The Mosuo is a small ethnic group belonging to the Naxi, inhabiting in Yunnan and Sichuan Province. One of the best known, and least understood, aspects of Mosuo culture include the practice of what has been termed a “walking marriage”.

Mosuo is the only matriarchal society in China in existence that maintains a system of “walking marriage”. There is no traditional marriage in Mosuo culture. Therefore, there are no husbands or wives. Children of such relationships are raised by their mothers and the mothers' families.

General Practice

The Mosuo have large extended families, and several generations living together in the same house. Everyone lives in communal quarters, and there are no private bedrooms or living areas, except for women of an adult age.

All on-going sexual relationships in Mosuo culture are called “walking marriages.” These bonds are “based on mutual affection.” In the daytime, young men and women express their deep liking for each other by singing and dancing. With the emotional foundations set to some extent, women invite men to visit their rooms at night and to leave the next morning.

An emotional breakdown marks the end of the relationship of walking marriage. Whether or not the father is involved, children are raised in the mother's home and assume her family name.

Benefits

This walking marriage system is a pure system, and is grounded in a basis of love, without any social rules. Such marrital practices have many positive outcomes.

Firstly, it provides both participants equal measures of freedom. It can be initiated at will and ended in the same manner. China has a history of focusing more on families’ ties than individuals’ as the mainstream helps serve economic and political interests of  larger parties. Walking marriages, however, negate these social pressures and allow more independence.

Another particularly important result of this practice is the lack of preference for children of a particular sex. In poorer populations, there is a strong preference for male children, because most believe that when they age, sons rather than daughters will be the ones to care for them. However, among the Mosuo, since children never leave the household, there is no particular preference for one gender over the other.

Unraveling Myths

How is this ancient tradition able to survive considering the vast changes that China has gone through over the last century? And why till today most of the Mosuo people still prefer such types of marriage to other forms? These remain the quandaries, which make the Mosuo people a mysterious ethnic group for outsiders.