The Bridal Lament 哭嫁歌

The Bridal Lament was a public performance of grief, a ritual where Weitou brides expressed their bitterness about arranged marriages and patriarchal rule. As such, its message reaches across cultures and generations. Rainbow Chan learnt of the ritual in her search to find out more about her Weitou heritage … and the result is a moving song cycle that reveals the multi-disciplinary artist’s incredible ability to draw past and present together through music, movement and storytelling.

The Weitou, from Southern China, were early settlers of Hong Kong and the New Territories. In 1996, as the British handed over the island of Hong Kong to China, six-year-old Chan, like many others, left with her parents for Australia, not realising that the move was to be permanent. Years later she returned in a bid to learn more about her Weitou heritage, the folk music, the stories and the traditions. From this came the discovery of The Bridal Lament and other forms of covert feminist protest against patriarchal control and repression.

Because in Weitou only men were taught to read and write, the women shared their stories orally. It was on an old CD that Chan found a recording in Weitou that described the Bridal Lament and the way young girls spent the night before being handed over in an arranged marriage.

With her mother’s voice reading the story in Weitou and series of projections, Chan explains how they passed the night with female relatives, weeping about their loss of freedom and the families and friends they would leave behind. Then, come morning, how they would pack their possessions into a trunk to be presented for the approval of their father-in-law.

Chan’s gentle interpretation of the ritual in song and dance loses none of the oppressive implications of the tradition. They are there in tense sinuous movements and vocals that are lightly tight and strained. But her story doesn’t dwell on that. More it celebrates the importance of knowing about such traditions, listening to the memories of the elders and keeping stories alive.

Rainbow Chan is an award-winning, multi-talented artist. She is small, lithe and moves with incredible grace. She reaches across any cultural bounds through the universal forms of music and dance, and a gentle honest smile that seems to say “Let me share this with you. It’s important. You will understand why if you watch and listen”.

And you do!

Carol Wimmer