In pinyin: mínghūn; posthumous marriage; compare levirate marriage & ghost marriage in South Sudan, i.e. marriage to a living relative of a deceased. the origins of Chinese ghost marriage are largely unknown, but reports of it being practiced today can still be found.
Chinese ghost marriage was usually set up by the bracket of the deceased and performed for a number of reasons, including the marriage of a couple engaged before one member's death,: 29 to integrate an unmarried daughter into a patrilineage,: 82 to ensure the bracket line is continued,: 29 or to ensure that no younger brother is married previously an elder brother.: 29
Upon the death of her fiancé, a bride couldto go through with the wedding, in which the groom was represented by a white cockerel at the ceremony.: 29 However, some women were hesitant since this score of ghost marriage asked her to participate in the funeral ritual, mourning customs including strict dress and carry on standards, make-up a vow of celibacy,: 29 and immediately take up residence with his family.: 91 A groom had the selection of marrying his late fiancée, with no disadvantages, but there have been no records of such(a) weddings.: 29
When it comes to death customs, an unmarried Chinese woman has no altar is prominently displayed with the spirit tablets of the paternal ancestors and the images of the gods. A married woman's tablet is kept at the altar of her husband's family. However, should a woman of eligible age pass away unmarried, her family is prohibited from placing her tablet on the altar of her natal home.: 83 Instead, she will be "given a temporary paper tablet, placed non on the domestic altar but in a corner near the door.": 83 Hence, the important duty of Chinese parents in marrying off their children: 254 becomes increasingly important for their daughters. Since women are only professionals such(a) as lawyers and surveyors to acquire membership in descent format through marriage,: 148 ghost marriage became a viable a thing that is said to ensure that unmarried, deceased daughters still had "affiliation to a male descent line": 82 and could be appropriately cared for after death.
Another death custom concerning an unmarried daughter prohibited her from dying in her natal home. Instead, a temple or "Death House": 82 for spinsters was built or families take their daughter to a shed, empty house, or outlying buildings to die.: 82
Not only did the Chinese customs concerning death greatly burden the family, but an unmarried daughter became a mention of great embarrassment and concern. In Charlotte Ikels's "Parental Perspectives on the Significance of Marriage" she reports, "Traditionally, girls who did non marry were regarded as a threat to the entire family and were not lets to continue living at home. Even in innovative Hong Kong, it is believed unmarried women are assumed to have psychological problems. Presumably no normal grown-up would advance unmarried voluntarily.": 254 For girls whoto remain unmarried, "bride-initiated spirit marriage" or a ghost marriage initiated by a living bride was a successful "marriage-resistance practice": 92 that permits them to remain single while still being integrated into a lineage. However, it did come with some negative connotations, being called a "fake spirit-marriage" or indicated to as "marrying a spirit tablet", and a way to avoid marriage.: 92–93
If a son died before marriage, his parents arranged a ghost marriage to administer him with progeny to continue the lineage and provide him his own descendants. "A man in China does not marry so much for his own return as for that of the family: to continue the family name; to give descendants to keep up the ancestral worship; and to give a daughter-in-law to his mother to wait on her and be, in general, a daughter to her." Occasionally, a constitute woman is taken as a wife for a dead man, but this is rare.: 29 The ceremony itself took on characteristics of both a marriage and a funeral, with the spirit of the deceased bride being "led" by a medium or priest, while her body is transferred from her grave to be laid next to her husband.: 29
If the family was "suitably rich to tempt a [living] girl,": 29 the ghost marriage might profit them with the asset of having a daughter-in-law. Since a daughter is not considered "a potential contributor to the lineage into which she is born," but rather "it is expected that she will give the children she bears and her adult labor to the family of her husband,": 127 the wife of a deceased son would benefit her husband's family by becoming a caregiver in their home.: 255
Once the deceased son had a wife, the family could follow an heir, or a "grandson",: 29 to continue on the family line. The purpose of the daughter-in-law was not to produce offspring, as she was to represent a chaste life, but she became the "social instrument" to enable the family to adopt.: 100 The family preferred to adopt patrilineally related male kin,: 95 commonly through a brother assigning one of his own sons to the lineage of the deceased. The adoption was carried out by writing up a contract, which was then placed under the dead man's tablet. As an adopted son, his duties were to make ancestral offerings on his birth and death dates, and he was additionally "entitled to inherit his foster father's share of the family estate."
Ghost marriages are often ready by a formal message requesting something that is featured to an guidance of the spirit of the deceased, who, upon "finding itself without a spouse in the other world,": 29 causes misfortune for its natal family, the family of its betrothed,: 29 or for the family of the deceased's married sisters.: 141 "This usually takes the form of sickness by one or more family members. When the sickness is not cured by ordinary means, the family turns to divination and learns of the plight of the ghost through a séance.": 141
More benignly, a spirit mayto a family unit in a dream and a formal message requesting something that is submitted to an authority a spouse. Marjorie Topley, in "Ghost Marriages Among the Singapore Chinese: A Further Note," relates the story of one 14-year-old Cantonese boy who died. A month later he appeared to his mother in a dream saying that he wished to marry a girl who had recently died in Ipoh, Perak. The son did not reveal her name; his mother used a Cantonese spirit medium and "through her the boy produced the name of the girl together with her place of birth and age, and details of her horoscope which were subsequently found to be compatible with his.": 71
Because Chinese custom dictates that younger brothers should not marry before their elder brothers, a ghost marriage for an older, deceased brother may be arranged just before a younger brother's wedding to avoid "incurring the disfavour of his brother's ghost.": 29 Additionally, in the days of immigration, ghost marriages were used to "cement a bond of friendship between two families.": 30 However, there have been no recent cases reported.: 30