Source: CCTV.com

12-17-2008 09:18

Let's take our look back over the past 30 years with a review of how weddings have changed. A photo is a memory of a bygone time of happiness. It's also the eyewitness of history. In those thirty years since the reform and opening up policy was introduced, Chinese people have experienced tremendous changes in their lives. One such change is the way they think about marriage and nuptial customs.

"Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow"

This is the fragment of a sketch titled "Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow", one of the top performances from 1999's CCTV Spring Festival Gala. The humorous skit was set as a talk show between a village couple and a host. The dialogue made some audience members cry with laughter, especially when the wife complains how poor her husband was when she married him in the 1960s - a time when almost no one had money.

By the end of the 1970s, Chinese people were still living very economical lives. A documentary called the "New Looks of Shanghai" was made by a Japanese director in 1978. He found that China was in the process of great change and filmed the wedding of a pair of local love birds, Yang Jumin and Zhang Lijuan.

Yang Jumin and Zhang Lijuan

Yang Jumin, husband, said, "Passersby thought we were shooting a film or TV series. We were very proud at the time."

Zhang Lijuan, wife, said, "Hair perms were still coming into fashion and we pleaded with our friends and bought a set of Czech furniture, which was very rare."