S2 Special - Strange Marriage Systems of Asia (2/3)

Forget cookie-cutter marriage. We travel from Lugu Lake’s “Kingdom of Daughters” to the windswept frontiers of Manchu clans to show how families reinvent themselves under pressure—and why it works. You’ll hear why the Mosuo’s walking marriage is not casual tourism folklore but a finely tuned matrilineal system where women hold authority, partners meet at night by choice, and public rituals acknowledge fathers to safeguard the community against incest. It’s autonomy with accountability, born from the weight of dowries, taxes, and the calculus of survival.

Then we pivot to the Manchu levirate, where a man could marry his deceased brother’s widow to protect children, property, and standing within the clan. It sounds uncomfortable until you place it in a nomadic world of raids and scarcity, where a widow without backing could lose everything. Consent mattered more than outsiders assume, and responsibilities—not ceremonies—defined the bond. Along the way, we unpack how elites across cultures embraced endogamy to hold on to power, long before Darwin and Mendel explained why inbreeding undermines fertility and health.

What ties these stories together is the simple question: what do families optimize for when the world presses in—security, continuity, freedom, or love? By examining the Mosuo and the Manchu, we see how economic pressure, geography, and risk shape norms that outsiders often judge but rarely understand. If you’re curious about anthropology, gender, kinship, or how today’s housing costs and childcare stress echo ancient burdens, this journey will reframe the way you think about marriage and family.

If this exploration sparked new questions, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review. Your thoughts shape where we go next.

