In rich Chinese families the wedding trousseau is often a matter of vanity and parade. I have seen a wedding outfit borne by more than a hundred coolies, and all the articles tied with red silk crape to the carrying poles. Before a trousseau is sent off everything in it is ‘sifted,’ so that no evil influences may go from the house of the bride. On the day previous to the wedding, the bride's parents invite their friends to a feast. The bride is dressed in her wedding robes, and her hair is done up in the style of a married woman. While friends are feasting the bride goes through her farewell ceremonies. She lights incense before the ancestral tablets of her father's house, and worships there for the last time. She kneels down before her grandparents, her father and mother, also her aunts and uncles, and worships them. It is really a formal leave-taking, and is often very sad. This is done after the bridal chair, usually sent the day before the wedding, has arrived.

On the morning of the wedding-day she is called ‘The new woman,’ and is invested with a large and magnificently embroidered veil of scarlet crape, having a blue and gold crown over it. This veil completely conceals her features, and almost her form.