Abstract
After the 1980s, China's one-child policy became the cause of a serious imbalance in the country's sex ratio, especially in the rural areas. Increasing regional economic differences as well as economic reforms are pull factors for the migration of young single women from rural Han villages to coastal urban areas as cheap laborers. These social changes have resulted in a wife shortage in rural Han areas. Impoverished rural Han bachelors who cannot find partners in their own areas have turned to ethnic minority areas in Southwest China to seek a solution. This paper focuses on the Lahu area, in the hills of the China-Myanmar borderland, which has one of the heaviest concentrations of such out-marrying women. The article has two objectives. The first is to elucidate how Lahu people understand marriage migration against the background of their marriage practices. The next is to show the social changes that can be observed along with marriage migration, especially the changing ways of sealing the marital bond among Lahu. The outflow of young women has created a wife shortage in Lahu, which has widened women's choice of mate in Lahu village and led to Lahu marriage practices being easily disregarded by young single women. As a result, Lahu men have begun to attach greater importance to official marriage registration. In several negotiations with the woman's side, the marriage registration has brought about changes in Lahu marriage practices so as to deal with young women's uncertain behavior.
