Some Taiwan businessmen in China develop not only industry, but extra-marital relationships -- a practice known as bao er nai (包二奶), literally "keeping two wives."
These Chinese mistresses keep their Taiwan boyfriends or husbands company, help them make it through their lonely lives in China and even entertain them, adding a lighter side to men's all-too-serious discussions of business and politics.
"There is a funny rhyme (數來寶) in my hometown: Chairman Mao was truly great, but for him the cellphone came too late, (毛主席真偉大,一輩子沒打過大哥大), when Jiang Zemin makes a slip of the tongue, the floods commence and go on and on (江澤民岔了嘴,三天兩頭發大水)," Mrs Zhung said, giggling, at a dinner with Taiwanese businessmen, and prompting hoots of laughter.
Zhung, 28, came to work in Xiamen at the age of 19 from a city in Anhui Province (
"I've told her from the very beginning. She chooses to stay with me of her own free will," Cheng said.
"[It's nice of him] to have me. Frankly, he has never looked down on me. This I appreciate," Zhung said, adding that she was poorly educated and had worked as a bar girl before she met Cheng.
She said that it was Cheng who rescued her from a drab, often sleazy existence and gave her a normal life.
"Many may consider our marriage to be based on money," she said, "but we just see ourselves as a normal couple."
"The sweetest thing for me now is that I have a lovely child and I'd like to have another one," Zhung said, before telling of her ambition to start her own clothing business someday, as Cheng played with their daughter.
Zhung said she used to despise men from Taiwan because they would come to the bar in shorts and flip-flops "looking like peasants," even though they were rich. She said she decided to marry Cheng because he seemed to be a decent man.
But still, money inevitably became a focus of their life.
"Every time he came back [from Taiwan] with, say, 20,000 yuan, he gave me less than half of the amount," Zhung complained, "He hasn't even returned the money I lent him. That's my only savings -- 50,000 yuan."
As far as Cheng is concerned, he offered her a house worth more than 200,000 yuan (NT$800,000) in a village full of mistresses of Taiwanese men, nicknamed "second wife village" (
Neither the law in China nor that in Taiwan allows men to have extra-marital affairs, but given the huge number of cross-strait marriages, no laws seem to been able to prevent this conduct, which is potentially destructive for so many families. Some Chinese women are even said to keep their own lovers while their Taiwanese husbands are not around, further complicating these cross-strait relationships.
Unlike Zhung, Xiao-bao (小寶), 32, was born into a rich family in Xiamen. She is financially independent from her married Taiwanese boyfriend -- 52-year-old Mr Chen -- yet hopes to have a family with him someday. However, that is a dream Chen cannot afford to fulfill. Chen visits her whenever he travels to China on business.
Though unemployed, Xiao-bao is currently taking music lessons and aims to become a singer -- she has a singing voice that Chen likes to show off to his friends during his business trips. Xiao-bao gets to broaden her views when travelling around with Chen -- one of the reasons why she chose a married lover, since young men in Xiamen can't afford to lead such luxurious lives and are regarded as having low cultural standards.
Though they have been together for years, the future remains impossible to predict -- except that for Xiao-bao in particular it seems to be one that holds little promise.
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