Why do people send pork to their in-laws before they get engaged?

In the Central Plains, in addition to ordinary clothes, bedding, furniture and electrical appliances, the bride's dowry also includes an indispensable meal dowry-"takeaway meal". When a man gets married, he should prepare dozens or even hundreds of pounds of pork for his wife. This kind of meat is called "leaving the mother".

The custom of "keeping mother's meat" originated from an interesting legend: once upon a time, there was a family where only mother and daughter lived alone. When a daughter gets married, her mother is inseparable. The man who came to get married used his quick wits and went to the butcher's to buy a piece of pork. He advised the old man to say, "Cut a piece of your heart and give you another piece."

In this way, people coaxed the girl and finally married her. Since then, other people's wives are also afraid that their mother-in-law will stop their daughter from leaving, so they also send a piece of meat to express their son-in-law's comfort to her mother-in-law.

The varieties of take-away meals include meat, vegetables, steamed stuffed bun, noodles and jiaozi.

Because this kind of meal needs to be prepared by parents in advance, the girl will take it to her husband's house in a sedan chair or car on her wedding day. Among them, "carrying jiaozi" is very interesting. The number of jiaozi is generally determined by the age of the girls. In some places, the number of jiaozi is one more than the age of girls, in order to make it more auspicious. The purpose of parents pinching jiaozi for their daughter is to hold her in-laws' mouth, so as not to let her daughter suffer indignities after entering the door.