Six couples married at the Dongpo Academy in Danzhou on the morning of October 4, walking a lantern-lined path in Song-style wedding dress toward a witness who left the island more than nine centuries ago. The ceremony ran under the banners of the city’s 2026 “Love in Hainan” program and was free to the public.
Danzhou’s civil affairs bureau and its tourism, culture, radio, television and sports bureau organized the event. All six couples had registered their marriages in advance and had agreed to the reform-minded customs the occasion promotes, which steer couples away from outsized bride prices and lavish spending toward smaller, plainer weddings.
A Wedding Nine Centuries in the Making
Dongpo Academy gave the wedding its weight. Set in Danzhou’s old town on Hainan island, it is where the exiled poet and official Su Dongpo taught during three years in banishment. Local accounts credit him with planting the study of letters in this corner of Hainan and with helping to produce the island’s first jinshi, the highest degree in the imperial examination. The couples stood on ground that a literary tradition had already marked.
The day began at 10 a.m. with a Song-style classical dance, after which a master of ceremonies declared the rites open. Carrying red flowers and walking hand in hand, the couples moved along the lantern path and then worked through a sequence drawn from Song custom: the witness’s address, the reading of the marriage document, the signing of it in the couple’s own hands, the ritual washing of hands, the sharing of a gourd cup, and the tying of the pair’s hair into a single lock. Applause ran down the line as each couple finished.
Which Rites Made the Cut
Organizers trimmed the ceremonial register rather than staging it whole. Kept were the steps understood to carry meaning, among them the lowering of the bride’s fan, the hand-washing, the gourd cup and the hair-tying. Set aside were the costly and cumbersome parts of older practice. The gourd is split in two and joined again, read here as a sign of a shared fate and shared hardship, while the hair lock, sealed into a brocade pouch, is read as a promise to grow old together.
Behind the choices is a broader push on marriage customs in Danzhou, where the authorities have for several years worked to reduce high bride prices, competitive gift-giving and waste. The academy event folds that effort into a cultural frame: a plain ceremony, held in a historic place, that residents can copy.
Su Dongpo as Silent Witness
What made this collective wedding unusual was the identity of its witness. No guest filled the role. Su Dongpo did, in the words of the officiants, standing in for the elder whom Chinese families traditionally invite to speak a blessing at a wedding. Li Jie, who heads the marriage registration office at the civil affairs bureau, explained the reasoning: Su Dongpo lived in Danzhou for three years and taught the island’s first jinshi, so six couples beginning their lives together where he once taught was, in his words, a way of expressing the plainest feeling Chinese people hold about marriage.
For both brides, the setting had settled any doubts. He Bailan, one of the newlyweds, recalled that she and her partner had planned a simple wedding and had worried it might feel too plain until they stood inside the old academy and felt the weight of the place. With Su Dongpo as their witness, she added, the day felt rare and full of meaning. Another bride, Wu Xiaojia, noted that the poet had sown the seeds of learning in Hainan three years before she and her husband chose to build a home on the same soil.
After the vows, the event spilled out past the rites. Organizers set up a Chinese-style garden tour, photo spots and a cultural market around the academy, all free to residents and tourists, so onlookers could take in the lantern-lit grounds and the ceremonial dress at their own pace. Li Jie said the city intends to keep developing the event as a signature brand that pairs Dongpo culture with reformed wedding customs, and to carry that mix into its work on family life and civic life. For the six couples, the morning ended the way it began, with a slow walk under lanterns and a crowd that had come to watch.
