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Documentary highlights lives of immigrant wives

The first time Li Hsiu, also known as A-du, went abroad was when she married a Taiwanese who lives in Dongshan Township (東山), Tainan County.

"At the beginning, I cried a lot. Later, after I gave birth to a child, I thought: `Now I have a family here.' Nowadays, I seldom think about my family in Vietnam," she said.

Li is featured in the The Map of Happiness, a documentary on female immigrants in Asia, which will be broadcast for the first time on the Public Television Service (PTS) at 10pm tonight.

Besides PTS, the documentary will also be aired on eight other cable channels: Chinese Television System (華視), CTi TV (中天電視), Taiwan Television (台視), China Television Co (中視), Good TV (好消息), TVBS, Hakka Television Service (客家電視台) and Taiwan Indigenous Television Service (原住民電視台).

The documentary was produced by Artemis Wang (王瓊文), who also made the documentary Lee Teng-hui: Taiwan's Transition Towards Democracy (李登輝傳).

PTS yesterday granted copyright for the documentary, as well as that for TV series Nyonya's Taste of Life (娘惹滋味) -- a film on immigrants to Taiwan -- to the TV stations as a way to highlight immigration issues.

Wang said her team traveled to 14 cities in four Asian countries to make the documentary. They interviewed female immigrants who all moved to a different country for their marriage. Besides Vietnamese wives in Taiwan, the documentary includes Filipino and Korean spouses in Japan and Taiwanese spouses in Japan.

The first question Wang asked the women was whether they had checked on a map where their country of destination was before they came.

"Through the making of the film, I want to find out their map of happiness and where they get information for that map," Wang said.

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