brides on sale

BRIDES ON SALE

Thomas K. Nakayama General Editor Vol. 21

The Critical Intercultural Communication Studies series is part of the Peter Lang Media and Communication list. Every volume is peer reviewed and meets the highest quality standards for content and production.

PETER LANG

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Todd L. Sandel

BRIDES ON SALE Taiwanese Cross-Border Marriages in a Globalizing Asia

PETER LANG

New York  Bern  Frankfurt  Berlin Brussels  Vienna  Oxford  Warsaw

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sandel, Todd L., author. Brides on sale: Taiwanese cross-border marriages in a globalizing Asia / Todd L. Sandel. pages cm. — (Critical intercultural communication studies; vol. 21) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Intercountry marriage—Taiwan. 2. Intercountry marriage—Indonesia—Singkawang. 3. Mail order brides—Taiwan. 4. Mail order brides—Indonesia—Singkawang. 5. Chinese—Indonesia—Singkawang—Social life and customs. I. Title. HQ1032.S287 306.82—dc23 2014042555 ISBN 978-1-4331-2781-6 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-4539-1484-7 (e-book) ISSN 1528-6118

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contents

Acknowledgments A Note on Translations Introduction

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Chapter 1. The “Advertized” Foreign Bride: A Semiotic and Discourse Analysis 27 Chapter 2. Historical and Contemporary Marriage Arrangements 55 Chapter 3. What It Means to Be a “Foreign Spouse”: Gendered Understandings 83 Chapter 4. Educating the “Foreign Spouse” and Her Children 117 Chapter 5. The End of Brokered Marriage? 141 Chapter 6. Conclusion: Critical Reflections on Cross-Border Marriage 171 Index

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To my mother, who taught me to listen

acknowledgments

This book has been years in the making. I am indebted to many people who gave their time, support, assistance, and encouragement to me. Those who receive the greatest thanks are the many individuals who must remain anonymous. I am deeply indebted to them for sharing their experiences and stories with me, often meeting me in their homes and private, inner places. I wish to thank acquisitions editor Mary Savigar at Peter Lang, who responded positively and enthusiastically to the initial book idea, and then helped facilitate the text through all stages of review. I also thank Tom Nakayama, series editor at Peter Lang, for providing helpful comments and feedback that strengthened the arguments and impact of this book. For financial assistance I am grateful to the Fulbright Foundation for supporting me and my family in Taiwan for a year of research. The Executive Director, Dr. Wu Jing-jyi, created a warm and supportive environment for all of us Fulbrighters. Thanks especially go to fellow Fulbrighters Chris Reed and Charlie Chern for your companionship, insights, and the contacts that you provided. Jean Rose, a Fulbright teacher, also facilitated contacts with a community in northeastern Taiwan. I also thank National Chiao Tung University (NCTU) for hosting me in Taiwan, and the Chair of the Center for General Education, Tsai Hsiung-Shan, for his friendly support; NCTU also provided a grant that was used to hire student assistants who assisted with the project.

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Finally, financial support came from the University of Macau during the latter stages, allowing me to conduct research in Singkawang, Indonesia, and visit a Hakka community in Taiwan. In Taiwan, where most of the work for this project was done, I want to first of all thank Professor Chung-Hui Liang. She has been a constant and reliable source of support and friend for many years. I also thank the following students at National Chiao Tung University who worked with me from 2007–2008: Chang Ya-ching 張雅晴, Su Jyun-wei 蘇俊瑋, Liu Shu-yu 劉書瑜, Lin Chi-wen 林紀汶, Hou Patricia Hsiao-ying 侯曉穎, Kuo Liang-ting 郭亮廷, Alice Chen 陳柔諭, Diane Hsiung 熊得恩, and David Chang 張之偉. They helped with the sometimes tedious task of transcribing interviews, and provided insights and reflections that helped me better understand the data. I also want to thank Kuo Chung-Ru 郭忠儒, whom I was fortunate to meet in 2013, and provided access to another community in Taiwan. I also want to thank Peter Dodd for the help you provided in communities you know well. Professor Hsieh Chih-ling 謝智玲 of Da-Yeh University 大葉大學, was another great help to me. She not only introduced me to many teachers and administrators, but also gave me car rides, and stimulating conversation. Other educators in Taiwan I wish to thank include Principal Liu Mei-hui 劉美惠, Principal Wang Sheng-tai 王昇泰, and Principal Kuo Hsiou-yu 郭秀玉. They care deeply about their students and the many “waipei” mothers who have made Taiwan their home. Many family members and extended kin, to whom I have been blessed to know through marriage, gave meaningful assistance. Some I can only anonymously thank here. Those I can name include each of my three sisters-in-law, Hsu Chin-yu 許錦玉, Hsu Chin-li 許錦麗, and Hsu Li-chiau 許麗嬌, who gave invaluable assistance in finding participants, and provided many memorable meals and enjoyable times together; thanks also goes to my brother-inlaw, Hsu His-chin 許錫欽, who helped me better understand the experiences of some Taiwanese men. In Indonesia, a place that was unfamiliar to me until the latter stages of research, I was helped by a number of people. Aimee Dawis of the University of Jakarta, and Sunny Lie of St. Cloud State University, Minnesota, provided my initial contacts and entreé. They also read the chapter about Indonesia and gave helpful suggestions. I also wish to thank Pak Hartono, Janto Tjahjadin, and other members of Permasis Singkawang, Chinese Indonesians who met with me, and who are deeply concerned for the needs of the people of Singkawang. Thanks also must be given to Hasan Karman,

