Mass Marriages

To earn, scrimp, save and toilsomely amass the Chinese equivalent of seven U. S. dollars may take an industrious Shanghai coolie seven years. Last week, as a great and novel civic philanthropy which aroused nationwide excitement, Chinese Mayor Wu Te-chen of Shanghai enterprisingly began to marry poor Chinese in batches for only seven dollars per couple.

Hitherto a Chinese marriage, what with exorbitant fees for priests, costly offerings to the gods and enough food to gorge all the bride's & bridegroom's friends, has often cost enough to run the couple into debt for life. Chinese bankers, who have battened on such marriages for centuries, gnawed their lips in rage last week as Mayor Wu hired an elegant brass band which blared the "Wedding March" of "Foreign Devil" Mendelssohn.

In the City Hall an impressive nuptial altar had been raised to no God or gods but to Dr. Sun Yatsen, "Father of the Chinese Revolution," and as holy to China as Lenin is to Russia. Between pack-jammed ranks of 1,200 neck-craning relatives, 57 couples advanced with diffidence, two couples at a time. Mayor Wu, officiating, encouraged each bride and groom to bow thrice to a statue of Dr. Sun, twice to each other and once to Mayor Wu. He then handed to each bridegroom a satisfying certificate done in multi-colored inks and the marriage was complete.

"Just an effort on the part of Shanghai to advance on the trail of progress blazed by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek," Mayor Wu told friends who overwhelmed him with congratulations. "The first Wednesday in every month from now on I will conduct such marriages. The thing has taken hold at once. Already 31 couples have applied for next month. It is all part of Generalissimo Chiang's great 'New Life' movement to regenerate China."

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