The fog in the mountains of northern Myanmar never truly lifted; it only thinned enough to see the next row of pine trees. For nineteen-year-old Aye, the fog was a shroud. Her family’s small plot of land had been ravaged by years of conflict and poor harvests. When Auntie Wei, a distant relative from a village near the Chinese border, arrived with promises of "factory work" in a glittering city, Aye’s parents didn’t see a transaction. They saw survival.
"They have so many men and so much money," Auntie Wei whispered, her eyes darting like a bird’s. "You will send back more in a month than your father earns in a year." bride buying in china
: Buying a trafficked woman is a crime in China, carrying sentences of up to three years, though local social normalization often hinders enforcement. The fog in the mountains of northern Myanmar