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FEATURE: Chinese spouses yearn for kin during holiday

Most Chinese spouses of Taiwanese are anticipating the Lunar New Year holiday with the same excitement as other people in Taiwan, tinged with a little disappointment that they cannot be reunited with their relatives in China to celebrate the year's most important festival.

Despite the company of the family of her husband and friends, Yin, who has lived in Taiwan for eight years with her Taiwanese husband, cannot stem her yearning for her daughter, who studies in Zhejiang Province.

The daughter is from an earlier marriage. When Yin decided to remarry and move to Taiwan, her daughter was only a teenager and she had to leave her with relatives. Yin has returned a few times to her hometown over the past eight years, yet her greatest desire -- to live close to her daughter -- will not be realized soon.

In contrast to the cheerful atmosphere of the Lunar New Year, Yin's regret seems to be more intense than usual.

"However happily you live here, the sorrow over the separation from your close relatives remains inconsolable," she said.

Yin is not alone. Feng, a young woman from Anhui Province, who had been hoping to see her parents, ditched the idea after considering the logistical problems involved.

"Procedures for applying for a family visit visa are too complicated and the maximum permitted time is just one month, at most two," Feng said.

Planning a family reunion is long because it is difficult for Chinese spouses to receive a Republic of China identity card. They often have to wait eight years to be naturalized and according to government statistics, as of last November, only 44,493 out of 250,160 Chinese spouses (17.8 percent) had been granted an identity card, while 59,906 out of 137,353 spouses from other countries (43.6 percent) had become naturalized citizens.

In addition, Chinese people can only come to Taiwan on a group tourist visa and can stay for a maximum of 10 days.

Although Chinese spouses suffer from the separation from their families in China during the Lunar New Year holiday, they are excited nevertheless about the festival.

"In Guangdong Province, families that are well-off prepare `dragon-phoenix soup' made with snake and chicken or `turtle-snake soup,'" said a young woman who was born in Shenzhen.

She said that in general, Taiwan celebrates the Lunar New Year with much the same traditions and customs as in China.

"But I was surprised that people in Taiwan keep the tradition of worshiping gods and ancestors during the Lunar New Year. This kind of tradition is no longer popular in China after the Cultural Revolution," she said.

The Taipei-based Chinese Association for Relief and Ensuring Services, organizes English, dancing and cooking courses for Chinese spouses, while on Jan. 20, the Pearl S. Buck Foundation invited low-income families of foreign spouses for an early celebration of the Lunar New Year.

These NGOs, however, do not want their activities to be seen as charity for foreigners, since they do not want to differentiate between Taiwanese and foreign spouses.
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