When a Man Marries Into His Wife's Family in Pursuit of Jade and Ancient China

Recently, I've been watching the C-drama Pursuit of Jade, and it has been such a great show. One interesting thing that happened early in Pursuit of Jade is the idea of 入贅, where a man marries into a woman's family, making the woman the head of the household. While the background of the drama is fictional, 入贅 is a very real concept from Chinese history. In this relationship, the man who marries into the woman's family is known as a 贅婿. In a traditional Chinese marriage, the woman leaves her family to join the men's. Here, it was the man who leaves. He moves into his wife's household, places himself under her family's roof, and in doing so, steps into a completely inverted version of the traditional Chinese family structure. In many arrangements, the husband was required to take his wife's surname entirely. In others, he kept his own name but agreed that his children would carry hers. In either case, the children of this arrangement generally belong to the mother's house, not the father's. They took her surname and performed rites at her family's ancestral altar. In some dynasties, even the wedding ceremony was different for a 入贅 marriage. In a traditional wedding, the bride waited in the wedding chamber while the groom hosted the celebration. But in a 入贅 wedding, it was the groom who waited while his wife received the guests. The exact mechanics of 入贅 varied across regions and time periods, but the general sense of it was the same. The roles would be reversed, and the wife would be the head of the household. Hi everyone, I'm Amy. Today we are going to look at how a man married into a woman's family in Chinese history, why it was looked down upon, and how it worked for the imperial family. To understand 入贅, we have to start with the word itself. The character 贅 doesn't just mean to marry in. In ancient Chinese, it referred to an unnecessary growth on the body, something extra, useless, and out of place. This negative implication tells us exactly how society viewed these men before we even get to the law. But where did this stigma actually come from? One of the most common historical theories says that the 贅婿 began as something far more literal, a 贅子. Imagine a family so poor, so deep in debt during a famine, that they had only one asset left, their son. They would pawn him to a wealthy household as collateral for a loan. If the family couldn't repay within specific time, the son didn't go home. He became a debt slave, and eventually, to keep his labor in the household permanently, the master might marry him to a daughter, often a daughter of lower status. Such as a daughter of a concubine. In this case, the slave became a son-in-law. According to this theory, it explains why in the early records of the Warring States and Qing Dynasty period, the 贅婿 was often treated as a low-status dependent, sometimes comparable to servant classes. According to texts from the Han Dynasty and later Chinese folklore, Zhang Ziya, the great strategist who helped found Zhong Dynasty, is described as an outcast husband. Before his great accomplishments, he was a descendant of a fallen noble family who had nothing but his family's name. He was living in poverty and was forced to enter a 入贅 marriage. He spent all of this time studying strategy and philosophy, and was unable to even sell flour or weave baskets correctly. He ate the wife's family's rice, without bringing in his own property or name. He was essentially a burden on the family. Even in modern day, there is the slang 吃软饭, which literally means eating soft rice, a direct reference to men who eats food that his wife earns, with no contribution of his own. Eventually, he was divorced and kicked out of his wife's house, as an example of a low-status 赘婿 man. But ironically, after he is kicked out, he meets who would later become King Wen of Zhou, and helps him to overthrow the Shang Dynasty to form the Zhou Dynasty. Legend says that after he became powerful, his ex-wife came back to him and begged to be his wife again. In response, Zhang Ziya took a cup of water, spilled it on the ground, and told her, Spilled water cannot be gathered back. A broken marriage cannot be rejoined. Zhang Ziya's story is an interesting legend of a 赘婿 reclaiming his dignity. But for most men, there was no comeback. And if being a 赘婿 meant social humiliation at home, it meant something far more dangerous when it comes to the government. In the eyes of the emperor, a man who married into a woman's family wasn't just a family anomaly. He was a tax loophole. In the early dynasties, the state used household registration for taxes. A man's primary duty to the state was to lead a household, pay taxes, and provide labor. But a 赘婿 didn't have his own household. He attached himself to his wife's family. From the government's perspective, this was one less household to collect taxes from. But instead of encouraging them to form independent households, the state found another way to make use of these 赘婿. The consequences were severe. From the Qing dynasty onward, 赘婿 were treated as lowborn dependents in the eyes of the state, routinely targeted for the hardest labor and most dangerous military assignments. 