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Vietnam's mixed marriage
mayhem
By Tran Dinh Thanh Lam
HO CHI MINH CITY - When Vietnamese police
arrested five South Korean men last month for choosing
potential wives from among 125 women presented to them
at a hotel, not too many people were surprised. But
Nguyen Xuan, a 24-year-old taxi driver who had driven
two of these women to the hotel, could not help but be
cynical.
"Just think of it. These 125 young
girls compete for the luck to be chosen as wives by five
old guys," said Xuan, lamenting how he thinks Vietnamese
women are increasingly eager to marry foreign men in the
hope of a better life.
The foreigners and their
potential brides were later released, but the two
Vietnamese "matchmakers" who brought the women to Ho Chi
Minh City were kept for further investigation.
This is but one kind of marriage brokering
taking place in Vietnam, where sociologists say women
are increasingly marrying foreign men and going abroad
to places such as Taiwan.
According to the Ho
Chi Minh City justice department, 39,300 Vietnamese
citizens married foreigners, including overseas
Vietnamese or Viet Kieu, between 1993 and 2003.
Of these marriages, about 92 percent occurred between
Vietnamese females and foreigner or Viet Kieu
males, and of the husbands, 35.6 percent were Taiwanese.
Many of the marriages take place after some
introduction and as the result of a genuine
relationship, but wife-selection rackets have been
uncovered in this southern Vietnamese city over the past
few months.
Reports show that many girls born to
poor families in the Mekong Delta still believe that
marrying a foreigner is their only chance of solving
familial financial problems.
These women are
easy prey for middlemen and illegal matchmakers. Many
become the "Vietnamese brides in Taiwan" that the local
media report on.
The trend is such that the
government now worries about increasing divorce rates
and reports of unhappy marriage taking place between
Vietnamese and foreigners. However, the government also
realizes that these marriages are difficult to put a
complete stop to.
Sociologists and social
workers are now suggesting the establishment of marriage
guidance centers to ensure that intercultural marriages
are more likely to be based on love and mutual
understanding.
"Both the foreign grooms and the
Vietnamese brides would benefit if official marriage
guidance centers had been set up," said Le Thi Thu Hien,
head of the family department of the Vietnam Women
Association in Ho Chi Minh City.
As the process
goes, an army of middlemen roams the countryside in
search of girls wanting to marry a foreigner. The
middlemen then drive the women to Ho Chi Minh City where
they are given modern clothes and makeup and introduced
to potential grooms, most from China and Taiwan.
"Each selected girl will receive around VND10
million [US$650] to give to her parents. The matchmaker
has already pocketed VND5 million from the package of
US$1,000 [VND15 million] that the groom has paid," Xuan
said. The government has banned any agency that matches
foreigners with Vietnamese, but allows some social
organizations and "acquaintance clubs", founded by the
print media, that help local singles get together.
Local singles looking to find a foreign partner
can also go to Internet chat rooms. However, Hien
remarked, "The results of these liaisons are doubtful,
as people are not very sincere while chatting over the
Internet.
"To avoid all these problems, the
Vietnam Women Association has plan to found some
'matchmaking centers' in major cities like Hanoi and
HCMC [Ho Chi Minh City] to help Vietnamese find their
rightful foreign partners," Hien said, adding that some
could take off from the "acquaintance clubs".
"The centers could help match foreigners or
Vietnamese living abroad, with locals who desire a
genuine marriage," Hien said, because there would be
greater chances of getting to know each other.
"Advisers could also support the couples in
overcoming the differences in lifestyle, customs and
language," Hien said.
Mixed marriages have
increased with Vietnam's opening to the world, but
divorces have also risen to due to disparities in
culture and language.
Some of the 39,300
Vietnamese citizens who married foreigners in the past
decade met their spouses through relatives or friends.
It is not usual for a foreigner to come to Vietnam to
visit a Vietnamese women two or three times before they
marry.
"My cousin, who married a German
engineer, introduced me to one of her husband's
colleagues. We courted for several months and then get
married," recalled Nguyen Thi Bang Tam. Her husband, Tam
said, was "nice and caring".
But most mixed
marriages - especially those involving Taiwanese or
Chinese grooms - take place without even a few meetings
between the bride and groom. Often, these marriages are
arranged by go-betweens or illegal matchmakers, whose
main interest is to earn money from the union.
"Everybody - groom, bride, and matchmaker -
wants to make it fast, and there are cases where the
foreigner just picks up the woman of his life after a
20-minute session," Hien said.
"It is thus
necessary to raise public awareness about the issue and
limit unhappy marriages between Vietnamese and
foreigners [or Viet Kieu] by intensifying
education programs, informing the to-be husbands and
wives about possible cultural gaps and marriage-related
laws," said Hien.
When it comes to awareness, Vo
Thi Phong, deputy director of the Women's Union in Tay
Ninh, a southern province near the border with Cambodia,
said "our experience in dealing with the issue of
'Vietnamese brides' could help".
Some 670
Vietnamese women went to Taiwan as brides last year from
Tay Ninh.
Together with a local group, the
Women's Union organized training workshops for
brides-to-be, teaching them about women's rights,
reproductive health, Vietnamese and Taiwanese culture
and marriage laws.
"Upcoming marriage guidance
centers could do the same for Vietnamese women and their
foreign partners, to help them get a genuine marriage
founded on mutual understanding and care," Phong said.
(Inter Press Service)
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