestors cannot be violated, and the unmarried people who appear among young people are regarded as heretics by them.
But this kind of "righteousness" is untenable. As early as the Ming and Qing dynasties, when people got married and had children at the age of fifteen or sixteen, the unmarried people in our country appeared.
This group of groups, nicknamed "self-combing women" and "black-clothed teams", did not choose to obey when they faced feudal and religious oppression, but used their lives to fight against such "natural righteousness".
The story of this group of legendary women also begins with the current social situation at that time.
"Five flower sticks were broken in three days, and nine embroidered skirts were broken on kneeling in April." The ballad describes the difficult situation of women in feudal marriages.
In ancient times, women's status was low, and they lost their freedom only because of feudal rituals such as "the word of the matchmaker, the order of the parents" and "the three from the four virtues".
Faced with such a situation, some Shunde women in the Ming and Qing dynasties stood up and agreed not to marry to fight.
This group of women is the self-combing women.
In ancient times, when a woman got married, the elders would straighten their hair and tie it into a coil as a symbol of marrying a woman. The self-combing women straightened their hair, tied them into a young woman's bun, and then feasted on the township and made a vow in public not to marry in this life.
The fact that the self-combing woman dared to act in this way was closely related to the development of the commodity economy in the Ming and Qing dynasties. During the Ming Dynasty, the textile industry in Shunde began to rise, and in the middle and late Qing Dynasty, the export of silk fabrics in Shunde was the crown of the province.
In the ancient book "Zhejiang Tongzhi" there is such a passage: "During the Ming Dynasty, Jiashan County woven yarn, weaved as cloth, and every household learned as Hengye... Men and women may stay up all night. "It shows the popularity of the textile industry at that time."
The development of the textile industry has made the demand for labor soaring, as the main force of the textile industry, women at that time to obtain a stable position, according to the "Shunde County Chronicle" record, Shunde textile industry peak, Ronggui has more than a dozen silk factories, and tens of thousands of female workers.
Material independence allows women to stop relying on others for their lives. As a result, some women choose to become self-groomed women and make a vow not to marry for life, so as to avoid the tragic situation after marriage.
The county chronicle records that there were more than a thousand female workers in a textile factory in Shunde at the end of the Ming Dynasty, of which more than 800 were self-combing women.
Even if they are financially independent, there are also forced marriages among self-grooming women, but they have a set of coping methods - "not leaving home".
When the self-combing woman is forced to marry, she will wear a one-piece suit that is not easy to tear off, and carry scissors with her, so that the groom does not dare to make a mistake when drawing the cave room, and other self-combing women nearby will also surround the room, as long as the woman shouts for help, she will break through the door to ensure that nothing goes wrong.
After three days of this, the woman can leave her husband's house on the grounds of returning to the door, although she is still the daughter-in-law of the husband's family in name only, and can be buried in the husband's family after death, but she is almost no longer in contact with the husband's family.
Qu Dajun, one of the three great masters of Lingnan in the Qing Dynasty, encountered "not to fall at home", and the resolute resistance of the self-combing women made Qu Dajun only complain about "pushing the negative mother, Hongjing did not return to his wife", while marrying another concubine to pass on the lineage.
The self-combing women who were far away from feudal marriages had their own way of life.
They called themselves aunts, worshiped as sisters, lived together in their self-built aunt's house, took care of each other like family, shared all kinds of affairs together, and in addition to working to support themselves, they also subsidized their families with wages.
Relying on their own strength, self-combing women do not have to act like ordinary women in the eyes of others, and enjoy their freedom.
But the freedom of self-grooming women challenged the bottom line of feudal etiquette, which caused people to fear, so various regulations were formed to squeeze their freedom.
When a woman makes an oath, she will not regret it for the rest of her life, and even if she meets the person she likes, she can only continue to stay in the aunt's building and endure alone, otherwise she will be resisted by everyone.
In the movie "Self-Combing", the protagonist Yi Huan combs himself in order to avoid marrying someone he doesn't like, and when he meets a good person later, he can only sneak together, and after an unexpected pregnancy, he even takes a wire to scrape the palace to have an abortion, and if he is found, he will be killed in public by the soaked pig cage.
Even if the self-combing woman does not break the oath, she still has to endure a lot of discrimination.