赘婿 were grouped with other low-status citizens, such as guilty officials, fugitives, and certain registered merchants. These groups were used by the first emperor Qin Shi Huang for his campaigns to build the Great Wall and conquests, and again by Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty for his military campaigns. When the empire needed men for its most dangerous assignments, the 赘婿 were part of the group that was sent first. Even if a man survived and came home, the stigma followed him into the next generation, and one after that. Over time, this status became formalized in law. The law of the earlier dynasties prevented 赘婿 themselves from establishing their own households or holding office. And even their descendants could only hold government official positions after three generations, with official registers still noting that their ancestors had been a 赘婿. It was a mark that the state literally wrote into the family record. This sounds terrible for the wife's family too, right? But from that family's perspective, a low-status heir was better than no heir at all. Remember that the premise of a 入赘 marriage was because the wife's family had no male heirs of their own. For an ordinary farming household, bringing in a 赘婿 also meant more than just a husband. It meant another adult male laborer, someone who was now bound to their household, who would continue working the same land and help to support them. So in the end, this arrangement allowed their daughter to stay with her family, care for them, and have help taking care of their property. By the later Han Dynasty and Tang Dynasty, the state became more lenient. Though the stigma around 赘婿 holding office persisted in various forms for centuries, the 赘婿 became less a legal problem and more a shameful social status, a shame that would continue for many years. Next, let's talk about inheritance. In traditional Chinese law, property usually followed the male line. And it wasn't just about wealth. The person who inherited the estate was also responsible for maintaining the family's ancestral sacrifices. Property and lineage were the same thing. To inherit the house was to inherit the duty to honor the dead. When there isn't a male heir, families generally have three options. A common option was adoption, bring in a male heir from within the extended family, usually a nephew, who could fully preserve the lineage. The second was 入贅, bring in a husband into the daughter's household to keep the property inside the family. The third was simply letting the extended family absorb the assets, which meant the daughter lost control entirely. Early in the C-drama, Pursuit of Jade, the main character runs into an issue about her property. After her parents died, they had left their house to her. But under the law at the time, a daughter could not legally inherit property. So in order to protect her house from being seized by her uncle, she had to find a husband. In this case, her 入贅 husband became her legal shield to protect her claim on the property. But a 贅氏 did not solve the issue of lineage. Compared to adoption, which preserved a family line completely, 入贅 was always seen as a compromise. The real solution came through the next generation. In many 入贅 arrangements, the children took the mother's surname and were considered part of her family line. It was the children, not the husband, who restored the lineage. And then there were the challenges of the courtroom. Throughout the Song, Ming, and Qing dynasties, as the legal system became more bureaucratic, there were more frequent disputes over inheritance involving 贅氏. And the 贅氏 was typically disadvantaged. If a daughter died, or if there was a dispute with a cousin, the court would often strip the 贅氏 of his holdings, even if he had lived in the house and worked the land for 40 years. Judges consistently favored blood relatives. The argument was that the property of the family should stay within the family. And the 贅氏 was not technically a part of that. He was a tool used to keep the house standing. But once the job was done, the system was designed to ensure he never truly owned it. While the legal reality for 贅氏 was often grim, there are certainly more positive stories. For some men, marrying into a woman's family wasn't a desperate act of survival. It was a calculated move for power. For a man with no land and no prospects of his own, it was sometimes the best deal available. But for the ambitious, 入贅 could be something more. The most famous example of this is the legendary Tang Dynasty poet and swordsman, Li Bai, who is often described in modern stories as the most powerful 贅氏 in Chinese history. Despite his enormous talent, Li Bai's family background was murky, and he couldn't enter civil service easily. For a man like him, talent alone was not enough. At the time, the Tang Dynasty court favored family background and connections. Li Bai could write poetry that impressed people, but he did not belong to the circles where decisions were made. According to later accounts, around 727 CE, he married into the noble Xu family, specifically, the granddaughter of the former chancellor Xu Yushi. However, his situation was unique. The Xu family was not looking for a 贅氏 in the traditional sense. Instead, they were impressed by Li Bai's talent and wanted to leverage him to increase their family's cultural prestige. They didn't even need his children, and when he had two children with Lady Xu, they were allowed to keep the Li surname. They just wanted the glory of his poetry. So instead of a typical 贅氏, Li Bai became more of a resident son-in-law. It is said that he spent the next 10 years or so reading and learning from the Xu family's massive private library and practicing his swordplay. It gave him the gentleman scholar polish he lacked. When his wife passed away a few years later, the Xu family let him leave, and he took his children with him. Now that is already fascinating. But wait, there is more. Years later, Li Bai had served some time as an official in the imperial court and had become somewhat of a celebrity. But unfortunately, he wasn't hired as a political advisor