In a rural area in the northern part of China, a wedding is taking place. The ritual is a strange but revealing mixture of Eastern and Western tradition and culture; of the modern and the ancient. The groom and the bride wear Western style dress, not the traditional long gown or cheongsam of old. However, many of the rituals still observed in Chinese weddings date back thousands of years and are a living echo of ancient Chinese teachings. The bride and groom still make traditional obeisances to their parents and each other as well as to the Heavens and the Land. Thus, some 20 percent of the world’s population still honor traditions and customs that date back over two millennia. When Christians marry, they commit themselves to each other before God. Chinese typically render these commitments to the Heavens and to the Land. Such relations between the Heavens and the Land that exist in Chinese culture provide a fascinating insight into the development of Chinese civilization.
Since ancient times, Chinese have all along held the Heavens and the Land that they live on in great reverence. Thousands of years ago, when many peoples on the Earth embraced a strong belief in Spirits who were thought of as the creators of all beings, the Chinese had begun to probe into astronomy as well as geography. There an old man for the first time unveiled the laws of nature and formed a cosmic view of worshiping nature, by symbolically comparing the relations between the Heavens and the Land and men to a chain.
The old man, regarded by the world as the initiator of the Chinese Taoist school—the native religion of China—was called Lao Tzu.