If you show up outside the home, you will be ridiculed by men and will be squeezed by the same sex. They usually can only wear black and gray clothes, dress plainly, in order to show that they do not dress up for others, otherwise they will attract criticism, so they are also called "black clothes team".
The place of residence is a forbidden place for men, and even if you are like a father and brother, you are not allowed to step into the courtyard door for half a step.
When the self-combing woman is old, it is difficult to find even the place where she has buried. They were considered to be unknown and would affect feng shui, so they could not die in their mother's house and bury them in the tomb of the sect, and even the land near the village could not be used.
Most of the deceased self-combing women are handled by their companions, sent into rivers or buried in the wilderness, and are called "pure women".
Some of these self-grooming women will choose to buy a door, marry a woman, and try to bury her in someone else's grave after death.
But this process is full of humiliation, not only to spend money to marry the dead, but also to be interrogated by the other party, until the other party is satisfied, in order to obtain the qualification to marry the dead.
After that, it is necessary to pay money and greetings regularly, otherwise you will be thrown out of the house and lose the qualification to enter the tomb. The self-combing woman has suffered a lot of hardships to be able to change the "door".
In that era, the self-combing women did not completely escape the oppression of feudal etiquette, but their spirit of exhausting their pursuit of freedom was admirable.
With the gradual improvement of women's status, self-combing women have slowly become history. Today, there are only a few self-grooming women left in the country, and the youngest of them is close to the age of 100.
One of them, Liang Jieyuan, did the first thing every day, that is, to go to the Ice Jade Hall to give incense to the Immortal Card. Ice Jade Hall was built in 1948 by self-grooming women who returned from Nanyang to let everyone have a home.
Only with the passage of time, the sisters on the Longevity Card, one by one, left, once more than 300 names, and now only 12 are still alive, they are China's last self-combing women.
In Liang Jieyuan's memories, these last self-combing women have a different situation from their predecessors.
According to the county chronicle, there were 400,000 women in Shunde at that time, and the number of self-combing women exceeded 10,000, and the income was higher than that of men: "Rongqi, Guizhou, and Daliang, silk reeling women and child workers earned one yuan to three millimeters a day, and male workers paid more than one yuan to one yuan." ”
However, after the 1930s, the war led to the decline of the coastal textile industry, and after the collapse of the silk factory, a large number of self-grooming women lost their jobs. Self-groomed women who have lost their financial resources can only find another way.
"At that time, the war was fought, the Japanese entered the village, my eldest brother was scared out of his guts and died, my sister-in-law also went to Hong Kong to work, two nephews, one 4 years old, one 6 years old, if I marry, what if my parents take two grandchildren?" 」
In Liang Jieyuan's story, the reason why she chose to comb herself is to help her family, and the other is the fear of childbearing, her mother gave birth to 12 children, and only 4 survived.
"The king of Yan Luo and the people were separated by a piece of paper, there was no caesarean section at that time, there were many deaths in difficult childbirth, I heard that giving birth to children is also very painful, I just want to marry or not to marry, many people come to me to get married, I said you go away, I don't marry."
And another self-combing woman, Huang Ruiyun, jokingly said that she was not voluntary when she was a self-combing woman: "My family has two mothers, eleven sisters, I rank fifth, my father said, in the future, there are men who have children in the family, and there are no women, so why should I keep it?" I rely on myself, I am gone, I am not the same as the eighth aunt (Liang Jieyuan), she was so beautiful when she was young, many people loved, why not get married? Some people love to get married, I am no one to love, can not rely on parents and no one wants, then be a self-combing girl. ”
The village chief Huang Xue said: "At that time, the rural families were similar, mostly for less income, more children, my aunt Huang Lijin, went to Nanyang at the age of 15, no one objected to her self-combing, grandparents were willing to let her go outside to make money to help the family, not to make money, the family is more difficult, many old people think so." ”
Under such circumstances, the self-combing women have flocked to Nanyang to survive for themselves and their families. Most of the self-combing women have no culture, and after going to Nanyang, almost all of them are engaged in the work of maids.
Talking about this experience, Liang Jieyuan did not say too much about himself, but frequently mentioned the most eye-catching figure in their group - Ouyang Huanyan.
Ouyang Huanyan worked as a maid for The Father of the Nation of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, for forty years, and single-handedly raised his children, so it was often seen in the newspaper.
