oa Marriage and Family values: a Case Study of Jiezhu (a religious menopausal ritual) performed in China

In traditional China, a woman’s role is defined by her attachment/ submission to three men – her father, her husband and her son – through her three stages of life. Jiezhu is an initiatory ritual for menopausal women. It espouses patriarchal family values with the husband as the transmitter of the Buddhist prayer beads and the male offspring as the lineage carrier. A woman is supposed to be “happy” if she has a husband and male heir. Jiezhu enacts and reinforces marriage as the “ideal” life for a woman with all the ritual symbols in its scriptures, texts, songs and accessories.