Can you tell that their ages are 30 years apart? Sino-Vietnamese May-Sep-tember couple Hsiao Chin-hua and Huang Chin-feng are a "model" husband and wife envied by many foreign brides who come to Taiwan.
Hsiao Chin-hua is 71, and his first wife died four years ago. In his grief and loneliness, he went to Vietnam to spend Chinese New Year with his son, who runs a business there. His son's Vietnamese wife warmheartedly set about selecting possible matches for her father-in-law, and after meeting five or six, he finally picked on 41-year-old Huang Chin-feng.
"If it was just for myself, I wouldn't have married someone from so far away," says Huang Chin-feng. The main reason she chose to marry a Taiwanese was because she hoped to find a good man who could help support her aged mother.
Having started out using sign language and a dictionary, but now able to communicate without problems, Huang Chin-feng cooks for Hsiao Chin-hua and attends to all his other daily needs. Hsiao also gives Huang plenty of respect and freedom, allowing her to go out shopping, and to attend class and chat with her compatriots, and he never forgets to give her encouragement and praise. For the ceremony to mark the end of this year's Chinese language classes, Huang Chin-feng wrote her own speech in which she expressed her gratitude to him. Hsiao Chin-hua, who is a volunteer lifeguard with a swimming association and the Red Cross, also regularly goes swimming with his wife to keep fit.
"Tomorrow, tomorrow's wind will blow"-Hsiao Chin-hua says that life is full of surprises, and he never imagined he would remarry, or that his new wife would be a Vietnamese lass. Three-and-a-half years into their marriage, Hsiao Chin-hua and Huang Chin-feng feel "as if washed by warm spring breezes."
p.097
Engagement and marriage to a Vietnamese girl have to go strictly in accordance with Vietnamese customs. (courtesy of Hsiao Chin-hua)