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Muyi Xiao

16-year-old Mei sits on bed with her 2-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son in Wanhe village, Mengla county, Yunnan province. She has been married for 2 years. She and her husband were classmates in primary school, they dropped out from school after getting married

16-year-old Mei sits on bed with her 2-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son in Wanhe village, Mengla county, Yunnan province. She has been married for 2 years. She and her husband were classmates in primary school, they dropped out from school after getting married

Married Young
China   www.muyixiao.com

In a certain part of Yunnan province, in China’s southwest, marriage of boys and girls as young as 13 years old is a common phenomenon, practiced without taboo despite the nation’s rule requiring women to be 20 and men to be 22 before they marry. The reasons are complex, as economic pressures, shifting social attitudes and changing population dynamics revive a practice that China’s Communist leaders had hoped to stamp out.