as he had imagined. Instead, his job was to write beautiful poems on command to praise the palace or the emperor's favorite consort, the beautiful Yang Guifei. During his time at the imperial court, he was constantly drunk and was eventually dismissed in disgrace. With nowhere else to go, Li Bai started traveling again. Popular folklore says that on these travels, he won the heart of the granddaughter of another former chancellor, Zhong Chuke, by writing a poem on a white wall. It is said that she was so moved by the calligraphy that she bought the entire wall to prevent it from being washed away. And so, he married into the noble Zong family once again as a Zhui Xu. Joining the Zong family gave him a place to stay and a powerful shield against his political enemies in the capital. For Li Bai, these marriages were never about settling down. They were more like political alliances. He traded the traditional pride of a household head for a seat at the tables of power, proving that for a man with enough talent, the stigma of marrying in was a small price to pay for a shortcut to what he wanted. The incredible stories of Li Bai show us that being a Zhui Xu was not always a flaw. Sometimes, it was a way in. A way into land, into stability, or into a circle of power that would otherwise be completely closed. And speaking of political alliances, that brings us to another form of Wu Zhui. When a man married an imperial princess. In this kind of marriage, the man was often referred to as a Fu Ma, which can be understood as an imperial prince consort. The common Zhui Xu married into his wife's family because he had no power, while a Fu Ma was usually the opposite. Marriages with an imperial princess were almost always a political alliance with another powerful family. Meaning that the man was already someone who was powerful. And while a Fu Ma would gain prestige by marrying an imperial princess, it had its own burdens. He would enter the tightly controlled world of the imperial family, where his wife wasn't just his spouse. She was his sovereign because she held a higher political rank. The domestic role of a typical Wu Zhui household were amplified. In many dynasties, the Fu Ma had to behave as a subject when addressing his wife in formal settings. And in some cases, he would live in the princess's residence instead of his own. But what's most interesting is the children. The children of the imperial princess usually took the surname of their father and belonged to their father's family instead of the imperial family. The reason is simple. The emperor didn't want these children to have a legal claim to the throne. The exact mechanisms of a Fu Ma varied widely throughout the different dynasties and gradually shifted from alliance to restriction. In the Tang Dynasty, being a Fu Ma was often a sign of immense imperial favor. And the role still carried real political weight. High-ranking noble families like the Zhangsun family frequently married with the imperial family to solidify their power. I talked about an example of this in a previous video when Zhangsun Quan married Princess Xing Chen to strengthen the alliance between the two families. By the Song Dynasty, the court had already begun pulling back from powerful marriage alliances with noble families, marking a shift toward tighter control that would fully develop in later dynasties. The Ming Dynasty took this logic furthest. In the early Ming Dynasty, many Fu Ma came from the families of founding military heroes and held real command and significant posts. But as the dynasty matured, the emperor grew wary of powerful in-law families accumulating influence near the throne. Later Ming Dynasty emperors increasingly chose Fu Ma from lower-ranking military families or commoners, granting them generous stipends and high social standing while quietly barring them from real administrative or military power. By the Qing Dynasty, the system became even more tightly controlled through the banner structure, with imperial marriages serving as a balancing tool rather than a form of political advancement. In the end, the closer you were to the emperor through marriage, the less independent power you were allowed to have. The story of the Zui Xu is ultimately a story about the intersection of human desperation and the rigid mechanics of property. In a society where land and name were everything, the Zui Xu was a legal anomaly. Whether it was a brilliant strategist like Jiang Ziya being tossed out in his old age, or a poet like Li Bai trading his pride for a chancellor's library, the reality was the same, an interesting contrast to the traditional structures of Chinese history. History remembers the emperors and the generals, but the story of the Zui Xu reminds us of the men who filled the gaps in the records. It reminds us that for centuries, the family wasn't just a unit of love, it was a unit of property. And behind every Zui Xu brought in to save a household was a daughter, a woman trying to hold on to whatever her family had built, in a system that gave her no clean way to do it. The Zui Xu existed because she had no other option that is just as much her story as his. Interestingly, there are some places in China today where men voluntarily marry into their wife's family as a practical solution for only child households. The tradition that was once a mark of shame has quietly became in some corners of China just another way to keep a family together. Does anything about Ru Zui remind you of marriage customs in your own culture? Let me know in the comments. If you enjoyed today's topic, don't forget to like and subscribe. Thanks again for watching and I'll see you in the next one. Stay Magical