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former mayor of Singkawang for discussing the project with me and facilitating contacts. Iwan Ong Santosa, journalist for Kompas, and author of many books on Indonesia, was a wonderful guide in Jakarta, and a fantastic source of information. In Singkawang I wish to first thank Ulung Wijaya and Fredy Lie, for working with me as assistants. Their contacts, language skills, knowledge of the local community, and good-heartedness made the research there possible. I also wish to thank Elisawati and A-Thong for providing important contacts, and Christian Valentinus for leading me on a trip into remote parts of Singkawang that I will never forget. At the University of Macau I was assisted by a team of students with a range of linguistic abilities and diverse cultural knowledge: Anastasia Lijadi, Fiona Wu, Hazel Wan, Julie Zhong, Florence Fok, Melissa Chen, Siau Thung, Jenny Zhi, and Agy Yan. I thank each for their meaningful and important assistance. Last I wish to thank my immediate family. My mother, Rebecca, and my father Robert, not only encouraged me and repeatedly asked, “When will you finish your book?” they also read early drafts of the book. My oldest daughter, Sarah, read and critiqued early chapters, and is a wonderful daughter and Dajie in the family. Robbie and Pearl, shared in the experience of living in Taiwan with me, and gave me times to recreate and rest. Finally, none of this would have been possible without Donna, who not only pushes me to be a better father, scholar, and man, but is the love of my life. During one field trip participants explained to me that they see me as a “bridge” between them in their community, and others in a world outside. They said this in the context of sharing with me their hurts and needs; that hoped that the publication of this book would let others know their stories, and serve as a lesson to others. Thus, I have written this book as a bridge between individuals, families, cultures, and worlds. May this book be a bridge that can inform, warn, and help those in need.

a note on translations

Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese (Hokkien), and Hakka are tonal languages with regional variants. These are represented using both Chinese characters and Romanization systems. Following standard practice, I have chosen to represent spoken Mandarin with Pinyin, absent tonal marks, and in most cases provide Chinese characters. Likewise, Taiwanese utterances are presented using the “Church Romanization” system, minus tonal marks that was developed in the nineteenth century by foreign missionaries and is currently used in publications by Taiwan’s Presbyterian Church. Hakka utterances, however, were transcribed using Chinese characters, that I have translated into English. Similarly, Indonesian dialogue has been translated into English, with assistance from Anastasia Lijadi who knows both languages well. Those interested in seeing dialogue in the original languages may contact me.

introduction

“I bought a bride!” exclaimed a middle-aged man when I met him the summer of 2004. Like many other men in rural Taiwan without a high paying job, advanced degree, or home in one of Taiwan’s cities, this man was approaching 40 years of age without a wife or child, requisite symbols of success and maturity in this Confucian-influenced society. With few opportunities for marriage in sight, he decided to pursue a path toward marriage taken by thousands of other men in Taiwan: He contacted a professional marriage broker, who for a fee arranged to have him fly to Vietnam where he could meet women interested in marriage. He and five other Taiwanese men, who previously did not know each other, boarded a plane for Vietnam, and there met women who had left their homes in Cambodia, waiting to be “chosen” by their future husband. My friend expressed interest in one woman he found attractive and intelligent, who had graduated from high school and attended university. She assented to his request, and they were married in a brief ceremony, as were the other four couples. Then after a short “honeymoon” with their brides, the Taiwanese men flew home, while the women remained in Cambodia for several more months until the marriage company arranged their spousal visas, which allowed them to fly to Taiwan and begin married life.

