How much would you pay for a wife? What is your life like that you would give your picture and information to an organization where a man from another country would choose you from your picture to be his wife? What is the value of a life?
Over the past two decades, Taiwan has experienced an immigration boom composed largely of foreign spouses from China and Southeast Asian countries. These new immigrants, more than 90 percent of whom are female, presently number approximately 300,000, making them the fifth-largest demographic group in Taiwan. More than 190,000 come from China (including Hong Kong and Macau), with significant numbers also from Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand. (http://www.gio.gov.tw/taiwan-website/5-gp/yearbook/p238.html) One in five newly-wedded Taiwanese are married to foreign spouses and, 3.5 percent of newborns are the children of foreign spouses. (http://www.bikhim.com/2005/chinese/internet/news/news_cont.asp?news_id=297&newsType=01) Starting in the late 1980s many different organizations offer a chance for women to “start a better life” and men an opportunity to “find a good wife.”
Think about it. These women, for whatever reason, get on a plane for the first time; go to this brand new country where they cannot speak the language in order to marry a man they have never met. These men, for whatever reason, find that their prospects of marriage are not good, go to another country to find a wife. They have never met the woman, only seen a photo of her, invite her into their homes and marry her.
On Saturday, I went to this organization that is run by the Good Shepherd Sisters (http://www.goodshepherd.org.tw/english/) to help with translation of their literature. (Side note: I can do translations…as long as the pronunciation is by the characters…yay! J) While there I met some women who came to Taiwan to marry a Taiwanese man. (On a purely intellectual level, it will be interesting to see 50 years from now what the ethnic makeup of Taiwan is. The migration of women from Vietnam, Indonesia, China, and the Philippines will change the concept of “Taiwanese” completely.) The women that I met were all so young! They decided (or their parents, economics, etc.)when they were 20 or 21 to immigrate to Taiwan to get married. One woman told me that she wanted to seek a better life. She was a farmer and felt that her chances of having a better life would be in Taiwan. So when this man from Taiwan found her to be of his liking, she came to Taiwan. She has been here for six year and has two children. She chose to come over herself, so she was excited about her prospects. She married a man who does cement work; her sister went to Korea and married a man who runs a store. When she first came here, she could not speak the language and when her husband was at work, she had nothing to do and missed home. The people from Good Shepherds contacted her and told her about the classes that they offer for foreign spouses. Any thoughts on foreign spouses?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail-order_bride (Wikipedia’s discussion on mail-order brides)
http://db.npa.gov.tw/fore-eng/e_f_spouses/e_f_spouses.htm (Handbook of Living Information for Foreign Spouses in Taiwan)
http://www.goodwife.com/ (a website to find a ‘good wife’)
Following My Feet 