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Transcript

Recap And Setup For Part Two

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Yo, what's up everyone? Welcome back to Asian Uncle Strange Marriage Part 2. Now I went down the rabbit hole, guys. I was doing research, and the more I did, the more and more interesting it got, and I couldn't stop. And I knew I had to share with you, so I made a part two and a part three. Please forgive me for my ADHD. We're gonna drift off topic slightly, but I'm sure you will enjoy it. And last episode, we talked about my experiences in Tibet with polyandry. Well, not my experiences, but seeing it and um polygyny. And we dug in more in depth in terms of fraternal and sororal. And so polygamy is only one type of marriage system that's prevalent all over the world. It still exists today. We even brushed up a bit on arranged marriages, which still exist today, but in different forms. Instead of a mystery box, you would have a chance to date, but you would kind of skip the part where you have to kind of court each other, right? The embarrassing part. So it does make sense. Now, the next couple that I'm going to talk about, you probably never heard of. And to be honest, even if you're local, you probably not heard of it or have a different understanding of it. Now, our next type of marriage is called a walking marriage. And it's definitely not as popular as polygamy. And it's only practiced by a specific group of people in China. They are, remember when I told you guys there's 56 minority groups in China that are not Han Chinese? And so this group actually is outside of it. And most people consider them the Nashi group. But in reality, they're not. They're called the Mosua. So Mosua people, they're from Yunnan, China. I've been there. And it's crazy. The misunderstanding that people have about this type of marriage is actually kind of funny. So if you look up walking marriage on Google, you would find the definition, night visit relationships where men do not move into the woman's home. Maternal households raise children. So to make that even easier to understand, pretty much means they open their house to you, you impregnate the woman, and the father leaves and the woman raises the kid. So that's the that's the concept that tourists or people who don't understand the culture have of this custom. But contrary to popular belief, it's actually very different. I read in a news article once, it was funny because a tourist went, right? And he thought you would just go over and have a kid with one of them. So essentially, in his mind, in his dirty little mind, he thought this village was just filled with hoes that just sleep around every night. And that's how he thought it works. And so when he brought this up during the tour, it was offensive. Obviously, right? People took offense that, but it was funny. So what does happen is the question I'm going to answer today. And also we're going to introduce another type of marriage that is probably just as shocking. Now, a quick introduction to the Mosua people. They're an ancient ethnic group, like I said before, located in Yundnan, China. That's the southwest corner. Very beautiful place. We're going to go into that in one of our specials or one of our seasons. And the local people there in that specific village are known as the Mosua. So they have a separate society, and the government allows it because it's their minority practice. So there's no fathers, quote unquote father, okay, in the conventional sense, nor are there husbands. Women in that society are the pretty much the only and the central figures and the only figures. The community pretty much preserves uh one of the oldest traditions in the world. Okay, the practice in which men don't marry and women do not wed. And thus we call it in Chinese Zhouen, translate directly into walking marriage. So the real ideology behind it is not what the tourists think. Right? It's not a village filled with hosts. But it's actually the world's last matrilineal society. We'll explain what that means in a bit. It's not that important. It just pretty much means women are the center of the society, right? Yunnan is a very distinct province in China because it envelops a lot of different minority groups. If you go there, unless you go to the major cities, you would normally come across a lot of these minority groups. Okay, they're very centralized there, along with the other southern parts of China. And when I went there, I wasn't expecting to see this the Mosu people. I had no expectation. I was there to see Lugu Lake. It's one of the most beautiful natural lakes in United. Enchanting waters, uh, it's just beautiful. And has a very distinctive custom around that lake. Many different minority groups around that lake. And so there's an ancient group that sits with them, like I said. Their population is roughly 50,000. Small population group live alongside the water, the lake. They have their own indigenous language, but no written. Meaning they don't have a written script. And they are not officially recognized as a separate ethnic group. So they're combined with the Nashi group, like I said before. But their culture, on the other hand, has been preserved for over 2,000 years. You know, whether it's their walking marriage system or their indigenous religious practice, they've pretty much retained, and the government allowed it for them to retain their traditional customs, which is pretty cool when you see it. A lot different from what you're accustomed to. As mentioned, the Musu families, they're centered around women, meaning women make all the decisions, right, from biggest decisions to kids to what's for dinner, everything. Men have pretty much no say. They are considered literally emotional support. So the Musus, they took women's rights, feminism to a complete different level. Because they believe that um marriage should be a voluntary union and free separation. Divorce should not happen. But what's even more interesting is it feels not only does history repeat itself, but human nature. Because if you dig deep into why this marriage exists, the elders in the village will also tell you that it's because of the heavy burdens. What type of burdens? The same burdens our new generation are facing. Large dowries, taxes, levies, tributes imposed by the chieftains. Isn't that similar to what our young people face? They're rent, insurance, right, groceries, gas, taxes. And as a result, they struggled to keep a traditional household. Kind of the reason why w our birth rates are going down too. All over the world. So as a result, they adopted walking marriage. What will we adopt? I don't know. For instance, there are countries, even China, they encourage you to have kids. They would reimburse you, give you money for having kids. Hong Kong too. I believe Japan also has some sort of a standard as well. Don't quote me on that, but it's interesting to compare why people don't form households anymore. It's because you you are the future seems bleak to you, I guess. You can't, you don't want to carry all that burden. Make sense? Now, enough of this boring history background. What does happen in a walking marriage would actually shock you. So my buddies and even our tourists that are reading the article, they all think you just walk into somebody's room, a woman's room, and have a baby. No, it's not like that. Okay, so during a walking marriage, when night falls, the man quietly enters the woman's room. But he must leave before sunrise. Right, before dawn. And as long as these two like each other, as long as they love each other, nothing, not money, parents, nothing can separate them. Family arrangements, nothing. It's free love. Alright, so they spend time together every night. Not during the day. And even though they have this sort of weird custom, many Mosus consider a single walking marriage relationship a lifelong bond. Okay, they don't they don't slut around. Okay, they don't sleep around with different men of the village. I mean there might be some, but for the most part it's just the way they perceive feminism. Make sense? Next, it's also possible for the relationship to end. But this also depends entirely on the woman. If she feels the man no longer suitable, right, or she no longer likes him, for instance, she could just stop opening the door at night. And this type of separation, it brings no consequences. It only means relationship has passed on. But this applies normally when there are uh no children, because once children are involved, like the real world that we live in, right, um separating becomes more complicated. And so decisions are made um more carefully, just like how we would react to a divorce, right? And when a couple continues their relationship and has children, for instance, the man will hold a uh sort