Why Chinese women are denied legal land rights

In the tea-growing hills of southern China, bonds of blood make villages strong. Most residents of Lüchuwu, a village in the pine-clad highlands of Fujian province, share just two surnames between them. The clout of the Su family, in particular, is shown by a white-walled, red-pillared shrine bearing the inscription: “Su Clan Ancestral Hall”. Yet if family ties bind places like Lüchuwu, those bonds are also conditional. A woman may be born and brought up in a village that her ancestors built. But if she marries a man from elsewhere, custom deems her lost to her birth family and home village, as a waijianü, or “married-out daughter”.