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Three years passed by the time I met this friend and wife again in the summer of 2007. They had two young children, and the Cambodian-born woman had learned to speak fluent Mandarin Chinese and some Tai-gi (also known as Hokkien, Taiwanese, Southern Min, see Sandel, 2003). I often saw her walking in the village, riding a scooter, or traveling with her husband and children in the family car. Unlike images and stories reported in the media of the many problems associated with the phenomenon of Taiwan’s “foreign brides” (see Hsia, 2007), they appeared to display another side: The integrated “foreign spouse” family. They became my first contact in a study of such families impacted by brokered and cross-border marriages in Taiwan. In past generations marriage in Taiwan, China, and other parts of Asia was a family affair arranged by parents and matchmakers (Chuang & Wolf, 1995). What counted as a good match was guided by folk understandings that were gendered, such as the belief that marriage marked the time when a daughter would “marry out” and join her husband’s family; a son would “marry in” a daughter-in-law who would live with and learn from her mother-in-law (see Wolf, 1987). These beliefs were indexed by a number of folk sayings, such as Zhong nan qing nü 重男輕女, literally “heavy male light female,” or favoring sons over daughters. Parents preferred a son because he was to live with and support them. He would inherit the family’s land and property, and stay rooted in the land and community of his birth. A daughter, however, was dispreferred: Resources and energies devoted to support her were believed “wasted” as they would serve to benefit her future husband and his family (Chu, 2001). Marriage marked a time for the daughter to move out and adapt to her husband, mother-in-law, and new community, as expressed in the Taiwanese saying, Cha-bo-lang si ku-chhai mia 女人是韮菜命, “A woman’s fate is like that of the Chinese leek.” Just as a leek is a vegetable that must be transplanted and spread to new ground in order to grow well, in the same way the marrying woman must be pulled out of the home soil and transplanted to a new one, and there begin the task of growing again. Across Asia rapid change has come. Decades of economic growth have brought greater wealth to individuals, families, and communities. Movement from rural to urban areas, smaller family size, and access to universal education—especially for girls—have changed the traditional connection to the land as the source of the family’s wealth (Kristof & WuDunn, 2009). For the woman who moves from her natal home and community to someplace new, while this is challenging, it offers opportunities for personal growth: An out-marrying daughter’s well-being does not require obedience to her

introduction

3

husband and mother-in-law. Likewise the in-marrying daughter-in-law may be employed outside the home and make independent financial decisions. Societal change and economic and educational opportunities available to women have changed the dynamic of the Asian family and how to act as a wife or husband, daughter or son, daughter-in-law or son-in-law, mother or mother-in-law. Yet traditional beliefs about how to arrange a marriage and the role of family members—especially women—persist and often conflict with the present-day actions and beliefs of family members. This book examines the tensions and dilemmas of marriage and family in this changing context. It examines a type of marriage pattern that has arisen over the past two decades, the cross-border or transnational marriage. Taiwan, like other Asian countries such as South Korea (Freeman, 2011) and Japan (Suzuki, 2005), has become the destination of hundreds of thousands of marriage migrants, most of whom are women from China and the countries of Southeast Asia such as Vietnam and Indonesia. Because they are perceived as foreign, they are often referred to waiji xinniang 外籍新娘 or “foreign brides” (Sandel & Liang, 2010). This, however, is a term most women dislike as they do not want to be perceived as forever “foreign” or newly married “brides.” And while many of the ways that “women” and “men” are discussed in this book appear essentialist, this is not meant to be an argument for essentializing gender roles and relationships. Instead, this is a presentation of the dominant ways that gender is deployed in the context of Asia in general, and Taiwan in particular. Women and men are motivated to constitute such marriages for different reasons. Women from other lands see Taiwan as a more developed economy and place with better job and career opportunities. For example, when Vietnamese women see their sisters, relatives, and friends sending money home and raising their family out of poverty, they may feel pressured by family members to pursue this path, or may be individually motivated to seek the prospects of a different and potentially better life (Nguyen & Tran, 2010). Taiwanese men have other motives. One is the belief that today’s Taiwanese women are “not traditional,” “hard to control” and not interested in the tasks of marriage—bearing children and taking care of parents (Tien & Wang, 2006; Sandel, 2011). Another is the demographic push from rural Taiwanese women to move to urban areas and not marry men who live in rural areas— locations where the demand for “foreign brides” is highest (Hsia, 2002). Thus working class and rural men find the “marriage pool” of Taiwanese women limited and look for women in other countries. The combination of these

