ABSTRACT
From approximately 1865 through 1935 in three districts of the Pearl River Delta, there arose a singular social phenomenon which Marjorie Topley (1975) has called the "marriage resistance movement." Women who chose not to marry were called sou hei, "self-combers," referring to the fact that they combed their own hair in the fashion of married women rather than having it done for them in a marriage ceremony. Most sou hei formed sisterhoods which, if successful, served as a substitute for the family throughout their lives. The movement was spontaneous and unorganized, spurred by the economic leverage which some women gained through the wages earned in the production of silk, and popularized through song and story. At its height, in the early twentieth century, the movement may have included up to 100,000 women. There is very little known about the origin of marriage resistance. Most of the women involved were illiterate or semi-literate. Little official notice was taken of the movement, because of the political upheavals of the time, and because the movement concerned only women. Yet many members in the last cohort to resist marriage are still alive and living in the cities of Southeast Asia and Hong Kong and in the People's Republic of China. It is through them that we come to know of the movement.
