page_title: Han dynasty
section_title: Marriage, gender, and kinship
hierarchical_section_title: Han dynasty / Culture and society / Marriage, gender, and kinship
caption_attribution_description: English: The Dahuting Tomb (Chinese: 打虎亭汉墓, Pinyin: Dahuting Han mu; Wade-Giles: Tahut'ing Han mu) of the late Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220 AD), located in Zhengzhou, Henan province, China, was excavated in 1960-1961 and contains vault-arched burial chambers decorated with murals showing scenes of daily life. For further information, see the Baidu article (in Chinese): 打虎亭汉墓. Click here for more pictures and a step-by-step walkthrough of the tomb, from the outside, down a stairwell, and through the vaulted burial chambers.
context_page_description: The Han dynasty was the second imperial dynasty of China, established by the rebel leader Liu Bang and ruled by the House of Liu. Preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty and a warring interregnum known as the Chu-Han contention, it was briefly interrupted by the Xin dynasty established by the usurping regent Wang Mang, and was separated into two periods — the Western Han and the Eastern Han, before succeeded by the Three Kingdoms period. Spanning over four centuries, the Han dynasty is considered a golden age in Chinese history, and influenced the identity of the Chinese civilization ever since. To this day, China's majority ethnic group refers to themselves as the "Han Chinese", the Sinitic language is known as "Han language", and the written Chinese is referred to as "Han characters".
  The emperor was at the pinnacle of Han society. He presided over the Han government but shared power with both the nobility and appointed ministers who came largely from the scholarly gentry class. The Han Empire was divided into areas directly controlled by the central government using an innovation inherited from the Qin known as commanderies, and a number of semi-autonomous kingdoms.
context_section_description: The Han-era family was patrilineal and typically had four to five nuclear family members living in one household. Multiple generations of extended family members did not occupy the same house, unlike families of later dynasties. According to Confucian family norms, various family members were treated with different levels of respect and intimacy. For example, there were different accepted time frames for mourning the death of a father versus a paternal uncle.
  Marriages were highly ritualized, particularly for the wealthy, and included many important steps. The giving of betrothal gifts, known as bridewealth and dowry, were especially important. A lack of either was considered dishonorable and the woman would have been seen not as a wife, but as a concubine. Arranged marriages were normal, with the father's input on his offspring's spouse being considered more important than the mother's. 
  Monogamous marriages were also normal, although nobles and high officials were wealthy enough to afford and support concubines as additional lovers. Under certain conditions dictated by custom, not law, both men and women were able to divorce their spouses and remarry. However, a woman who had been widowed continued to belong to her husband's family after his death. In order to remarry, the widow would have to be returned to her family in exchange for a ransom fee. Her children would not be allowed to go with her.
  Apart from the passing of noble titles or ranks, inheritance practices did not involve primogeniture; each son received an equal share of the family property. Unlike the practice in later dynasties, the father usually sent his adult married sons away with their portions of the family fortune. Daughters received a portion of the family fortune through their marriage dowries, though this was usually much less than the shares of sons. A different distribution of the remainder could be specified in a will, but it is unclear how common this was.
  Women were expected to obey the will of their father, then their husband, and then their adult son in old age. However, it is known from contemporary sources that there were many deviations to this rule, especially in regard to mothers over their sons, and empresses who ordered around and openly humiliated their fathers and brothers. Women were exempt from the annual corvée labor duties, but often engaged in a range of income-earning occupations aside from their domestic chores of cooking and cleaning.
  The most common occupation for women was weaving clothes for the family, sale at market or for large textile enterprises that employed hundreds of women. Other women helped on their brothers' farms or became singers, dancers, sorceresses, respected medical physicians, and successful merchants who could afford their own silk clothes. Some women formed spinning collectives, aggregating the resources of several different families.
caption: Detail of a mural showing two women wearing Hanfu silk robes, from the Dahuting Tomb (打虎亭汉墓; Dáhǔtíng hànmù) of the late Eastern Han Dynasty (25–220 AD), located in Zhengzhou, Henan
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