V I E T N A M
Government Steps In to Manage Mixed Marriages
by Tran Dinh Thanh Lam
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — When Vietnamese police arrested in August five South Korean men who were choosing potential wives from among 125 women presented to them at a hotel, not too many people were surprised.
But those like Nguyen Xuan, a 24-year-old taxi driver here 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 spouses 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 over were kept for further investigation.
This is but one kind of brokering marriages in Vietnam, where sociologists say women are increasingly going abroad as wives of men in places like 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, about 92 percent were husbands and foreigners or 'Viet Kieu', and of the husbands 35.6 percent were Taiwanese.
Many of the marriages take place after some introduction and genuine relationships, but wife-selection rackets have also been uncovered in this southern Vietnamese city. Reports showed that many girls born from 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 often report on.
The trend is such that the government is worried about reports of unhappy marriages between Vietnamese and foreigners and their increasing divorce rates, but also know full well that these are very difficult to put a complete stop to.
Sociologists and social workers are now suggesting the establishment of marriage guidance centres to try 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 Women Association in this city.
As it is, an army of middlemen roams the countryside in search of girls wanting to marry a foreigner and drive them to Ho Chi Minh City. There, they are given modern clothes and make-up and then introduced to potential grooms, most from China and Taiwan.
"Each selected girl will receive around 10 million Vietnamese dong to give to her parents. The matchmaker has already pocketed 5 million from the package of 1,000 U.S. dollars (15 million dong) that the groom has paid," Xuan said.
The government has banned any agency that matches foreigners with Vietnamese, but allows some 'acquaintance clubs' founded by the printing media and social organisations help local singles to get together.
Local singles who want to find a foreign partner can also go to Internet chat rooms. However, as regular chatter Le Thi Tam 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 plans to found some 'matchmaking centres' in major cities like Hanoi and HCMC to help Vietnamese find their rightful foreign partners," Hien said, adding that some could take off from the 'acquaintance clubs'.
"The centres could help match foreigners or Vietnamese living abroad (Viet Kieu), with locals who desire a genuine marriage," Hien said, because there would be more 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 happened to due to disparities in culture and language. Some of the 39,300 Vietnamese citizens who married foreigners in the last decade met their spouses through relatives or friends.
It is not usual for the foreigner to come to Vietnam to visit the Vietnamese women two or three times. "My cousin, who married a German engineer, introduced me to one of her husband's colleagues. We courted for several months and then got married," recalled Nguyen Thi Bang Tam, 29. Her husband, Tam said, was "nice and caring".
But the majority of mixed marriages — especially those involving Taiwanese or Chinese grooms — do not have even a few meetings to speak of.
Often, they are arranged by go-betweens or illegal matchmakers whose main interest is to earn money from it. "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 twenty-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 programmes, informing the to-be husbands and wives about possible cultural gaps and marriage-related laws," Hien said.
In this area, 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 organised training workshops for brides-to-be, teaching them about women rights, reproductive health, Vietnamese and Taiwanese culture, and marriage laws.
"Upcoming marriage guidance centres 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.
