Yue Lao, the old man under the moon and the red thread of fate

In China the god of marriage does not shoot arrows: he ties. Yue Lao, short for Yuexia Laoren, the old man under the moon, is the guardian of predestined unions, who according to popular belief knots together with a red thread the people destined to marry. Unlike many love deities, his figure stems from a specific literary tale written during the Tang dynasty.

The betrothal inn

The tale, entitled Dinghun dian, the Betrothal Inn, is preserved in a collection of marvellous stories attributed to Li Fuyan, an author of the ninth century. The protagonist, Wei Gu, is a young orphan eager to marry soon. One night, while waiting for a marriage go-between in the town of Songcheng, he meets an old man reading a book by the light of the moon, sitting beside a bag.

The old man explains that he keeps the marriage registers of the other world and that his bag holds red cords: with them he ties the feet of a man and a woman destined to be united, and from that moment no distance or enmity can separate them. He then reveals to Wei Gu that his future wife is a three-year-old girl, the daughter of a poor woman who sells vegetables at the market.

The scar on the forehead

Outraged at the thought of such a humble marriage, Wei Gu sends a servant to kill the child. The servant strikes her with a knife between the eyebrows and flees. Fourteen years later Wei Gu, now an official, marries the daughter of a prefect, a very beautiful girl who always wears a flower ornament on her forehead. When questioned, she reveals that she is hiding an old scar: she is the child from the market, adopted by her uncle after her parents died.

The tale ends with the peaceful life of the couple and with the news that the inn was thereafter called the Betrothal Inn. The moral is clear: marital destiny is written in advance and no one can escape it, not even through violence. From this story arose the figure of Yue Lao as the deity to whom people turn to find the husband or wife they are destined for.

The red thread and the temples

In the ancient tale the cord binds the ankles, but in later tradition the image turned into the red thread joining fingers or hands. The idea spread throughout East Asia: in Japan it is known as akai ito, the red thread tied to the little finger, and it appears in countless tales, plays and modern stories.

Statues of Yue Lao, shown as an old man with a white beard holding the book of marriages and a staff, are found in many Chinese temples. In Taipei, in the Dadaocheng district, the Xiahai City God Temple is famous for its altar to the god of marriage, visited every year by a great many people. Devotees leave offerings there and, according to custom, receive blessed red threads.

Yue Lao represents an idea of love different from the one more familiar in the West: not the sudden blow of an arrow, but a bond established in advance that is only waiting to reveal itself. His red thread, born in a tale more than a thousand years old, has become one of the most recognisable love symbols of the contemporary world.