Couldn’t add my reply to ‘mail order bride’ thread so I’m starting a similar thread fresh…
My observation in other Asian countries (Thereavada Buddhist ones of SE Asia) is that the mother counts for everything. Is the father the authority in Taiwan? Discretion and kindess count for a lot in SE Asia. But I hear horror stories of racism against Caucasian expats in Korea dating ‘their women’ and in China the very undesirable (for heterosexual males) situation of a skewed gender ratio due to aborting female fetuses. My theory on this is that it is primarily biological and economic, viz. as a man gets older he has the potenial to become a better catch (wealthier, better connected, more stable, more powerful) whereas a woman as she gets older become a worse catch. Plus a man has a longer desirability range whereas as woman has a shorter one - the ‘sell by date’ phenomenon. Thus working class Chinese men are so desperate to find wives they resort to finding them in S.E. Asia. When a female has the choice of rich, very rich or super rich the ‘market’ the already highly competitive ‘market’ becomes extremely so. I strongly disagree with the poster who insinuates that Taiwanese pig farmers who marry poor SE Asian women are somehow crude and exploitative.