Shim-pua marriage

Tongyangxi (traditional Chinese: 童養媳; simplified Chinese: 童养媳; pinyin: tóngyǎngxí), also known as Shim-pua marriage in Min Nan dialects (Chinese: 媳婦阿; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: sin-pū-á or sim-pū-á; and in phonetic Hokkien transcription using Chinese characters: 新婦仔), was a tradition of arranged marriage dating back to pre-modern China, in which a family would adopt a pre-adolescent daughter as a future bride for one of their pre-adolescent, usually infant, sons, and the children would be raised together.

A direct translation of the Taiwanese (Hokkien) word "sim-pu-a" is "little daughter-in-law," in which the characters "sim-pu" (traditional Chinese: 媳婦; simplified Chinese: 媳妇; pinyin: xífù) mean daughter-in-law and the particle character "a" (Chinese: 阿; pinyin: ā or Chinese: 仔; pinyin: zǐ; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: á) indicates a diminutive. The similarly used Mandarin Chinese term "tongyangxi" (traditional Chinese: 童養媳; simplified Chinese: 童养媳) means literally "child (童) raised (養) daughter-in-law (媳)" and is the term typically used as translation for the English term "child bride."

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