Tongyangxi (), also known as Shim-pua marriage in Min Nan dialects (; 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" () mean daughter-in-law and the particle character "a" ( or ) indicates a diminutive. The similarly used Mandarin Chinese term "tongyangxi" () means literally "child (童) raised (養) daughter-in-law (媳)" and is the term typically used as translation for the English term "child bride". These child marriages were more common among the poor, where they served to guarantee a wife for a poor son. The families that gave their daughters up also benefited to the extent that they no longer had to provide for a daughter, someone who was bound to marry and leave the family one day. Such marriages were often unsuccessful, and they were outlawed in China in 1949. In Taiwan, compulsory education got these girls out of their homes and exposed them to the broader world, often leading to them leaving their adopted families. The practice ended there by the 1970s. Social anthropology perspective Within social anthropology research of Chinese marriage, shim-pua marriage is referred to as a "minor marriage" because the daughter-in-law joins her future husband's household when both are minors, in contrast to Chinese major marriage, in which the bride joins her husband's household on the day of the wedding. The shim-pua daughter was often adopted into a family who already had a son to whom she would be betrothed, though this was not always the case. Instead, some families adopted a shim-pua daughter prior to having a son, prompted by a traditional belief that adopting a shim-pua would enhance a wife's likelihood of bearing a son. Although the shim-pua daughter joins the household as a child, the marriage would only occur after both had reached puberty. Depending upon the family's socioeconomic status and financial means, the wedding could range from a large banquet on par with a major marriage to a small family ceremony, or in the simplest cases "a bow to the ancestors and a slight change in the family's sleeping arrangements." Shim-pua marriage occurred over