What’s Her Name?

Thoughts on foreign brides, translated…

“I recently sent for my Vietnamese wife for her to come to Taiwan, her Vietnamese name has a “Ms.” in it, doesn’t sound too pretty, can I change it for her?”

“Sure you can! My wife is from Thailand, since she’d come over, I’d given her a random name, she can have ANY last name she wanted.”

“My friend’s foreign bride, when she first arrived in Taiwan, she’d gotten a temporary name from translating her name to Chinese, ‘Su-Duei Wu’, doesn’t sound articulate at all, recently, he’s about to change his wife’s name, anyway, it doesn’t has any relation with her original name of Duan Wu anyways!”

Your daughter-in-law, your wife, your mom, your wife’s younger sister, your aunt, that lady from your neighborhood, do you know, all their names?

The reason why this is an important question is because the unequivocal relationship of an international marriage, along with the problems that may surface because of it.  The part about these marriage being unequivocal is in that the men who married them are not only patriarchs, but they were also, borderlined, by those foreigners they’re married to, they’re the victims of the caste systems, and, through marriage, they’d helped each other find a better place for themselves together.

But, even after the princess married Prince Charming, happiness still isn’t guaranteed.

A friend who works as an elementary school teacher in Changhwa told me, that over half of her class were children of migrant families, and, of them all, either that their parents are all divorced, or, one of the parents had gone missing.  “Those from Cambodia behaved the best, those from Indonesia, also better behaved, the Vietnamese will run away, there are less and less from Thailand,  and those from China would fall in love as they wished to, but, those from the deeper parts of the inland will run easy.”  All of these words sounded very discriminatory, there’s no doubt, but, she’d said seriously, the reason why they all escaped, is because most of the migrated ladies had NO idea, that their marriages were going to be hell!

They’d come over here to Taiwan at a very young age, and, realized that they’d gambled it all, on the wrong things, their husbands are drunks, domestic violence, the elders in the families tell them, “We BOUGHT you”, or call them flat out, “servants”.

The moms that ran off, would sometimes secretively go to the schools to watch their kids from a distance.  Some kids believed, that their mothers had abandoned them, and, just ignored their moms; some kids would run out after the mothers, and start crying with them, in the darkened stairways, fearing, that if other kids see them, they’ll go home and tell their parents, and, somehow, the words will get relayed back to their own households.

Those who don’t make their escapes, couldn’t speak Chinese or Taiwanese fluently, couldn’t read the assignment books for their kids, the teachers stopped communicating with them, because they saw NO point in doing so.  As the kids get into the higher grade levels, they’d started understanding what’s happened, and started belittling their own moms, and, as the moms buy the kids the toys, the name brand sneakers, but, chopping up chicken for over ten hours a day, they’d made less than $800N.T.s.  As for, how is mom’s name pronounced in her tongue, the kids never even bothered to ask.

I recalled how I’d once interviewed, Ya-Ching who works for the Southeast Asian Ladies’ Union, but, from Thailand, her original name was Yadrung Sata, “Yadrung” means “rainbow” and her friend’s name’s meaning was “stars high up in the skies”, but, as they’d registered for their names, their names were demeaned to something less beautiful.

The migrated ladies losing their own names, when they get divorced because of domestic violence or some other reasons, should they keep using this name given to them by their husbands?  Or, should they give themselves a brand new name?  The last names are supposed to symbolize the continuation of a family, the passing of the torch, and the first names, are the blessings of one’s own parents for oneself, losing the right to choose one’s own name, symbolized how people are ignoring a woman’s complicated history.

Faina Eepachievna Wahrleva was from Yekaterinburg, Russia, after she’d married abroad, her father-in-law gave her a name, “Fang-Nian”, later on, her husband changed her name to “Fang-Liang”, after she’d taken her husband’s last name, “Chiang”, silent, quiet became the way she’d lived her life, or maybe, her life was set, at the precise moment she’d lost her own name.

So, this, is the OTHER side of this WHITE picket fence, and that’s just DISRESPECTING to a fellow human being, I mean, why the HELL should the ladies “lose” their own last names after they are married?  After all, OUR last names are parts of our identity, and, wouldn’t losing THAT means that we’d lost, parts of our pasts, parts of ourselves, and, if we are made, to LOSE parts of our pasts and ourselves, then, what, are we?  People who are L-O-S-T in the world!