Nationwide interviews with locals married to foreigners

As my wife and Tigerman just pointed out, the tax dept. can provide financial info, while census records can provide info. re: kids.
Which leaves “marriage situation,” to which the only answer is a big gruff “Tell me how often you fuck your wife and I’ll tell you how many times a day I fuck mine. Hao bu hao?”
I’m actually starting to look forward to these interviews!
(I only hope that there are officials involved other than the li chiangs – our li chiang is a nice old lady two doors down from us who looks after our animals and house when we’re away and who I’d never dream of insulting. Anyway, she probably already has all that, and more, information about us :laughing: )

Here is the Ministry’s press release that describes the reasons behind the survey and what information they are looking for. Here are some rough translations:

The Ministry of the Interior will conduct a survey of foreign and Chinese spouses between 17 October 2003 and 7 November 2003.The survey will collect information about foreign and Chinese spouses including contact details, living arrangements, and need for services. A report will be issued on 31 January 2004. The Ministry is appealing to family members of foreign and Chinese spouses to cooperate with the survey. The survey is essential to the Ministry’s efforts to provide more practical assistance to foreign and Chinese spouses. All information collected will be kept confidential. The Ministry hopes that families with foreign or Chinese spouses will participate in the survey so that the goverment can obtain more accurate basic data that will be used to serve and counsel foreign and Chinese spouses…

[Description of the test survey conducted earlier this year and the scope of the full survey]

I. Survey scope and subjects

  1. Survey scope: All cities and counties in Taiwan Province, Taipei and Kaohsiung Cities, Jinmen and LianjiangCounties
  2. Subjects: Foreign and Chinese spouses in Taiwan

II. Survey Items

  1. Personal details of foreign or Chinese spouse
  2. Personal details of Taiwanese spouse
  3. State of marriage
  4. Children
  5. Living arrangements
  6. Financial situation
  7. Employment
  8. Health care needs
  9. Service and Counseling needs

[Interview procedures]

I still haven’t located the questions (I think they must be in the Survey Plan which is referred to in the part I didn’t translate), but the survey is clearly voluntary.

I have to say that I’m not comfortable with the scale of this survey or the effort that is being put into it. Why must every last spouse be interviewed? Wouldn’t a sample be sufficient? Why is the Ministry of the Interior undertaking the survey rather than an academic institution? What law empowers the Ministry to conduct such a survey? The whole thing smacks of an Orwellian desire to monitor and manage Taiwan’s foreign spouses.

I’m going to politely refuse to respond.

Feiren

  1. Personal details of foreign or Chinese spouse

They have that already, since the person has an ARC or whatever

  1. Personal details of Taiwanese spouse
    they have that or could get that easily

  2. State of marriage
    That is nobody’s business but your own. Except maybe for those foreign brides that are married into slavery. But I think they would say everythign is rosey

  3. Financial situation

As per 1 and 2 and what you do with your money is your own business

  1. Employment
    They have got that info already and if you are doing a bit of foxing ( working and not paying tax) then nobody ever would say anything about that

  2. Health care needs

As per any human being’s needs

  1. Service and Counseling needs

What they re going to provide a Dr. Ruth (Chang) to help out in times when the marriage is in trouble

There is no question about the state of the marriage, only marital status (yes or no)
It doesn’t ask for your income but it asks where most of your income comes from (work, savings, spouse’s work etc…)
I does ask what classes you think the government should offer (language, cooking, childcare, finding work, legal advice…)

It’s all pretty harmless, but also pretty pointless, they already know a lot the answers (How long have you been in Taiwan ? :unamused: ) No harm in asking again to save them looking it up I suppose.

I think they’ve already been to see us, but with me not being a housewife, I wasn’t in.

I came home to find the missus on the phone with them. They had already asked questions about how we had met, on whose salary we lived, my profession, etc. My wife gave me the receiver and I asked the woman interviewing if I was compelled by law to answer the questions. She dodged the question, asking me if I didn’t want to cooperate. I told her I would cooperate fully with any requests compelled by law. Extra-legal requests would, however be met with silence. She was most unhappy, and got very snippy with me. Tough titty.

