A GOVERNMENT department of Tianzhu county in Southwest China's Guizhou province recently issued a document banning local residents from holding banquets if they are marrying for the second time. Fawan.com comments:

The guideline is rather detailed, but it states that local residents are allowed to hold feasts only when a family member dies or gets married, someone marrying for the second time is forbidden from holding a celebratory banquet.

The guideline has aroused fierce discussion online with the government department receiving much criticism. It responded by saying the move was intended to help ease the financial burden on local residents, since according to local customs those invited to attend a wedding banquet are supposed to give the host large sums of money as a gift. This is an increasingly heavier financial burden for them, and the local government department concerned said it issued the guideline because an increasing number of local residents were complaining about the custom.

If that is the case, the local government department meant to do something good to serve the people. However, it did so in the wrong way.

Holding wedding and funeral banquets is a traditional custom. People have the right to hold wedding banquets and only a law can prohibit the practice. If a government hopes to regulate the custom, it can encourage people not to hold feasts, instead of trying to prohibit them.

Of course, some residents might feel the traditional custom has become a burden. But in order to change that custom, what the local government should do is to organize more meaningful activities so that local residents have more ways to celebrate weddings and hold funerals, instead of holding meaningless feasts only.

Wedding and funeral banquets are a traditional custom. For ordinary citizens, it is up to them whether they observe it or not; a local government's administrative hand should not reach out too far.