A matriarchal society in China:
“Why would you want the marriage license to handcuff yourself?” a blunt-spoken Mosuo woman named Cha Cuo asks Zhou. For Mosuo women, it is not an idle question. In their matriarchal society, they do not marry. They practice what they call “walking marriage” in which a woman may invite a man into her hut to spend a “sweet night,” but he must leave by daybreak. If a pregnancy results from this union, the child will be raised by the woman and her family.
“You Han people [the majority Chinese] are so different,” Cha Cuo tells Zhou in the film. “If the kid doesn’t have a father, only a mother, and lives in the city, people would call him a wild child. Who would ever say that here?”
Cultures vary. Aren’t the amazing? (In a neat sort of way.)
I just think it’s wild that this one exists in the middle of very patriarchal China.
Somehow it doesn’t surprise me, but that might be in part due to your dad telling me/us about some culture in the far east where there are polygamist(sp?) cultures – where the culture is matriarchal and the women have as many men/husbands as they like.
It sounded brutal and loveless to me. But then I am from an entirely different culture. Not to say I can’t understand it – just wouldn’t want it for myself.
There are tribes in Nepal that practice polyandry. Several men, mostly brothers, will marry one woman because they’re too poor to afford a wife and family by themselves.
I think that was the one he was telling me/us about.