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and other factors have created both the push and pull for women and men to cross-borders in search of marriage partners, creating a sizable population found across all regions of Taiwan. Reasons how and why cross-border marriages are constituted in Taiwan and other parts of Asia are important and have been discussed by others (e.g., Constable, 2005; Palriwali & Uberoi, 2008; Williams, 2010; Yang & Lu, 2010). Yet an issue underexplored is the long-term impact of these marriages. What happens several years after marriage, when there are likely to be children in the family and a woman has developed relationships with her husband, mother-in-law and extended family members, community members, and friends? At that stage can it be claimed that a marriage is on the path to failure or success? What are the everyday and communicative challenges of the foreign-spouse family? How are the foreign spouse and family members perceived? Another underexplored issue, and way of addressing the gendered aspect of these marriages, is to compare the experiences of foreign-born female spouses with the smaller population of foreign-born male spouses. Most of the latter are from more “developed” countries such as Europe, Japan, and the United States and have higher socio-economic status in Taiwan. What are the similarities and differences? What are their communicative challenges? What do comparisons of these types of foreign spouses show us about issues of gender and power? Finally, what is the impact of cross-border marriage on the families and communities that women leave? Why do we often see a pattern of “chain migration” (an older sister leads a younger sister to marry a Taiwanese man) emerging? And what might be reasons why women might not want to follow this path to marriage, and the practice decline? Answers to these questions not only shed light on marriage migration in the context of Taiwan and Asia, they also show us another way to understand how gender, local folk beliefs, and migration affect what it means to be married. Theoretically I bring together three inter-related concepts: folk theories, cultural ways of speaking, and gender and control. As a researcher my first job is to collect “data”—stories, observations, images—that come from specific times and places. The second job is to arrange these data in a coherent fashion, to interpret them in such a way that meanings emerge that make sense not only to me as researcher, but to a reader who most probably will never visit the places I have seen, or talk with the people I have met. Theories and concepts drawn from a range of other studies and contexts help with this task. The following sections provide a brief overview.

introduction

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Folk Theoretical Understandings A folk theory (also called an ethnotheory or cultural belief system), put simply, is a locally understood way of looking at the world. It is a model that people may use to explain how and why things happen, often linking events in a causal way. It is not universal, but limited to a culture or group; it arises from what “folk”—not scholars or official leaders—do, say, and believe (Miller, Sandel, Liang, & Fung, 2001). When I introduce this concept to American students, I often talk about the belief, popular in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, China, and other countries across Asia, that blood type is linked to and influences personality. For instance, if you look at Chinese or Japanese language dating websites (e.g., Jia Ren You Yue 佳人有約 [Have Beauty to Invite], 2014), you will find blood type listed in each person’s profile. A common folk belief is that those with a certain type of blood are more compatible with others: A person with type A is compatible with A and AB; a type B person is compatible with B and AB; type O with O and AB; and type AB is compatible with any blood type. This folk theory may then be cited as a way to explain why some people can get along well in a relationship, and others cannot. I have heard people in Taiwan say, “So-and-so does not get along well with so-and-so; and you know it’s because of blood type!” The origins of this belief are traced to a dubious study by a Japanese high school administrator, Takeji Furukawa, who in 1927 claimed that he observed differences in the temperament of his students due to blood type (The Great Geek Manual » Japanese Culture 101, 2007). The Japanese militarist government took up the study and extended it to identify ideal blood types in order to “breed better soldiers”; it was also used to justify the presumed racial superiority of Japanese over other “lesser” populations (Japanese Blood Type Theory of Personality, 2014). The concept spread to Taiwan, which until 1945 was a Japanese colony. Most people today do not understand the racist and faulty origins of this belief. Once I gave a lecture at a university in Taiwan and used this to illustrate what is a folk theory. Members of the audience, including professors and graduate students, strongly objected to my claim that the blood-type-personality-link was just a “folk theory” and said that it was supported with scholarly work. However, even in Taiwan this folk theory is not determinative in relationship formation and a person may befriend someone else with a less than ideal blood type. While the blood-type-personality folk theory may seem trivial, folk theories can often powerfully influence cultural practices (Miller et al., 2002).

