Word: shaanxi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...place of contentment and hope, but Liu's mother doesn't want anyone observing too closely. "Please," she says, hands frantically kneading the quilt, "do not speak of this room." Indeed, the newlyweds point to the desperation that has engulfed the hardscrabble villages of China's central Shaanxi province. For Liu and Hai are not just husband and wife but also first cousins...
...need strong wives. Now that the offspring of China's one-child policy are reaching marriageable age, millions are finding there just aren't enough women to go around. With so many men to choose from, women are loathe to live in, say, the mud caves where many Shaanxi peasants make their homes. So men in the countryside are resorting to drastic means to continue their family lines, including wedding women who once had little hope of marrying, like those with physical or mental disabilities. Brothers share one wife. The most desperate of all, though, are those who marry members...
...Dehai never imagined he would wed his shy first cousin Hai Hongmei. But Liu's parents couldn't make enough from Shaanxi's parched earth to buy their son a wife. Desperate, his mother asked her sister for a big favor. A few days later, Liu was informed he would be marrying his kin. "It can be unsafe to marry cousins," says Liu's mother. "But what...
...Shaanxi, China...
Worse than the memory of the pain is the wall of silence that immediately fell around the village chiefs implicated in the attack, which arose from the village's refusal to allow Wu Fang to divorce her husband. Powerful and corrupt, these officials from Fenghuo village in northwestern Shaanxi province have consistently blocked all attempts by Wu Fang to bring them to justice. When a Chinese newspaper wrote a story sympathetic to her case in 1996, the village sued for libel--and won last June in a local court. "Everywhere in China there are outside factors that interfere with legal...