‘Three or four nothings’: China tradition of elaborate weddings rejected by growing numbers of young people who opt for no-frills simplicity
- Groom picking up bride, serving parents’ tea, emcee, unknown guests, all shunned
- Country’s young ditch patriarchal belief that husband owns wife, embrace gender equality
A new simpler wedding trend that rejects traditional elaborate nuptials and abandons dowries and bride prices is on the rise among China’s younger generation.
The style, known as “three or four nothing weddings”, means downsizing lavish arrangements. That includes cancelling traditions such as the groom picking up the bride from her home to take to the couple’s new home and the newlyweds serving tea to their parents.
It could also include not hiring an emcee, as well as not inviting guests they barely know, and even forgoing bridesmaids and groomsmen.
Instead, young Chinese couples are choosing their own ways to wed.
A woman, surnamed Huang, whose wedding was in southeastern China’s Guangdong province in August 2023, told Chinese media outlet New Weekly that instead of her husband picking her up from her home, they took a city walk with friends.
City walk is an informal leisure activity that means roaming around a city freely without a destination, which became popular in post-Covid China last year.
Another woman from Shandong province, eastern China, who goes by the name @chaojiwudiluckygongzhu on Xiaohongshu, said she and her husband cancelled the traditional ceremony and hosted their own wedding.
“My father and my partner both love me, but I am an independent individual, and my life is in my own hands,” she said.
She said she did not want an emcee because they are mostly male, and are “not good at hosting from a gender-equal perspective”.
For many who choose “three or four nothing weddings” over traditional nuptials, it reflects a desire to ditch outdated patriarchal beliefs that the husband owns his wife who has been transferred from one man to another.
Some also discarded bride prices and dowries for the same reason.
Bride prices, traditionally paid by a man to a woman’s family and average 100,000 yuan (US$14,000) plus jewellery. Dowries, brought by the bride to the couple’s future home, are usually a car or household appliances.
In recent years, the government has discouraged expensive bride prices and wedding banquets by holding group weddings, suggesting women reject the prices, and create wedding venues that put spending caps on banquets.
Cost is the main reason young people are increasingly rejecting formal wedding customs.
Usually, a wedding in China costs 174,000 yuan (US$24,000), eight times the combined average monthly salary of a young couple, according to research published by Tencent Guyu Data in 2021.