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Deloache & Gottlieb (2000) describe beliefs from a number of cultures that mothers and caregivers have about such ideas as birth and personhood, and how they impact related practices: The Walpiri of Australia will “smoke the baby” at birth; the Beng of Cote D’Ivoire will paint babies and adorn them with beads to “allure them into this world” (not die); and Turkish mothers will engage in practices that ward off the evil eye to protect their babies. One cultural practice that I have studied, based upon a folk theory, is that of the need for the post-partum mother to observe a month’s rest, called zuo yuezi 坐月子 in Chinese (Sandel, 2014). This is near universally observed in Taiwan, China, and other parts of Southeast Asia (Dennis et al., 2007). The traditional practice is for the mother to be confined to the home for a 30-day period of rest and recovery following birth. It is related to ideas of the forces of Yin and Yang (陰陽) and how they impact health. Pregnancy, birth, and the postpartum period each mark a disruption in the balance of the body. During pregnancy the mother accumulates blood, interpreted as an excess of heat or Yang; the act of giving birth is marked by the release of blood and other bodily fluids, meaning the body becomes cold or tilted toward Yin. Restoration of balance is achieved by a number of practices, such as avoiding the cold (e.g., do not use the air conditioner or wash your hair), and by consuming foods that are meant to boost or warm the body (e.g., sesame oil chicken) (Sandel, 2014). How well a woman observes this period of rest is thought to impact health not just in the short-term, but also many years—even decades—after giving birth. I have talked with many women who claim that if they do not (or did not) properly zuo yuezi, then later in life they will suffer problems with their joints and circulation. The importance of this practice, however, is not limited to health concerns: A post-partum rest is an interactional practice, something one family member, usually a mother-in-law, does for another, her daughter-in-law. Thus, it may serve to either strengthen the relationship bond, or if not performed well, may harm it (Sandel, 2004, 2014). A third folk theoretical idea, and one that impacts marriage and families, is the belief that women should marry up and men marry down, a concept also referred to as “hypergamy” (Constable, 2005). Chinese parents have traditionally sought to arrange matches for daughters that raise their status, and/or to find a mate of similar background, referred to as mendang hudui 門當戶對 or literally “matching doors” (To, 2013). In the past, or in some rural communities today where women have few educational opportunities, women are married at a young age. In a study of a rural community in China, Chu found that “[b]y age 25, 98 percent of the women were married” (2001,

introduction

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p. 266). Yet as women in Taiwan and China receive advanced university degrees and professional, well-paid careers, they are less likely to get married. The word shengnü 剩女 or “leftover woman,” is one used to describe women who are in their late 20s or early 30s, with successful careers, but unmarried (Fincher, 2014; To, 2013) Men on the lower end of the wage scale also may find it harder to marry and likewise called shengnan 剩男 or “leftover man” (Fincher, 2014; Sandel, 2013). As reported by Magistad (2013) in China’s marriage market: Chinese men tend to “marry down” both in terms of age and educational attainment. “There is an opinion that A-quality guys will find B-quality women, B-quality guys will find C-quality women, and C-quality men will find D-quality women … the people left are A-quality women and D-quality men.”

If women and men seek partners within the same country or geographic locale, they may find it very difficult.

Cultural Ways of Speaking about Marriage Language used to talk about marriage, spouses, family members, is a culturally and linguistically embedded practice. As we know from the writings of Edward Sapir (1974) and Benjamin Whorf (1956), language is culturally patterned and impacts our perception of the world (O’Neill, In Press). Whorf famously wrote of examples of fires that may have been carelessly started by people who were influenced by the words used to describe substances such as “empty gas drums,” or “spun limestone,” falsely believing that a flame or heat would not affect them, when instead they were highly flammable. Yet it is not just individual words that impact behavior and perception, but also the grammatical and syntactic structure of a language, such as Whorf demonstrated with his comparisons of Standard Average European and Hopi languages. As explained by Silverstein (2000), Hopi and English differ in terms of tense and aspect, leading English speakers to “objectify” time and space in ways unknown to Hopi speakers. In my work I have explored the linguistic resources available to Mandarin Chinese and Taiwanese speakers, even young children, who have more terms of address to address kin and fictive kin, demonstrating bonds of family and friendship (Sandel, 2002). Likewise Chinese/Taiwanese verbs used to index marriage are more complex than English language verbs, demonstrating properties of gender and direction: A woman will jia 嫁 (marry out) a husband, as she

