When Mr. Liao, a driver for a shipping company in Kaohsiung, brought his wife from Heilongjiang to Taiwan, the newly married couple were soon to discover that things were not quite as they had imagined them.
Unable to work because of the laws governing mainland spouses, his wife discovered that she had to stay at home with her mother-in-law. What's more, her husband, who in China it seemed was on top of the world, back in Taiwan, was working as a driver, pulling long hours with little time to spend with his wife.
Before long his wife decided she wanted out.
Meanwhile, for J.K. Chiang, the vice general manager of Pai Chen Brewery and Foods Co, Ltd., his cross-strait marriage couldn't be better. Chiang met his wife, whose family runs golf tours in Zhuhai, last year.
"The way she talked and thought was really not that different at all," Chiang said.
For good or for bad, cross-strait marriages have been steadily rising since the government made them legal in 1993. In fact, cross-strait officials estimate the figures are rising by 10,000 a year, and according to records in China, shared with Taiwan officials, 73,000 Taiwanese have tied the cross-strait knot.
For government officials here in Taiwan, the issue is a thorny one. Not all the marriages are born out of love. During the first half of this year some 300 mainland men came to Taiwan, marrying women that were 30-40 years older than they were. According to one Mainland Affairs Council official, the elderly have long been easy prey for "snake-heads" or illegal immigration groups.
"For many it's the one way to get to Taiwan," the official said.
But then, ever since the government legitimized cross-strait marriages, cross-strait tensions and the fear of a flood of mainland immigrants have made it difficult to formulate policies that please everybody.
Since the government opened up residence for cross-strait marriages in 1993, its policies have been sharply debated.
And caught in the middle are the couples who tie the knot. Not only do they have to deal with the challenges of a marriage in which both parties have widely differing cultural backgrounds but they also have to co-exist according to rules that have been formulated more in consideration of the political environment across the strait than in the best interests of those on the firing line.
Government bodies like the MAC maintain that policy making has always attempted to balance security and "humanitarian concerns."
But this balance, critics say, leaves many couples out on a limb.
Most mainland spouses have to pass through a grueling process before they can ever share the rights granted to other residents from abroad. In theory, couples who have been married for two years or have a child can register for residence in Taiwan. But at present 36,000 spouses who have met this requirement are still waiting their turn to receive residency rights. Since 1993 only 7,900 spouses have been granted residence, a wait which on average takes 10 years.
And during the long wait, mainland spouses are forced to travel back to China every six months and cannot work legally or enjoy the benefits of the National Health Insurance plan. Small surprise that many are driven to divorce.
In a draft law now working its way through the Legislative Yuan, the government is seeking to open a portion of the job market to cross-strait spouses, expand the annual quota of residency permits from 1,800 to 3,600, allow spouses without residency rights to stay for a year and give them care under the National Health Insurance program.
"If someone is married then you should let them have the same rights as any other foreigner who comes to Taiwan," said Ling Feng, a well-known television host who launched Taiwan's first travel series on China in the late 1980s. Ling met and married his wife He Shunshun, from Shandong Province, while filming in China.
Ling feels the government could circumvent problems, such as fake weddings and spouses running away to work illegally on the island, by setting up a bureau to monitor marriages.
Su Chi, chairman of the MAC, agrees that "the government needs to set up a program to investigate the nature of relationships" and points to a new draft law for cross-strait spouses that passed an initial review last Wednesday in the Legislative Yuan. But in the absence of an immigration bureau and any consensus about how such monitoring would be carried out, the future remains uncertain.
And in the meantime couples like Ling Feng and his wife Shunshun, who were married in 1992, are held ransom to the vicissitudes of cross-strait relations.
Ling's wife was eligible for residency in 1994. But after participating in a local protest in support of her husband's television program, which was being taken off air for what were seen as political reasons, she was told by the government that she would have to wait until 2005. It wasn't until early this year, following support from legislators, that Shunshun received the residency permit she had waited so long for.
But if the legal precariousness of Taiwanese-mainland marriages were not stressful enough, mainland spouses also have to adjust to the very different cultural climate of Taiwan, making cross-strait marriages, as Shunshun herselp points out, a lot of work.
Coming from China, where women are looked down upon if they are left dangling by the husband's purse strings, adjusting to Taiwan life was difficult, she says.
For many women in China, "if you have to rely on a man to raise you
you would feel like you are a waste, it's a big loss of face," she said.
And then there are the ideological differences. It's too easy for couples sometimes to get into arguments, says Shunshun, where the focus of the debate becomes "You Taiwanese, you mainland Chinese."
But this is not to say that cross-strait marriages are doomed to failure. Take Mr. Hu, a worker at a Kaohsiung shipping cargo company. The biggest obstacle for he and his wife, who recently arrived in Taiwan from Jilin Province, is the fact that she can't speak Taiwanese and was having some trouble initially fitting in.
"There are still a few people that have bias towards mainland Chinese and feel they are backwards," Hu said.
Hu met his wife in Guangzhou and after nearly a year of courting he traveled to her hometown in the northeast of China.
"Her parents were surprised at first," Hu said, saying they were curious how someone from northeastern China could have met someone from Taiwan. But, after the initial shock wore off, everything went smoothly.
"I don't know, I guess I am lucky," Hu said. "Fifty years ago my father came from Hunan province with the Nationalists, because of that my feelings towards China are different. I am more able to adjust."
Hu says his work schedule makes the relationship a little easier too and the fact that he doesn't have to take care of his parents. But it still bothers him that his wife can't come here and share in some of the same rights other couples can.
"Taiwan is a democratic country, I don't understand why in my situation it's not OK for my wife to have residence," Hu said.
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