of a public banquet to introduce the child to relatives and the villagers. This serves two purposes. One is actually pretty pretty funny. One, it asserts uh a biological relationship between the father and the child. And the next I found was kind of weird was this also helps prevent incest within the community because of their walk-in marriage system. And in this structure, men, of course, like we mentioned, hold a lower social position. Okay, uh what's interesting also is what they're called. For instance, male lovers are called Azu, female partners are called Asha. Similarly to Tibetans, their children also call their biological fathers uncle and not dad. There's no such thing as the term dad amongst their culture. All uncles. It's pretty cool, right? And besides leading the household itself, their leadership also women. They make decision not only of the household but also of the community, of the village. They hold the highest authority and status. They oversee everything. And the male, like I said before, emotional support. And realistically, it's domestic assistance, meaning they take care of their kids. Unsurprising to all, uh, this type of woman absolute dominance and in their governance, the system functions well. It actually functions really well without male inter without the heavy male intervention. And as a result, they gave this village a nickname. It's called the Kingdom of Daughters. And people there, the women there, as I've seen, are exceptionally free, open, confident. And yes, if you ask them about this, can I go to your place to sleep over at night? Yes, they will be offended. That's not part of their culture. You know, due to their village economy, the burden was too heavy to form traditional families that you and I are accustomed to, and as a result, they had to do things a different way. And also, their outlook on women or feminism is very similar to our Western thoughts as well. Women possess complete autonomy and control over their entire destiny, their lives, everything. Of course they are also bad things to this, in that I feel this does not encourage men, personal growth for men. Okay, it's it's the same concept of women fighting for instance the right to vote in America. Before then they were homemakers. And in this society it's the same. I just flip the sexes. I always find it interesting to explore these type of traditions. And I hope you do too. This is just one type of well, we've been through what three now. So we went from the two types of polygamy that's pretty popular in Asia, and this walking marriage, which is a very like a cultural jewel. It's very unique. You don't see this anywhere else except that village, I believe. So that's pretty much it in terms of walking marriage. It's definitely not widespread. And so you can't find too much online. You have to be there for yourself to really experience and see it. The next type of marriage does not exist anymore. Like I said before, the minority groups, the 56 minority groups, I'm part of one of them, known as the Manchurians. And so the Manchurians were the rulers of the last dynasty of China. But they were previously nomadic. And being nomadic, there were certain traditions that they followed in order to keep the family together. Some of them were sort of disturbing. For instance, there's a type of marriage called a leverate marriage, meaning a widow marries her late husband's brother or a male relative. Why? Well, traditionally, it's to protect the widow and retain family property. So this was very widespread among the Manchurians that that nomadic tribe. So nomadic tribes had a lot of kids, probably many brothers. Let's say you had two brothers, and your brother is killed in combat, then you would have to marry his wife. This term marry is different from what we perceive as, because the woman also has the right to refuse. Before we get into that, this applies to both the primary wife and the concubines or secondary wives. Back then you were allowed to marry many. And to go more into detail about preserving property, this is in the Manchu society, there's referred to as the clans. There's eight clans. And women were considered part of the clan's productive resource. So letting them marry out would mean potential land rights, labor, and future children. So they wanted to keep everything within their own banner, not understanding that this might create incest. Another reason was to protect the widow and her children. The Manchurians are always traveling, constantly in battle. Without a male protector, a family would face hardships, insecurity. Of course, they would lose their social status and most likely starve, or be kicked out of the clan, or be raided and exploited and turned into a slave. And this was a way to ensure that your sister-in-law stays in the family and that she's supported. When I learned this reading the history books, my first thought was, ew. With most of these marriages, my first thought was ew. Probably the same for you. But again, if you take a step back like our previous episode and take a look at why that exists, you realize it does make sense. What are you supposed to do? Just leave them on, you know, just leave them there to die. So there's a lot of misunderstanding, meaning the male had to marry if the woman agrees. So this is some detail that people ignore. I'm gonna go into that. It's not if they die in battle, you have to marry them. The woman has no choice. It's not like that. The man has to take care of the kid regardless, but does he have to marry sister-in-law? Not necessarily. Okay, so for one, the marriage does not require a ceremony. Okay, it's just uh considered a continuation of the previous marriage. And the new husband inherits all the responsibilities of feeding that family too, taking care of the deceased brother's children. And they will in turn call him dad and not uncle. Now, but if the widow refused to marry, she could remain unmarried, but she can still live in the deceased she can still live with the deceased husband's family and can still look after the kids. And she was entitled to that. And some something about incest that's worth noting. This happens a lot uh across many cultures. Um primarily you see this in in movies too, right? It's pr to preserve the royal blood. To not let your um your land or your title go elsewhere, et cetera, et cetera. But it's also because we lacked understanding. We didn't know that breeding with your sibling would cause genetic defects. And when did we know? We didn't know that Charles Darwin was the first dude to note that if you inbreed plants and animals, it would decrease vitality and fertility. And when did he find that out? 1860s, 1870s. And by then it was too late. For instance, the last three emperors of the Qing dynasty could not have kids. They were young, they had many wives, yet none of them had any kids. And it's believed that because of this marriage tradition of the Manchus during their early years or because of their ancestors, it caused future generations to lose their breeding capability. And Darwin did this research because he worried about cousin marriage in his own family. Interestingly enough. And it wasn't until all the way into the 1900s, early 1900s, that the concept of recessive inheritance was founded. So what that means is the reason why you can't have siblings have kids or cause a genetic deform is because it'll take up the recessive gene. Instead of having a dominant gene take over, in other words, Darwin's explanation about uh the strong survives. And here there is no strong to survive. So the weak keeps duplicating, and that causes genetic defects. And we didn't know that. We didn't know that until Gregor Mendel's work, when he rediscovered it in the 1900s. You know, by then incest was already already caused its harm. So there you have it. There are a couple of marriage systems that you would find throughout Asia history, and there's also a marriage system that you would still find today. Very unique. Something that you and I culturally have difficulty accepting. Yet, if you really think about it, it does make sense. At least it makes sense socially for the time of their existence. Now the last two, we don't have time to get into today, but we're gonna um but I have already planned a part three. The last two marriages are the last two marriages I cannot make sense of, okay, because they're not amongst the living. You do not hear that wrong. Okay, the last two marriages that we're gonna get into in part three do not talk about the living. They're marriages between the dead or the living and the dead. Very cryptic customs in Asian culture that we'll get to next episode. Trust me, you don't want to miss it. Thank you again for all your love and support. And I hope you find this type of topic interesting. Until next time, Uncle Wong signing out.