TNAG-0189-FCO40-225-Chinese-marriages-in-Hong-Kong-1969 — Page 48

for the registration of marriages is to be taken at all, there is no reason why it should be taken half-heartedly, apologetically, or on the cheap.

36. Hu, on the other hand, was very much in favour of preserving the legal, as against the purely ceremonial, significance of customary forms of marriage, whether traditional or modern. Appreciating as he did the difficulties involved in the kind of two- stage marriage apparently envisaged in the Report, Hu saw as the only acceptable solution weddings of one or other customary kind during part of which, at least, a Registrar would be present to carry out the registration of the marriage. In his opinion the participation of such an official could without difficulty be harmonized with existing traditional views of the significance of the ceremonial, which it might, indeed, be thought to enhance. The system would overcome the principal difficulty referred to above by preventing the separation of the wedding ceremony itself from the act of registration, which alone could confer legal validity under the proposed legislation, and it would enable the traditional forms of marriage to preserve a legal as well as a purely ceremonial significance.

37. De Basto and Dicks had a good deal of sympathy with this view, though in the event they did not agree with it, chiefly on grounds of practicality, for the operation of such a system would clearly require the recruitment of a large force of deputy registrars. On days selected by traditional methods of divination as auspicious for weddings the pressure would probably be too great to accom- modate easily. Such a system might be workable if mass weddings of the kind popular among the Chinese of Singapore and Malaysia found wide acceptance in Hong Kong (it has been announced that a scheme for such weddings is to be launched in the Colony, see China Mail, 3rd June, 1967) but short of such a development the system would probably be unworkable except at great cost if pro- fessional officials were to be employed. The Sub-Committee gave some thought to the possibility of licensing other persons to conduct the registration of marriages in accordance with the system proposed by Hu, including such persons as Justices of the Peace, though it noted that a suggestion of this kind was turned down by the

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