Just like home?
Putting aside the differences in socioeconomic class, Vietnam's colonial past and close ties to Europe have made it much more cosmopolitan than Taiwan and given it a correspondingly greater degree of tolerance for foreign marriage. But Taiwanese-Vietnamese families in Vietnam still face pressure to conform, and their children's education is a particularly challenging issue.
Given the environment, the children pick up their mother's native tongue naturally, but Taiwanese fathers typically want them to learn Mandarin as well. Many therefore send their children to the Taipei School in Ho Chi Minh City, despite the high cost (tuition is around NT$70,000 per term). Nearly 100 students from 13 nations are enrolled in the school's kindergarten, 65% of whom are from Taiwanese-Vietnamese families.
Some Taiwanese dads instead choose to take the whole family back to Taiwan before their kids reach school age.
Jason Hung, who heads up Cathay Life's Hanoi office, has been married for 13 years. His marriage was seemingly fated: he met his future wife at a wedding party he attended just two weeks after his arrival in Vietnam. After three years as a Taiwanese groom in Vietnam, Hung took his wife and children back to Taiwan a decade ago. Over the intervening years, Hung picked up fluent Vietnamese from his wife, while she learned both Mandarin and Taiwanese.
When Cathay Life decided to open a Vietnamese office two years ago, the Vietnamese-speaking Hung was their natural choice to head it up. But while he went back to Vietnam, his wife remained in Taiwan to keep their kids in school here. "Now I'm taking care of her parents in Vietnam, and she's taking care of mine in Taiwan," laughs Hung.
Shen Ming-jen, general secretary of the Council of Taiwanese Chambers of Commerce in Vietnam, was among the "pioneers" of Taiwanese-Vietnamese marriage. Shen, who went to Vietnam in 1989 as an investor, was a "Taiwanese husband" for nearly a decade. He emigrated to Canada with his wife and two children four years ago and now spends a lot of his time flying back and forth between Canada and Vietnam.
"The traffic is terrible and the streets can be dangerous in Vietnam, so the kids can't really go out," says Hung. "Taiwan, meanwhile, isn't very nice to foreign spouses. And then there's the education issue." Hung says that after much thought and weighing of options, he finally decided to move the kids to Canada, far from both his and his wife's respective homelands.
Naturally, some Taiwanese-Vietnamese families are happy and some are not. If we pull back and view the situation from a less personal perspective, we also see that the growing numbers of these families have implications for our national security, social structure, educational system, culture and demographics. On a more personal level, acceptance of and experiences with Taiwanese-Vietnamese families vary widely, just as does enthusiasm for Vietnamese fish sauce and durian.
The transition from trading partners to marital partners, from business partners to family, may have been only a small step for these individuals, but it is a huge one for a nation to make. And as a nation we should be a little kinder towards and more solicitous of these families.
Hardworking, thrifty Vietnamese women provide crucial support to their families. Girls from poor rural communities will even sacrifice themselves by marrying into distant families to keep their natal families afloat.
Following in Taiwan's footsteps, South Korea has in recent years also become a major investor in Vietnam and a major "export market" for Vietnamese brides. These days, couples of mixed nationality having their pictures taken in front of Ho Chi Minh City's Notre Dame Cathedral (Nha Tho Duc Ba) are themselves part of the scenery.
Men drinking coffee and chatting in streetside cafes are just part of the scenery in Vietnam. Are they incurable romantics? Congenitally lazy? It probably depends on your perspective.
Men and women enter the interview rooms separately. Anxiety and confusion writ plain upon her face, a Vietnamese woman planning to marry a Taiwanese man faces a question she cannot yet answer and a future she cannot predict.