Walking Marriages
One of the best known, and least understood, aspects of Mosuo culture is their practice of what has been termed “walking marriage” (zou hun in Chinese). There is no traditional marriage in Mosuo culture. Therefore, there are no husbands or wives. The Western conception of marriage has been replaced by “walking marriages” or “visiting relations,” in which partners do not live in the same household. Children of such relationships are raised by their mothers and the mothers' families. Shih (2010) is the most sophisticated anthropological account of Mosuo practices of sexual union.
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