here’s an ad that said: Vietnamese brides, tota cost of $200,000N.T.’s, if she runs in a year, we’ll give you a brand new one, guaranteed virgins! As if THAT’s not INSULTING!!!
From the observation of someone, who knew someone who’d “imported” a wife from another country, the discriminations that these women had to endure here, it’s truly, atrocious, translated…
In mid-November, I was invited by the cultural department of Yilan, went to Luodong to make a short speech, on the new migrants’ life in Taiwan. After my speech, a man with glasses, in his fifties, looking very earthy, limped toward the stage to shake my hand.
The man spoke in Mandarin, with Taiwanese, that he’d married a Vietnamese woman, living in Luodong, he’d worked as a truck driver from before, and because the company paid him based off of the number of trips, the more trips he’d made, the more money he’d earned, one day, before he was about to ge4t off work, he’d wanted to get an extra shipment in, and he had a car wreck on the way, shattered a lot of bones in his body, was rushed to the I.C.U. and the doctors worked on him for days, the hospital even handed out the notices of his passing away. During this time, this man relied solely on his wife, staying by his side endlessly, watching over him, to help him make his recovery.
“Had it not been for my wife who’d looked after me so endlessly, I would’ve died!”, the man said, getting emotional. He’d only walked to nearby as a rehab, and saw that my lecture topic was “Migrants”, and came in to the lecture. And still, as he’d sat and listened to how I’d spoken of how many of the foreign brides were said to have been “bought”, how they married here for the sake of “citizenships”, he was almost crying then, because other people had said this of his wife too from before.
“If I’d bought my wife, how would she stay with me through all my hard times in the past? And I’m in physical rehab, couldn’t work, she’s the one, earning the pays, to keep me!”, the Vietnamese wife currently works in a pastry shop in Luodong, there were a total of three Vietnamese migrants working there, the man commanded, “the Vietnamese women were all very strong, and hard working too!”, afterwards, he’d, squeezed my hand hard, thanked me for voicing the thoughts of people like him, who’d married women from abroad.
Seeing how the man had, limped away, there was a surge of emotions taking me over—he and his wife were only, looking for that place to live in the world, they’d loved, cherished one another, and, this marriage should be blessed by others, instead of being gossiped on, and they shouldn’t have to weather through any discrimination at all.
In the past, Taiwanese society had no right beliefs about international marriages, plus the locals were affected by the ads of foreign brides, the stereotypes, causing the people to ask those who’d spoken with a foreign accent, “Where are you from?” “Did your husband pay a lot of money to marry you?”, and maybe, the individual voicing these question had not the heart of malice, but, the way they asked would make people uncomfortable, and, it’d, intruded into the privacy of others, and a lot of the pressures these women were placed under, were from these interactions.
a group of these women, with the same backgrounds, who became friends after marrying over to Taiwan, photo from online…
There was once a migrated mom who’d said to me in a heavy heart, “Why do you, Taiwanese people all wanted to ask us these question like you’re the paparazzi? Actually, I’d more prefer that someone asked me, ‘are you living okay here? Are you adapting okay?’ but more often than not, we’d heard the gossips, instead of the concerns we needed.”
Currently, there are over half-a-million migrated individuals living on this island, and everybody has a chance, of bumping into them in her/his daily life, it’s time, to rid ourselves of the stereotypes, and really show our cares and concerns toward them.
So, this, is a SERIOUS issue here, there are so many migrated women who’d married to men in Taiwan, made this island their home, and yet, the discriminations the writer talks about are still currently ongoing, because we are still, too narrow-minded, and we simply, have a hard time believing, that they’re marrying over for love, instead of money!
Life, the Obstacle Course 