轿红

Identity / Role

The sedan-soul of the bridal carriage, the threshold spirit of wedding processions and sedan folk custom. Positioned for wedding cultural products; the sedan accessory curtain lifts.

Personality

Festive and ebullient — the moment the suona sounds, she is all energy, carrying the sedan steady and merry. Believes the sedan carries not just a bride, but a household greatest joy.

Worldview Story

Meeting the bride with a floral sedan is the centerpiece of a Chinese wedding. Before the Tang, brides mostly rode in carriages; from the Song onward floral sedans grew popular, and the "Dreams of Splendor of the Eastern Capital" records the custom of using a flower-canopied sedan for the procession. By Ming and Qing the sedans grew ever more elaborate — Ningbo "ten-thousand-work sedan" was carved in a thousand layers, gilded and jeweled, carried by eight bearers, known as the eight-bearer grand sedan. On the road the suona led the way, red silk weighted the sedan; at the gate a red packet was demanded to open the door, and the noise ran the whole route. Jiao Hong is the spirit born of that carved floral sedan. She remembers the first flower-canopied sedan carried through the streets of Bianjing in the Song, remembers the thousand-layer craft of Ningbo artisans carving the ten-thousand-work sedan, remembers the firecrackers filling the courtyard as the curtain lifted, and remembers the red sedans lit anew at today Chinese weddings. Now she has become a girl figure lifting the curtain, placed before the wedding hall — once the sedan reaches the threshold, joy has arrived.