Ted, some customs in China are particular to a region, and not so wide spread.  Never heard of the goose "gift", but you can always give him a few aspirins to calm him down prior to handling him over.

Now, the "dowry" is still very common all over China.  In general, the older the lady, the more "traditional" (versus modern) she will be, and thus a dowry will have to be paid.  In general, this applies only to ladies who have never been married, and should not apply to ladies who were married once (and thus parents already collected compensation money for loosing her) and are now divorced or widows. 
But if a foreigner is involved, and since most Chinese think we are all like Donald Trump or Bill Gates, the majority will be looking out to a dowry even if it was a Chinese instead, no dowry will be paid.

And also remember one thing, a weding in China is paid by the groom, not by the bride's father as we are used to.  And that includes everything, even the banquet, at which the bride's family will use mostly to show off to neighbors and friends their new wealth............

If you wish to get real technical, there are two of them, the dowry, and the dowerly (or so I am told).  One is to be paid by the groom to the bride's family to compensate them for her loss to that family, and the other is to be given to the groom by the bride or her family.  What I am not sure about is the proper names for each.