时间：2020-05-22 点击：1148次
Every morning past 9, Huang Qundi goes to Bingyu Hall not far from her home after she finishes her breakfast.
Huang Qundi is a "self-combed" woman who takes a lifelong commitment to remain single. Everyone respectfully calls her Third Great Aunt.
There is a unique marriage custom for spinster in the Pearl River Delta called “self-comb”, which means women dress their own hair. In Qing Dynasty, the unmarried girls had a long braid in the Pearl River Delta. And when they got married, their mother or a female elder would help them roll their braids into a bun at the back of their head. However, "self-combed" women went through a special ceremony where they would change their hairstyle into a bun on their own to take the vow that they would never get married until they died. Once they did it, they could never regret it. Such women are called "self-combed" women.
According to the "Shunde County Annals", Shunde's custom of self-combed women began in the late Qing Dynasty and boomed in the early Republic of China. At that time, Shunde had a developed silk industry. Many female workers therefore had decent salaries and economic independence. After knowing that some of their married sisters were bullied by the husband's family and had unequally low status, they decided not to be bound by marriage and remained single for the rest of their life once they were financially independent. In the 1920s and 1930s, Shunde's self-combed women reached the highest level, with the estimated number of up to 10,000.
However, in the middle to late 20th century, many people lived in dire poverty due to wars and political turmoil. At this time, women often chose not to marry in order to increase the income of their family. Third Great Aunt is one of them.
Bingyu Hall was an elderly home established in 1951 by the self-combed women of the Shatou Village who worked in South East Asia. In the past, people were superstitious and believed that unmarried women would bring bad luck to the family. So, the self-combed women could not live with their family, and even after death, their family could not bury them and hold funerals for them. Therefore, some self-combed women who get along will pool money to buy a house to live together. The house is commonly known as an "Aunt's House." Nowadays, the prejudice against self-combed women has gone. Most of them choose to go home to live with their family and enjoy their later life. The deserted Bingyu Hall is transformed into a museum, and meanwhile serves as a gathering place where self-combed women can meet each other. Twelfth Aunt, Third Great Aunt's closest friend, hasn't visited Bingyu Hall for a long time because of illness.
Self-combed women devoted their whole life to their families. They toiled and moiled for decades.
Bingyu Hall was the home for around 60-70 self-combed women. It used to accommodate more than 30 people at one time. Once upon a time, self-combing was prevalent in feudal society, but it has already perished in modern society where women who choose to be single no longer need places like Bingyu Hall as their shelters. The oldest self-combed women alive today are over 90 years old, while the youngest ones are also over 70 years old. Therefore, they're called the Last Self-combed Women in China.
This is Sixth Great Aunt. She doesn't remember much about the past now.
They combed up their long hair in their youth to symbolize their promises to remain unmarried all their life. They dedicated themselves to work to achieve happiness for themselves and made contributions to their families. Now, they're old and taken care of by juniors in their families. Nevertheless, Bingyu Hall remains an unforgettable place for them. From time to time, they'll come here to sit for a while. It not only tells their life story as a self-combed woman, but is also an important witness to the history. They're the legendary self-combed women, but only the ladies themselves know exactly what this word means to them.
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