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With the rapid economic and social progress in recent years, farmers in the Tibet Autonomous Region in southwest China have increased their exchanges and contacts with the outside world. As a result they are choosing their spouses in wider areas. Norbu Qoizhoi, who got married recently, lives in the Pozhang Township, in Shannan Prefecture. The home of her husband Lhagba Cering is more than 100 kilometers away. They got to know each other when they worked in Lhasa, the regional capital. To the elderly people in Norbu's hometown, who have very few chances to go to the county town each year, Norbu's marriage is something unimaginable. Dr. Banjor at the regional academy of social sciences said that at present, it is very common in rural areas of Tibet for young people to choose spouses from places several hundred, even several thousand kilometers away. "This reflects one aspect of the social progress in rural Tibet," Banjor said. Banjor drew his conclusions from a one-year investigation he made at Bainang County in Xigaze Prefecture. He said, in old Tibet, farmers were tied to the farmland and heavy labor, and they had almost no chance to go out except when enshrining Buddhas. Under feudal serfdom in old Tibet, local people were divided into different classes and there were strict restrictions on marriages between respective classes. In rural areas, appointed marriages were very common and most of the marriages involved people living in the same village or neighboring villages. A'gyizi, a Tibetan scholar, said that in the early 1950s, wealthy farmers in Tibet built up family wealth by ways of doing business or grazing domestic animals, but not by expanding arable land. Among the rural population, only this group of rich farmers had the chance to travel to Lhasa and Xigaze, and they usually chose husbands and wives from local families of upper class, he said. He said that at that time, only 15 to 20 percent of families in rural areas of Tibet were formed by people of different classes and different minority ethnic groups. Sometimes, farmers in old Tibet could not avoid marrying off their children to places far away. "In the past, farmers were poor and they married off their daughters to remote areas just to avoid giving them too many supplies," said Cering Qamjue,74, mother of Norbu Qoizhoi. If daughters were married into a family in the same village, their own parents' had to divide a piece of farmland from the family home and give it to them and they often took possessions from their own parents' homes as well, Cering Qamjue said. However, great changes have taken place in the lifestyle and ways of thinking among local farmers under the tide of the market economy. They are eager to conduct exchanges with the outside world, experts pointed out. At present, more than 70 percent of the townships and villages in Tibet have access to highways. More and more farmers go to cities to make money during the slack season in farming. Marriages like Norbu's are very common in the Chundui Township in Lhunzhub County, a major grain producing region in Tibet. Some 70 percent of local young farmers leave their homes to work or do business in cities during the off season in farming. Domgya village in suburban Lhasa has an unwritten rule: all brides and bridegrooms who want to marry into the village should first pass an examination on their knowledge and skills in doing business and on technologies they have mastered.