With the amount of cooperation I got from the Panchiao Foreign Affairs while renewing my ARC, anything remotely governmently run has got fucking buckleys of getting boo from us :imp:

I’m really dreading this. They won’t come knocking on my door, will they?

No. They’ll most likely telephone (probably right as you’re sitting down to dinner). Its not compulsory, its just yet another pointless exercise carried out so the government can say its doing something about the “problem.” Just tell them to go away in whichever crude vernacular you prefer.

In some other post I’ve since forgotten there was some talk about ensuring your Chinese was best understood by your opening remark - in that instance courteously. As I recall (sorry for the pinyin) qing wen etc etc etc. I think the opening ambit in this instance should be guan ni shenme pi shi?.

This campaign is not aimed at the bulk of us in ths forum. There’s been heaps of stuff in the Chinese media about one out of four newly wed brides being “from overseas” (read, China or Vietnam) and the inordinant number of scam marriages - geting lasses in to satisfy the local ejaculaion industry. Sadly, several drowned not that long ago when the skipper turned tail and shed his “load”.

I link back to my conversation at the Banqiao cop shop:

http://forumosa.com/3/viewtopic.php?t=8247&start=45

Those not immediately affected, or inadvertantly affected (Amos, you fit this bill) need to connect up with the “other” spouses and end this rot now.

Sorry, I got my IC card today. That’s been fought bitterly in Australia and with good reason.

Juba, you stll around? I’m sure you’ve got the drill on this.

HG

I guess I understand why everyone is being so cynical about this, but might it not be better to politely answer this interview, and then try to mention whatever issues you have at the end?

If the goal of the survey really is to help them “provide more practical assistance to foreign and Chinese spouses” as they claim, then it’s a bit silly for everyone to refuse to cooperate. Apart from anything else, if you tell a bunch of civil servants & politicians that you won’t cooperate when they’re doing something which (they believe) is for your benefit, how do you expect them to react the next time you need their cooperation? “I’m sorry sir, but we tried to interview every single foreign spouse, and not one raised this problem …”

Mixed (Taiwanese/non-Taiwanese) marriages are a big issue for Taiwan, and so it’s not unreasonable to expect politicians to be interested in it. Isn’t it a good thing that they’re trying to research the issue before coming up with a new policy? You can have a bad policy with or without this data - a good policy requires a good understanding of the issues.

If the only thing they learn is that Western spouses have a remarkably good grasp of Chinese swear words, the only change you can expect is a new obscenity law at language schools :slight_smile:

[quote=“david”]If the goal of the survey really is to help them “provide more practical assistance to foreign and Chinese spouses” as they claim, then it’s a bit silly for everyone to refuse to cooperate. Apart from anything else, if you tell a bunch of civil servants & politicians that you won’t cooperate when they’re doing something which (they believe) is for your benefit, how do you expect them to react the next time you need their cooperation? “I’m sorry sir, but we tried to interview every single foreign spouse, and not one raised this problem …”

Mixed (Taiwanese/non-Taiwanese) marriages are a big issue for Taiwan, and so it’s not unreasonable to expect politicians to be interested in it. Isn’t it a good thing that they’re trying to research the issue before coming up with a new policy? You can have a bad policy with or without this data - a good policy requires a good understanding of the issues.[/quote]
Give me a break. :unamused: There is no need for the politicians to “understand” the circumstances under which I met my wife, or the nature of our financial arrangements. This is big government at its worst. Also, there is no legal grounding for asking these questions, as far as I know. So this is an extra-legal request, which strikes me as being unnecessarily nosy. As far as how long as I’ve resided in Taiwan, well they already have this information. I have no desire to give more info to a nameless, faceless person who “claims” to have my best interests at heart.

