‘出嫁前夜睡草铺’

‘出嫁前夜睡草铺’ is a Teochew custom in somewhere,which is ‘Sleeping on a Straw Mat on the Eve of a Wedding’.’出嫁前夜’ means the Eve of a Wedding.’睡草铺’ means Sleeping on a Straw Mat.

To practice speaking this sentence in Teochew dialect,follow the audio below:

The Vicious Stepmother

In the past, there was a stepmother in Jieyang who was cruel and ruthless. She treated the daughter of her husband’s previous marriage with extreme harshness, often beating and scolding her.

Tortures Before Marriage

When the stepdaughter of the previous wife married, her stepmother did not prepare a large dowry. Instead, she prepared a series of tortures for her stepdaughter:

• The night before stepdaughter’s wedding, she was ordered to sleep against the wall on a straw mat, head facing outward and feet facing inward, like a dead person (in Teochew, only the dead were treated this way).
• The next morning, stepdaughter was given only three bowls of food, similar to the number of bowls offered to a prisoner about to be executed.
• Before leaving, she placed a hard-boiled, peeled egg on the stove. The stepmother then had her bend over with her hands behind her back. She then took the egg and chewed it, swallowing it, like a prisoner holding a piece of wood before being executed to prevent him from crying out.

However, this woman later became wealthy and had many descendants. Many people followed this example of marriage, and it became a custom.