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moves from her natal home to his, while a man will qu 娶 (marry in) a wife, as he moves into his home. In a similar line of research Carbaugh and colleagues (Carbaugh, BoromiszaHabash, & Ge, 2006; Carbaugh, Nuciforo, Saito, & Shin, 2011) have studied terms for “dialogue” using a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic perspective. Their work richly shows differences of meaning and interpretation when speakers of different languages use terms that may be translated as equivalent in meaning. For example, Japanese understand dialogue to involve the search for harmony, Blackfeet Indian means a mutuality of exchange, and Chinese implies talk between people who are of similar status and rank. While each is similar, when these terms are used in context and practice they may imply very different things, and these are related to cultural and personal experiences. In similar fashion, when using language to express what it means to be a spouse, or how to identify oneself as a mother/wife or father/husband, these words imply positionalities that may differ cross-linguistically. In the following chapters I pay close attention to the words, language, and culturally implied meanings that speakers invoke, when they discuss what it means to be a foreign spouse, and/or member of a foreign-spouse family.

Gender and Control in Chinese Contexts A number of years ago I listened to a well-known scholar in communication— whose name I will not mention—and listened to this person talk about research on persuasion effects in health campaigns. The population that was studied included both male and female participants; but there was no attempt by this researcher to explain how health could be different for both genders. I thought to myself, “How can anyone study health without considering that it is embodied? Women’s and men’s bodies are different and they face different health challenges!” The question of gender also applies to this book and any study of family and marriage: Women’s and men’s experiences differ. In their poignantly written book, Kristoff and WuDunn (2009) describe a range of challenges girls and women face worldwide: Prostitution and sexual slavery, sex-selection abortion, rape, maternal mortality, religious-based misogyny, economic and educational discrimination. One of the most disturbing problems they describe is that when girls are married at a very young age and become pregnant before their bodies are fully grown, they may experience prolonged labor in childbirth; lack of access to health care may then lead to the development of a fistula and incontinence—the inability to control the

introduction

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body’s bladder and excretion functions. Such girls may then be shunned by their husbands and families, blamed for problems that are no fault of their own. A man could or would never suffer such problems. At an even more fundamental level, in many parts of Asia the chances for a girl to even be born are less than for a boy. The problem of sex-selective abortions, facilitated by the use of ultra-sound and other technologies is well-known in China (Chu, 2001). This has led to China having one of the highest ratios of males to females in the world, a problem that is worse for rural-dwelling men who have few opportunities to marry (Sandel, 2013). This is also a growing problem in Vietnam (Bèlanger & Oanh, 2009), reversing the earlier demographic phenomenon in Vietnam of marriage-eligible females outnumbering males, due to the effects of the Vietnam War and the outmigration of Vietnamese men to other countries (Thai, 2008). These create regional and global distortions in the “supply” of marriage-eligible females; poorer families may resort to kidnapping or “buying” girls from poorer regions to marry their sons (Chu, 2001). Or, for wealthier men, such as Taiwanese businessmen who live and work in China, one sees the rise of businesses where men have relations with women in karaoke bars and “drink flower wine,” a euphemism for women who accompany paying men to drink alcohol and engage in flirtatious behavior—or prostitution; a man may also bao er nai 包二奶 or “keep a second mistress” in China while his wife and children live at home in Taiwan (Shen, 2008). One can argue that these cultural practices collectively perpetuate the belief that women and girls are valued less than men and boys. Gender matters. Control of women is the last issue to consider here. Chinese parents in Taiwan have traditionally found ways to control the marriage choices of their children. Perhaps what today seems to be the most disturbing example of this was the widespread practice of arranging the “sim-pua marriage” 童養媳 (Chuang & Wolf, 1995). One family with a daughter would agree to adopt her out to another family, who would then raise her as their own. But when she grew up she would be expected to marry her brother in her adoptive home. She as a daughter/daughter-in-law would be trained in household chores and could be more easily controlled as she made the transition into married life. From census figures compiled by the Japanese, Chuang and Wolf found that this practice was not limited to poor farming families who wanted to avoid the expense of a dowry. Instead, it was more common in Taiwan’s northern region that was more industrialized and wealthier than the south. It was a way for parents to exhibit the highest degree of control over their children and future

