Duggy: Hi there, I'm Duggy Day and I'd like to 欢迎你, that's welcome you to Living Chinese. As you can see I'm all dressed up with somewhere to go, and I've actually been invited to my good friends Nick & Na's wedding ceremony or 婚礼. Traditional Han Chinese weddings are normally filled with procedures and customs, and the groom normally sits on a piece of chiffon as the wedding progresses. Nowadays more and more Chinese couples are preferring to have western style weddings, while the groom has a nice tuxedo and the bride has a nice beautiful white wedding dress. Weddings around China happen at different times of the day, and there are also different customs depending on where you live. For example, here in Beijing, couples normally get married in the morning and wedding usually lasts for about 3 hours. In Tianjin, a coastal city not far from Beijing, couples normally get married in the afternoon. In Scotland, it's normal for couples to get married in the mid-afternoon with the celebrations continuing to the late afternoon and in the evening. Well, it's time to go to the wedding. Let's go.
Duggy: In my country, it's customary to give newly-wed a gift. Usually friends would ask the couple what they need, like a micro-wave oven or a steam iron. In recent times it's become fashionable to give a cash gift to the couple. Here in China there is a similar custom, it's called giving 红包! Usually Chinese people put a cash gift inside红包. 红means red which is a lucky colour here in China, and 包 comes from the meaning for bag. Put them together and 红包 actually means red envelope.
Here we are, in hotel already and I've already in reception area a little bit earlier, I told you about the红包, this is the red envelope where we put the cash gift inside, and I also have a special little gift from Scotland, this is the "water of life", which is also known as the Scotch Whisky. And here in China, we actually have an equivalent to this is called 白酒, which is white spirit. And well I'll tell you more about that a little bit later, right now I'm going to give my 红包.
