From the late 1990s, through the local ethic tradition of the “sisters group” social network, twelve Buyi girls from Luo Village of inland Guizhou Province married to men in Heng Village and the nearby areas of coastal Zhejiang Province successively. In this thesis, I mainly focus on these twelve minority women’s lives in the Han majority society of Zhejiang Province to examine the process of their adaptation and interaction with the local community, the change in their social status, and the relationship with their faraway natal families. Furthermore, the effect of ethnic minority issues on this whole process is also discussed. It is found that the term “married out Buyi women” is not a “derogatory”one, these women have maintained and even strengthened their “sister group” net...[ Read more ]

From the late 1990s, through the local ethic tradition of the “sisters group” social network, twelve Buyi girls from Luo Village of inland Guizhou Province married to men in Heng Village and the nearby areas of coastal Zhejiang Province successively. In this thesis, I mainly focus on these twelve minority women’s lives in the Han majority society of Zhejiang Province to examine the process of their adaptation and interaction with the local community, the change in their social status, and the relationship with their faraway natal families. Furthermore, the effect of ethnic minority issues on this whole process is also discussed. It is found that the term “married out Buyi women” is not a “derogatory”one, these women have maintained and even strengthened their “sister group” network in the local society of Zhejiang. And this network has offered a new chance to re-organize and re-construct social ties, leading to the empowerment of migrant wives’ discourse in their husbands’ communities and making identiy representation available. Furthermore, I argure the relationships between these Buyi wives and their home places have never been distant though they have married out.