As someone with more than a little familiarity with the Viet Namese and their culture, I would like to applaud LondonBoys very appropriate post:
[quote]Just a couple of observations from someone that has spent more time in Vietnam than Taiwan…
In 2001 I remember going to a village in Ben Tre province in Vietnam. Its a rather poor province in the south. A friend told me that most of the girls in this particular village had gone to Taiwan for marriage or were awaiting paperwork. I met two of them and had some coffee with them. They were quite interested to hear from me what Taiwan was really like. (I’d been coming here since 1994 for business, but had never lived here at that stage, so couldn’t really answer them.)
I would say that most such girls are just naive and innocent. The ones I met certainly weren’t bar girls/hookers etc. Actually many TW men insist of virginity tests before marriage anyway. They did have the idea that once in Taiwan they could send money back to their family. This was just their culture as elsewhere in Asia and they would have expected to do the same had they married well in Vietnam.
The girls I met didn’t really like the idea of living in Taiwan - and the stories they’d heard hadn’t encouraged them. Terrible food, strange language, a long way from their families. But they seemed sincere in wanting to give it their best shot and thought overall it was worth it. This village had a particularly large number of girls going to Taiwan because of some links through an agent there. I got the impression it was “slash and burn” - once all the nice girls had been sent, the agent would focus on another village. Or at least the process was they’d keep sending them until the first bad experience - then move to another village. So far the feedback to this village was positive.
I went to the TECO in Saigon last week. It was quite a sight to see so many young women there. A few TW men had pitched up to, and the wives-to-be were doing their best with their shakey Chinese to communicate with them. Most of the men were at least 10 years older. One was an old chap on crutches, another was in a wheelchair. I suppose these were the good guys - because at least they’d made the effort to come to the TECO and sit with their girl whilst the paperwork was being processed.
Anyway, it really was not a comfortable sight.
Difficult to generalize, but when thing go wrong its probably six of one and half a dozen of the other. But if I had to come off the fence, my sympathy would be more with the Vietnamese than the Taiwanese. The “hookers” of Vietnam have more lucrative markets to address - they have visa free access to Singapore nowadays, and many go there or Cambodia. Taiwan is not an attractive option for them.
In Taiwan I feel there is a general contempt for Vietnam - though with recent WTO entry and the APEC summit perhaps this is changing. Anyway until now I’ve never met anyone here who has a kind word to say about the place. When accompanying a Taiwanese (female) business friend to Vietnam a couple of years back she made the bizarre comment “the girls here are all like dolls. In Taiwan we feel there is nothing inside - they just care about the way they look”. I think this is only a couple of steps away from the “they are all hookers” prejudice. People who have never been there are remarkably opinionated - everyone will know of a maid that ran away or a factory worker that stole from the company. The country is looked down upon and is seen as poor and backward. At best many see VN as a useful source of cheap labour - be it maids in Taiwan or factories in VN. Taiwanese bosses in Vietnam are the most hated of foreign bosses from what I can tell.
Certainly there is little respect for the Vietnamese amongst the Taiwanese bosses I’ve met in Vietnam. One TW factory owner I met was proud of having lived in Vietnam for 7 years without learning a single word of Vietnamese. “Why should I? Its a stupid language.” Many Taiwanese bosses see workers as little more than a factor of production - and the efficient control of costs of production has been a reason for Taiwan’s past manufacturing success. Aging men who have been part of this “success” story seem respond to the promotion of Vietnamese girls in the same way they would the latest massage chair. They scan the details - age, weight, shape etc in the same way they would any other commodity. On arrival they apply their warped value system to their newly purchased wife. This analysis may seem rather harsh - but Vietnamese culture is different and I’m sure many of them get a shock when their wife doesn’t perform to specification. And of course, when it does go wrong, the Vietnamese girl must have done something wrong - after all, she’s not Taiwanese and doesn’t fit into society.[/quote]
Bravo!
