Tongyangxi  

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Tongyangxi (Chinese: 童養媳), also known as Shim-pua marriage in Taiwanese (Taiwanese: sin-pū-á, sim-pū-á), was a tradition of arranged marriage dating back to pre-modern China, in which a poor family would sell a child, a pre-adolescent daughter to a richer family as a servant or a caretaker. In exchange, the girl would be married into the adopted family when both children reach puberty. The girl acts both as a daughter-in-law (to be married to the adopted family's young son in time to come) and free labour. The girl is usually a few years older than the male child. Due to the lower-class status of the girls, discrimination was often present, and slavery-like treatment was not uncommon.

A direct translation of "Shim-pua" is simply "little daughter-in-law", while "tongyangxi" means "child daughter-in-law."

These marriages were rarely successful, principally because of the enforced nature of the marriage. This has been explained as a classic demonstration of the Westermarck effect.

In China, the practice was outlawed by the Communist Party of China after they seized power in 1949.

In Taiwan, shim-pua marriage fell out of practice in the 1970s due to increased wealth from Taiwan's economic success, making such arrangements unnecessary.

Related Concepts

"Zhao-Zhui" (Chinese: 招贅) is a related custom by which a wealthy family that lacks an heir might take in a boy child. The boy would take on the familial name of his new family, and typically would marry the family's daughter.

See also




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Tongyangxi" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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