Explainer | Why China custom requires new wife to leave husband’s home, hide from family lantern
Decorations normally seen as a sign of ‘light and hope’, but turn taboo for newlywed women during annual festival
A traditional custom in northern China known as “hiding from the lanterns” requires that newly married women leave their husband’s home and avoid the groom’s family lantern on their first Lantern Festival after marriage.
In China, lanterns are commonly seen as symbols of light and hope.
However, during the Lantern Festival, celebrated on the fifteenth day of the first month in the lunar calendar, they become a taboo for newly married women in some areas.
In a tradition popularly known as duodeng, which literally means “hiding from the lantern”, a newlywed daughter-in-law is not allowed to see the lanterns lit at her husband’s home on the night of the festival.
Instead, she must either return to her parents’ house or stay at a neighbour’s home during that time.
The custom is mainly practised in Shaanxi province, northeast China, and other parts of northern China, with some areas even requiring the ritual to be observed for three consecutive years after marriage.
The origins of the practice vary.
