At the beginning of the new year, a popular Chinese TV hostess, who is famous for the vivacious style with which she presents her TV entertainment show, tied the knot with her wealthy partner. According to the media report, the star-studded wedding ceremony turned out to be a gala of celebrities, VIPs and many other distinguished guests who attended to express their best wishes for the newlywed couple. A grand banquet with 50 tables, costing hundreds of thousands of yuan, was held for all the honoured guests. The bride stood out in all her splendour as the highlight of the wedding when she, resplendent in a specially designed wedding ring and an elegant wedding gown, appeared side by side with her bridegroom. The nuptial was really very luxurious and imposing.

In the ordinary course of events, to hold a wedding ceremony is a purely private matter that admits of no indiscreet remarks from other people. How, when and where to hold the wedding is one’s own personal affair, tolerating no interference from outsiders.

But in this case the bride is not just anyone, she is a popular figure. So her wedding ceremony not only attracts a lot of interest among ordinary people, it can even have an impact, positive or otherwise, on their thinking or actions. Viewed from this perspective, the wedding in question cannot be regarded as a well-calculated one. That is not only because the ceremony was so extravagant (though it really was a living incarnation of the yawning wealth gap in our society), but mainly because it took place just a week after a powerful earthquake hit Asia, unleashing a tsunami which devastated the coastal areas of some countries and already known to have killed tens of thousands of people at that time.

I don’t mean to be over critical, but wasn’t the gala out of keeping with a moment when tsunami survivors were searching for bodies in treetops, families were weeping over the dead laid out on beaches and rescuers were scouring coral isles for missing tourists? Wasn’t it inappropriate to splash out on a wedding when people from all walks of life were digging deep into their pockets to help victims of the tsunami, in one of the largest fund-raising efforts in recent history?

By contrast, an illiterate farmer from one of the impoverished provinces called the Red Cross to ask if 10 yuan (US$1.20) could be of assistance. And here in Shanghai a nine-year-old girl said that she had learned from TV reports that many kids in the tsunami-hit areas were dead and she felt very sorry and wanted to help. She donated 100 yuan (US$12) that her grandmother had given her to buy video game cartridges and clothes. There are no ends to such moving stories nationwide.

On the very day when the wedding ceremony was held, the Red Cross Society of China announced that it had collected 20 million yuan (US$2.4 million) in donations for the victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami. And, as a token of condolence for those who were engulfed by the giant tidal wave, CCTV cancelled its grand New Year’s entertainment show, an annual event that is broadcast live nationwide.

So it was not the right time for the hostess to show herself off in a super-lavish wedding ceremony when people all around the country were joining hands to deliver disaster-affected people from starvation and disease. The tin ear the couple showed for the suffering of their neighbours was suggestive of a lack of sympathy, if not callous disregard, for those who were living in an abyss of misery caused by the natural catastrophe.

As for the TV presenter herself, I definitely bear her no ill will. It is only understandable that she should choose to have such a splendid and impressive nuptial. But ?as a public figure ?she could have done better.

I cannot help thinking what a difference it would have made if she had down-scaled her wedding, even a little, so as to make a contribution right there on the red carpet. What if she had made use of her popularity to encourage those tycoons who were present on that day to open up their hearts and their wallets for the disaster victims in order to show their generosity and kind-heartedness. Then the wedding would have been a moment pregnant with love, deeply engraved in people’s memories.

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