If they want to know how many kids I’ve got, I invite them to go and check it out at the local Household Registration Office. They’ll know I’m a foreigner, because my name is in the ‘remarks’ column. My child will be the one under my name. Just incase not to confuse, I ask them to duly note that my daughter and I carry the same Chinese surname, she has an id number, I the one that doesn’t. Shouldn’t be too difficult to work out.

I don’t work anymore, after quitting my Elementary school job to take up a ‘legal kindy job’, I’ve just been informed that it’s illegal again, so now I’m unemployed and live off my wife’s salary.

That’ll be all the questions I can answer at present, my time is limited. With my OWP, there’s the possibility that the local Sha Lun Bao man will hire me on an occasional weekday, I must put on my suit for the interview.

[quote]might it not be better to politely answer this interview, and then try to mention whatever issues you have at the end?
[/quote]
Perhaps if the scenario was a public hearing. As it is, its merely a telephone survey in which a bunch of paid-by-the-call or paid-by-the-hour telesurveyors ask a number of carefully worded or leading questions constructed specifically to get the answers the poll designers have been told to obtain. The idea that these drones would take extra time to actually write down and pass on additional remarks is simply ludicrous. That’s another reason why the whole idea is such a bunch of politician-inspired bullshit. There’s no way for the interviewees to convey their true feelings – any such attempts would simply be recorded as “invalid responses.”
So we can look forward to a nice cosy CNA sidebar in a few weeks telling us comfortably that “a whopping 88% of foreign spouses are happy with their situation but wish there were more government-sponsored cookery classes.” Everyone is happy – the politicians who can preen at a job well done, the public, who can continue to kid themselves that these foreign brides have it good, and the foreign brides themselves can feel happy – well, no they won’t, actually, as it won’t make a blind bit of difference, but hey, they don’t really count anyway. After all, they’re not even real citizens.
Tell 'em to jam their survey up their collective jacksie.

ARC forms are in English, even blood donor forms are in English, so why is this survey of non-chinese speakers in Chinese ? They know very well what the problems we have are, but they never cared before.

BFM: The survey is not really intended for us. It’s for brides from China and Southeast Asia. In this case neither the interviewer or the interviewee will speak English. The survey procedures indicate that interviewers are to obtain answers from family members if there is a language gap.

The real question is why the survey questions are not in Indonesian, Vietnamese, and Khmer.

Having family members respond is another gross invasion of our privacy. Many foreign spouses (myself included) do not live at the address indicated on the household registry. This means that ‘family members’ are likely to release all kinds of personal information without permission from me.

The more I think about this, the more I feel that this is a gross invasion of our privacy.

[quote=“Feiren”]The real question is why the survey questions are not in Indonesian, Vietnamese, and Khmer.[/quote]Indeed. Makes you wonder who is supposed to fill in the forms and who’s view they really want.

If it’s not intended for people like me, why have they sent me a form ?

I’ve made sure that Mrs Fluffy won’t answer any questions unless they can quote her the relevant law that compels her to.

Just called the Ministry about this.

I talked to a very nice lady there who told me that they’ve been getting lots of calls about the survey. Apparently, lots of Taiwanese think this is an invasion of privacy too. Chinese spouses think they are being tracked while ‘high class’ foreign pouses (read people from the Norh America and Europe) are refusing to cooperate point blank.

The surveys are supposed to be conducted in person–not by telephone and not by filling in a form.

She also said that the purpose of the survey is to learn more about the needs of underprivileged spouses. I guess I believe her, but the whole thing seems very clumsy.

Well done, Feiren.

Nice to know we’re not the only ones suspicious about it :stuck_out_tongue:

That’s very true, but nowhere on the form does it ask for any comments or suggestions.

It’s basically a list of 20 multiple choice questions. Seems like they are trying to collect some demographic information, much like a census would do. From looking at the form, they don’t seem interested in much more than that.

And will they also be visiting us co-habiting foreign gay spouses who are denied the right of marriage. Don’t we experience difficulties, too?