But Liang Jieyuan said: "Aunt Ouyang did not work in Lee Kuan Yew at the beginning, but worked in Chen Jiageng's home for 9 years, and then the Japanese army invaded Singapore, the Chen family returned to Chongqing, Lee Kuan Yew's mother invited her to work at home, she and her sister went to the Lee family, and she worked for 40 years." ”
When Ouyang Huanyan was 18 years old, he went to Nanyang with his sister to work as a maid. His first job was at the home of Chen Jiageng, a famous patriotic overseas Chinese leader. When Chen Jiageng left, because his sister was still in Singapore, Ouyang Huanyan did not follow him.
After being invited to Lee Kuan Yew's home, Ouyang Huanyan accompanied the family here for more than forty years, when Lee Kuan Yew was still a lawyer, far from being prominent in the future, and the eldest son was born not long ago, and no one thought that this child would become prime minister in the future.
In these 40 years, Ouyang Huanyan was "responsible for making up the boy (with the baby) and the second sister cooking rice".
Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, from a toddler, was cared for by her until she studied abroad. Ouyang Huanyan and the children have a good relationship, when the children are picked up, they all run over to hold hands, smile and call Aunt Yan, and tell the interesting things they have encountered.
Ouyang Huanyan also likes these children, keeps the children's preferences in mind, often gets up early to buy fresh vegetables, and lets the second sister make meals for the children.
When Ouyang Huanyan returned to China, the children of the Li family often sent gifts and letters to greet, Li Weiling once wrote after sending a family portrait: You are a good memory of our growing years, I take this opportunity to say "thank you" to you!
Lee Hsien Loong also entrusted the embassy to send her bird's nest. Now Ouyang Huanyan's home still has various photos of the Li family at that time.
For this last batch of self-combing women, it is not uncommon for Ouyang Huanyan to bring up children like this, talking about his experience of taking a baby, Liang Jieyuan said: "The first owner's surname is Cen, and he brought three children with him, brought them to grow up and become a family, I brought up the daughter of the Cen family, got married and had a son, and I also brought it." ”
Huang Ruiyun quipped while listening to the memories: "When ordinary people ask her what she has done, the first sentence is that I brought up 12 children, and when she said this, I was very proud." ”
Recalling the memorable events in the maid's experience, Liang Jieyuan talked about an employer's child who was sick.
The child suddenly itched and peeled all over his body, Liang Jieyuan was anxious to find a way around, and finally solved it with the help of an old woman, "She said that this is fetal poison, take half a pound of plum blossom boiling water to take a bath, I tried, really good, it was too scary at the time." ”
Because of the conscientious and responsible conduct, this group of self-combing women who went south was very popular with employers, Liang Jieyuan recalled: "The host family was very good to me, what they ate, they went out for morning tea and called me to go with me, I have taken children to grow up and settle in Australia, and now they come back to see me and ask me if I have enough money to spend." ”
Talking about the past, when talking about the ice jade hall at his feet, Liang Jieyuan, as the caretaker, was quite emotional: "The world is different, now you can live with your family, the second floor used to be full of aunts' beds, now they are demolished, some live with their own, some live with their relatives, and they buy their own houses, and when they are idle, they come here to drink tea and chat." ”
Liang Jieyuan also said that everyone signed a will and donated it when they were no longer there. And sighed that it is a good thing that there is no self-combing woman: "There will be no more (self-combing women) in the future, why keep it?" Now people are really good, fairy-like life, girls can no longer be self-grooming women. ”
When asked if he regretted it later, the old man said freely: "What is there to regret, even if you get married and have children, there are good and bad, who is right?" It's good to be on your own for a lifetime. ”
From the first self-combing women in the Ming and Qing dynasties, to the last self-combing women now. They have different self-grooming reasons in different eras, but they are all using actions to fight for the life they want.
In today's era, there are no longer self-combing women, economic independence provides women with the right to choose, and vows in exchange for freedom are no longer applicable today, which makes marriage a choice problem, not a mandatory problem.
Whether you choose to be independent or choose to grow old with your children, it is enough to pursue what you want, and you don't have to care about other people's words.
Life is its own snow, each has its own purity and darkness, self-combing women are willing to stand up to the bright or dark snow all the way forward, just to be themselves, which is enough to make people admire.