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15-year-old girl Ayi lives in a small Yi ethnic village situated at 2,800 meters in the mountains of Jinyang County, Liangshan Prefecture. Every week there is a market near her home which draws all the farmers from nearby villages carrying chickens, potatoes and piglets in baskets to sell or trade in the market in exchange for alcohol, wool cloaks, snacks and other living necessities.

It was probably in one of these weekly markets that her grandparents arranged her engagement with a man she's never seen without her knowledge. Her grandparents received 30,000 yuan (about US$4,580) as betrothal price from the man's family. They plan to buy Ayi's 17 year old brother a bride with this money. The formal wedding day hasn't been set yet.

According to Yi ethnic minority custom adolescent girls aged around 15 or 16 are formally announced as adults following a ‘skirt change ceremony'.  After the ritual, the girls are allowed to make friends, date boys and enter into marriage engagements.

Weddings and funerals are not only the most important aspects of community life, they are also the largest expenditures that local families, with average annual income around 2000 yuan, will ever make. It is a local custom to give tens of thousands to the bride's family and to kill dozens of oxen to throw a banquet at funerals.

"I pleaded to my grandmother that I don't want to be married off. But she said the engagement has been cemented and I can't reject it because we've received the bride-price." Ayi cried.  She knows nothing about the man she is to marry except that his family is poorer than hers and without basic living utensils. This makes her feel even sadder.

More than ten years ago, both of her parents passed away because of AIDS and she‘s been living with her grandparents. She has never spent a day in school and is illiterate, while her brother has finished junior middle school.

"I also wanted to study like my brother.  But my old grandparents need help in the farm work and house chores. So, I had to give up studying. I feel regret now because without education I won't have a better life." She said. "If I am to have children, I will definitely send them to school."

Since she was 11, Ayi has been working from sunrise to sunset. The tough physical work has left its marks on the face of this young girl, making her look weathered. As Ayi talks, her brother Chi smokes slowly from the butt of a cigarette.

Ayi said she needs clothes most, but "the most important thing is to get a wife for my brother."

by Xu Xin