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Feature: Vietnamese wife's Taiwan dream sours

A Vietnamese woman married to a Taiwanese practices writing Chinese characters during a language course in Taipei yesterday while her son plays. PHOTO: AFP

Twenty-four-year-old Vietnamese Ah-ying, identified only by her nickname, looks younger than her years. But behind the pretty face are years of tears and agony in her pursuit of the "Taiwanese dream."

Ah-ying, a third-generation Chinese from Ho Chi Minh City, had hoped that marrying a Taiwanese man would help improve her family's financial condition.

But the dream quickly turned to a nightmare and she now sees herself as a cautionary tale.

"I have told my three unmarried sisters not to come to Taiwan. They should stay back home to find their happiness," she said in an interview.

Ah-ying, formerly a worker at an electronics factory, met a Taiwanese man and his son in 2000 through a Vietnamese match-making agency.

Three days after the first meeting, she married the son Ah-teh, then 24, and flew to Taiwan to what she expected would be a better life.

Ah-ying said her husband's family had paid approximately NT$200,000 (US$6,060) to the matchmaker, a small portion of which went to her parents.

It wasn't long after she arrived in Taiwan that her dreams began to sour.

"Perhaps because of language barrier, I did not realize my husband [had] slight mental deficiency problems until we [had] lived together for three months," Ah-ying said, speaking Mandarin Chinese with a strong Cantonese accent.

On some occasions she had difficulty communicating with her husband, who speaks Mandarin and Taiwanese, she said.

Ah-ying said she was shocked by her husband's condition, but probably because she had been taught since childhood not to fight against "destiny" she adapted to and accepted her situation.

"I bowed to fate at that time and started treating him like my son," she said.

Sharing a house in Taipei with her husband, her father-in-law -- who is guardian of his mentally challenged son -- and his second wife, Ah-ying said her husband treated her well.

She did household chores and looked after a shop owned by her father-in-law. Her husband, meanwhile, worked in a factory owned by his aunt.

Life was good enough under the circumstances, she said, until after she gave birth to a healthy baby boy two years into her marriage.

In 2004, her son now two years old, her in-laws threw her out for reasons she still does not understand.

Her husband did not give her any support, although his family did initially allow her to see her son twice a week.

"I suspect her father-in-law used her as a surrogate mother," said Chang Hsin-yi (張心琦), a social worker at the Taipei-based non-profit Eden Social Welfare Foundation, which offers legal, marriage and social consultation to foreign spouses.

Ah-ying said she suspected her husband's family had decided to get rid of her after she asked her father-in-law in 2004 if she could apply for long-term residency, as foreign wives, except Chinese ones, are able to do after three years of living in Taiwan.

"But he said there is no rush to do that since you're already part of this family and have a child," Ah-ying said.

Police records show that some Taiwanese men abuse their foreign wives before the women obtain the ID cards that confer the right to seek protection. Many abusive husbands also try to prevent their spouses from obtaining residency.

Ah-ying then turned to Eden for help and obtained her Taiwanese ID on Feb. 12. She now lives on her own on a monthly salary of NT$20,000 from her job in a Taipei electronics plant.

She is also fighting, with Eden's help, for custody of her son.

"I don't want a divorce, but I want my son back. I miss him so much," said Ah-ying, who is allowed to visit her five-year-old son only twice a month.
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