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grandchildren. Yet as they found, the practice ended abruptly by the mid twentieth century as young people, who could support themselves independently in Taiwan’s growing economy, rebelled and refused to marry their siblings. While sim-pua marriage no longer exists, the desire to control married children, especially the in-marrying daughter-in-law and/or wife, continues. In To’s (2013) study of “leftover women” one of the issues that unmarried, professional women expressed as an impediment to marriage, was that potential Chinese husbands wanted to control them after marriage, asking them to quit their jobs and live at home. Likewise in Chu’s (2001) study she found that “intermediaries” or “matchmakers” (or meiren 媒人 in Chinese) would find and “buy” brides from rural provinces, believing the practice was legal and that “a man has the right to keep a woman as long as he has paid the bride price” (p. 277). Finally, Tien and Wang (2006) found that Taiwanese men said that they preferred to marry a woman from Southeast Asia or China, rather than a local Taiwanese woman, because a Taiwanese woman was “hard to raise” and “not traditional”; women from other countries were easier to control (see also Sandel, 2011). The above concepts each help us understand how and why men and families in Taiwan have sought foreign-born spouses in large numbers. They will be examined in-depth in the following chapters.

Research Methods Data for this book are based upon three periods of fieldwork. First was a year of research in Taiwan from 2007–2008 while living in the central city of Taichung, supported as a Fulbright scholar, and hosted by Professor ChungHui Liang at National Chiao Tung University in Hsin-chu. Second was a one-month trip to Indonesia, August-September 2013, in which i visited both Jakarta and Singkawang, West Kalimantan, a Hakka Chinese majority “sending community” where many Taiwanese men came to find and marry local women (see Constable, 1996, for an overview of the Hakka people). Third was two short trips to a Hakka community in Miaoli, Taiwan, where many Indonesian-born women married local men. During the initial period most research was conducted in, but not limited to, Hoklo-majority communities. (The four major “ethnic” groups of Taiwan are (1) Hoklo, also called “Taiwanese” or Benshengren 本省人, (2) Hakka or Kejia ren 客家人, (3) “Mainlander” or Waishengren 外省人, and (4) Taiwanese Aborigines or Yuanzhumin 原住民. See Rubinstein’s, 1999,

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edited volume on Taiwan’s history, or my work, e.g., Sandel, 2003, or Sandel & Liang, 2010, in which I discuss Taiwan’s different ethnic and linguistic groups.) This was impacted by longstanding ties with friends and family members— through my spouse—to places in Changhua and Yunlin counties that are majority Hoklo. As will be described below I also visited communities in other parts of Taiwan, following leads and opportunities as they emerged. One unexplored piece of research during my initial time in Taiwan from 2007–2008 was to travel to a community that “sent” its women, through marriage, to Taiwan. During the summer of 2012, when attending a conference in the U.S. and presenting a paper on my earlier research, I came to know Dr. Sunny Lie, a native of Indonesia and, at the time, a doctoral student in the U.S. While she grew up in Jakarta, members of her extended family lived in Singkawang and she was very familiar with marriages between Taiwanese men and Chinese Indonesian: Her uncle owned and operated a hotel that over the years was a place where many Taiwanese men stayed. She then introduced me to members of her family, notably her cousin, Ulung Wijaya, who was my research assistant in Singkawang the summer of 2013. My introduction to Taiwan came many years before I approached it as a research site. After completing my college degree I was not interested in following many of my classmates to a career in investment banking in New York. A semester spent in Greece during my junior year inspired me to explore more of the world. With limited opportunities to return to Greece, I looked at the possibility of traveling to live and work in Asia, with Japan the number one destination in the 1980s. I almost went to Japan. Life, however, took an unexpected turn when I learned of an opportunity to go to Taiwan. I knew nothing of Taiwan at the time and had not studied Chinese. Thus, I arrived in Taiwan on a hot and humid day in July of 1987, not knowing then that it was the month when the period of “martial law” imposed by the Chinese Nationalist, or Kuomintang (KMT) government would be lifted, and Taiwan would experience a decade of unprecedented political, societal, and economic change, changes that I would witness. From 1987 to 1996 most of my time was spent living in Taiwan. After a year in the program, I returned to the U.S. to pursue a master’s degree, and a long-distance relationship (by letter) with Donna Ching-Kuei Hsu, the woman I would marry in Taiwan in 1990. After completing my MA degree in 1991, I was fortunate to find a job at Fu Jen University as a member of the English Department. My two older children were born in Taiwan, and yearby-year, season-by-season, I experienced and learned the culture, languages,

