76 Du NAN Nü 21 (2019) 76-106 NAN Nü 21 (2019) 76-106 Reforming Social Customs through Law: Dynamics and Discrepancies in the Nationalist Reform of the Adoptive Daughter-in-Law Yue Du Cornell University yue.du@cornell.edu Abstract Tongyang, rearing daughters-in-law from childhood, was widely practiced as a form of bride price marriage and transactional family building in late imperial and Republican China. Denounced as feudal and backward in twentieth-century public discourse, this time-honored and once legally-protected form of marriage went through significant law reforms in the Republican era. This article examines how the Nationalist Guomindang (GMD) party-state (1928-1949) re-conceptualized tongyang by introducing foreign- inspired notions of parenthood as duty-bound guardianship, and marriage as a union of free choice between spouses. The reformed law annulled the legal relationship between “parents-in-law” and their adoptive daughters-in-law, which enabled adoptive daugh- ters-in-law and their natal parents to dissolve previously established tongyang arrange- ments through litigation. But outside the courtroom, the Nationalist state adopted a non-interventionist approach toward the practice of tongyang, and took no actions to identify people who violated the law. This particular way of reforming social customs through reforming the law limited the effect of the GMD anti-tongyang legislation on a deeply-rooted social practice. The Nationalist reform of the adoptive daughter-in-law provides historians with a useful lens to discuss the dilemma Nationalist lawmakers faced as they treaded between the lines of offending popular customs and enforcing a rigid new social order through law, the balance of which was intimately connected with the regime’s legitimacy. Keywords adoptive daughter-in-law (tongyang xi) – transactional family – law in Republican China – judicial intervention – bride price © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/15685268-00211P03 brill.com/nanu NAN NÜ