Story highlights In some remote and rural parts of China, early marriage is not uncommon

Photographer Xiao Muyi profiled some young couples in 2014

The youngest was 13-years-old

Hong Kong (CNN) Thirteen and just married, Jie looks at her wedding picture framed in white. Next to it, incongruously, are stickers from the Pixar movie "Cars."

Jie married her 16-year-old husband three days after they met during the Lunar New Year in 2014. Not long after, she was pregnant.

It sounds like a scene from China's feudal past, when early marriage was customary, especially for girls, but teenage brides and grooms aren't uncommon in some poor and rural parts of the country's hinterland.

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The reasons are complex -- as economic pressures, shifting social attitudes and changing population dynamics revive a practice that China's Communist leaders had hoped to stamp out.

Photographer Muyi Xiao met Jie and her husband Wen in the southwestern province of Yunnan in 2014.

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