|
|
Sold!
Vietnamese Wife for Chinese Man
Fifty-year-old Deng Wendong is
persistent. Thirteen years after his first Vietnamese wife - whom he
bought for about 300 yuan (1US$=8.3 yuan) from a fellow villager - left
him and their daughter, he has got himself another bride from Vietnam.
The new bride is 27 and was brought here by her father's sister. Deng is a
farmer; he earns a meagre living from fishing and occasional rock chipping
in Ban'ai Village, about 20 kilometres from Dongxing, a border city with
Vietnam in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
The picture of his ex-wife is still hangs on a wall of his home. "She was
very capable (of doing housework and farming). But I was too poor, so she
gave up after living with me for seven years."
Says Deng, "People would look down upon you if you don't have money or a
wife. Having a Vietnamese bride is cheaper but will nevertheless earn you
respect. At least you have a family." Tradition in the area demands that a
bridegroom pay 8,000 to 10,000 yuan to the bride's parents as a betrothal
gift.
Of the eight brothers of the Deng family, four have Vietnamese brides. His
32-year-old brother Deng Wenquan has a Vietnamese wife from Hanoi, for
whom he paid about 400 yuan when he took a fancy to her at a villager's
home. "She is nice and good at housework. My parents treat her well. Life
is now a little better than the days without her," says Wenquan.
His wife Mai, four years younger than him, is a high-school graduate from
a well-educated family. "If he were an old guy, I wouldn't have married
him. I would try to report to the police," says the outspoken Vietnamese
woman.
In 1999, Mai went back to Hanoi with her daughter to visit her parents,
and she learned that they had reported the trafficker to the Vietnamese
police and got him arrested. Her parents wanted her back in Vietnam. Says
Mai, "I want to live with my parents. But I'm not sure I could marry a
good man there. This man is good to me; he never beats me although
sometimes we do quarrel." And she proudly shows photographs of her family
in Vietnam and China.
Over 30 of the 1,500 Ban'ai villagers have bought Vietnamese women as
wives, and this figure does not include men who cohabit with Vietnamese
women. Marriage expense aside, there is much more to a Vietnamese bride
compared to one who is Chinese.
Zhang Yuanfu, a 36-year-old butcher who first married a Vietnamese and now
has a Chinese wife, tells the difference. "She was very considerate and
hardworking. She would keep for me all the delicacies she cooked." He paid
500 yuan to the 'go-between'. However, she left him after four years, and
took her son along. "We quarreled over my gambling, but she was better
than the present one, who is very harsh, likes to pick fights and hits me
when she catches me gambling."
Pei Xingfu - from Ban'ai village - was arrested by the police for drug
trafficking; later he confessed to kidnapping a Vietnamese woman in broad
daylight. According to him, about 30 to 40 per cent of his fellow
villagers marry Vietnamese women. "Thanks to the opening up (of the
country) and reform, villagers here are better off and therefore can
afford to marry Chinese brides. I don't understand why they still want to
wed Vietnamese women, even young men between 26 and 30," he says.
In the past few years, about seven men in the village have been sentenced
for trafficking in Vietnamese women. Dongxing City shares 35.77 kilometres
of the country's land boundary line and 42 kilometres of the coastal
boundary with Vietnam. Since China normalized its diplomatic relations
with Vietnam in 1989, border trade has boomed each year and border
residents from Vietnam visit China easily and freely, as long as they
return by the end of the day.
Further, several years of war in Vietnam resulted in a diminishing male
population. This and the local tradition of marrying on either side of the
border has given rise to trafficking of Vietnamese women in China.
Statistics available thus far indicate all eight border towns and counties
in Guangxi are affected by the influx of Vietnamese women.
Of the 8,002 Vietnamese women in Guangxi, 7,919 were married to local
residents, but none of them had fulfilled the formalities required for
legal marriage. A total of 9,745 children were born out of these
marriages, but only 0.3 per cent were formally registered.
Although police officers are firm in cracking down on traffickers, and
they try to repatriate victims, or those sold for prostitution and forced
marriage, actual repatriation is a huge problem. "After we sent them home,
these women returned to China. It's an embarrassing situation," says Qi
Fuwei, chief of Dongxing City Public Security Bureau.
Legally speaking, the buyer of the trafficked woman should be held liable
for violating the law. But in reality, except for those who buy several
Vietnamese women and resell them, or buy for prostitution, few buyers have
been so far punished. It is just too hard to destroy a de facto marriage
of several years. Besides, most farmers don't even know that buying wives
is a crime. And the fact that local officials turn a blind eye only adds
to the problem.
For researchers, meanwhile, it is surprising that most Vietnamese wives
appear quite contented with their families in China. "I feel puzzled - is
this illegal migration or human trafficking? If they are willing to marry
someone and money changes hands, this could be interpreted as fees paid to
matchmakers. I guess the United Nations' working definition on trafficking
does not apply here," says Liu Meng, Professor at the National Women's
University of China.
Do Thi Huy refers to all her experiences of being kidnapped and later
sheltered by Tang Guoqin as his wife, as the design of fate. Tran Hao, 48,
abandoned her husband in Vietnam and came to live with a Chinese man. "I'm
not afraid of being driven back. So long as Dongxing is open to Vietnam,
I'll come back, no matter what."
However, the influx of sold Vietnamese brides in Guangxi and further into
inner China might lead to social problems. According to Wei Xiaoning,
these marriages - bigamy, in some cases - are not in line with China's
Marriage Law, and therefore the law does not protect them.
"In the long run," warns Zheng Zizhen, Director of the Guangdong
Provincial Institute of Sociology and Demography, "such migration is not
only destructive to the rule of law, but also unnecessary to China with
its existing population and employment pressure."
– Ma Guihua
December 8, 2002
Top
By arrangement with
Womens Feature Service
|
|
