A couple step onto a helicopter on their wedding day in Cixi, Ningbo, on Jan 16, 2013. The newlyweds paid over 20,000 yuan per hour to rent the 60 million yuan helicopter.[Photo/CFP]

A RECENT wedding ceremony held in Zhongshan, South China's Guangdong province, has attracted much attention because of its extravagance. It is a personal choice to hold a luxurious wedding, but society should not follow suit, says an opinion article on cnhubei.com:

Such extravagant weddings distort the real values that a wedding ceremony should celebrate. A wedding means getting friends and relatives together to celebrate a new couple joining hands. If a wedding is too extravagant it will shift public attention from the couple to the display of wealth. In some sense, that's no longer a wedding but a shallow show of money.

Moreover, when an over-luxurious wedding becomes popular in society, and starts being imitated by other couples, who then try to out-do each other in displaying their good fortune, there is a problem with society and the values it holds dear. It would imply a blind worship of money, which is incompatible with a healthy society, where people pursue happiness and know it is more than about material well-being.

That also has much to do with the widening social gaps. When people see others getting rich, not through honest labor or entrepreneurship, but via the trade of power for illicit profits, they will naturally lose hope of social justice and turn to worshipping power and money instead.

Hopefully, the anti-graft campaign will curb the trade between power and money. We hope it will in turn reverse the blind pursuit of power and money in some sections of society, too, before our values are corrupted.