They were sold and made to wed their brothers. China’s fostered child brides now want answers

“It’s very difficult for (a child bride) to provide evidence that the marriage has broken down irretrievably, because everyone in the village would side with her husband,” said Li Wenbin at the Zhongda Legal Clinic.

“All the divorce cases I’ve handled were initiated by women. If a man wants a divorce, it’s often because he looks down on his fostered bride.”

Hu, who still dreads intimacy with her husband, would have divorced him if times had been different then. “He should’ve married someone else, someone who actually liked him,” she said. “He’s suffering too.”

FEELING UNWANTED FROM A YOUNG AGE

Besides the trauma of being made to marry their foster brothers, there were child brides who grew up feeling unwanted well into adulthood. Cai, for instance, could not recall her foster parents ever being supportive of her.

Nor could Huang. “I don’t think they thought of me as their own, because they treated their own children very differently,” she said. “I was basically a servant.

“For example, when they finished their rice, I knew I had to refill their bowls.”

Hu, who was sold for 105 yuan, said she was put to work in the fields at age 7 while other children went to school.