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and rhythm of life in Taiwan. We returned to the U.S. in 1996 as I pursued my doctoral studies. While my doctoral adviser at the University of Illinois, Peggy Miller, did not speak Chinese, she was interested in doing research there, inspired by the cross-cultural work she did with one of her Taiwan-born graduate students, Heidi Fung. She worked with me to craft a dissertation study that was built upon her studies of childhood language socialization and cross-cultural comparisons (Miller, Fung, & Mintz, 1996). Working with classmates, we collected data in both the U.S. and Taiwan, and published many of our findings (e.g., Cho, Sandel, Miller, & Wang, 2005; Miller, Wang, Sandel, & Cho, 2002; Sandel, Cho, Miller, & Wang, 2006). For me, this was a time to not only improve my fluency in Mandarin Chinese, I also studied Taiwanese (also called Tai-gi or Hokkien), the widely spoken “topolect” of Taiwan. (I explain in earlier work, Sandel, 2003, why it is linguistically and politically problematic to call Taiwanese and/or Hakka “dialects” of Chinese. In related work Mair, 1991, proposes the term “topolect” as a translation of the Chinese term “fangyan” 方言 which is customarily and inaccurately translated as Chinese “dialects.” See also an explanation of “Dialects”: Sandel, In Press.) While it is possible to communicate with most people in Taiwan in Mandarin only, this puts you at a linguistic disadvantage: Older people, especially those in rural and “southern” parts of Taiwan (“south” often refers to any place south of the northern city of Taipei), speak little Mandarin; middle and younger generations frequently code-switch between both (Sandel, 2003). Following graduation I became a professor at the University of Oklahoma, and supported by grants from that university and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation from 2002–2004, was able to return to Taiwan often, usually during summer vacations. For this period I was interested in the topics of language acquisition and language shift (e.g., the loss of fluency in Hakka, Taiwanese, Aboriginal languages among younger speakers), and efforts to reverse shift through Taiwan’s newly instituted “mother tongue” education (Sandel, Liang, & Chao, 2006). I also worked with graduate students in Oklahoma to study Chinese-American language, culture, and identity (Sandel, Wong Lowe, & Chao, 2012). While pursuing these other studies, parents, educators, and people I spoke with in Taiwan pointed me in another direction: the rapidly growing population of waiji xinniang 外籍新娘 or “foreign brides” and their children. They were concerned that children with mothers from Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam and Indonesia would fall behind, and this in the long run would adversely impact Taiwan’s growth and development. It was impossible

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to ignore the issue as advertisements to “buy” a foreign bride (discussed further in Chapter 1) were posted everywhere. During the summer of 2002, when I spent a month living with my sister-in-law’s family in Taipei County, as I rode my 50 cc motorscooter along one major road I would frequently pass by a large sign with Yuenan Xinniang 越南新娘 or “Vietnamese Brides” in large characters displayed on top, and information showing the cost and telephone number on the bottom. During a visit to my wife’s hometown in Changhua the summer of 2004, one man jokingly said that the town had become a “little United Nations”: “On this street the brides are all from Vietnam, on the next they are from Burma, and the next from Cambodia.” Statistics on the number of registered marriages compiled by Taiwan’s Ministry of the Interior show that the period from 1999 to 2005 were the peak years for marriages between Taiwanese men and foreign-born women, ranging from 17 to 28 percent of all marriages. When I returned to Taiwan in the summer of 2007 to begin a year of study, I approached it with a number of methodological tools: I was fluent in Mandarin Chinese and conversant in Taiwanese; I was familiar with the culture and lifestyle of Taiwan both through my experience and previous scholarship; I was fortunate to have personal connections to friends and family members throughout Taiwan—people who were willing and able to introduce me to participants for the research; and, as will be discussed further in Chapter Three, I understood what it was like to be a “foreign spouse” or waiji peiou 外籍配偶 in a Taiwanese family. (This term of reference I later found to work well as a way to introduce myself when talking with female foreign-born spouses.) Finally, the support I received from such institutions as Da-Yeh University, the Center for General Education Studies at National Chiao Tung University, and the Fulbright Foundation of Taiwan, all were important methodologically, as through them I was given access to educators and professionals in a number of communities that my personal connections would not have led me to. My research goal for the first period of study was quite simple: Go to places with “foreign brides,” their family members, and children; meet them in their homes, schools, and places they frequent; and follow my leads and contacts wherever they take me. Thus I made field visits to participants in their homes in two communities in Changhua County, four communities in Yunlin County, one in Ilan County, one in Hsinchu, and one visit to Taiwan’s northernmost city of Keelung. In addition I was also interested in talking with elementary school teachers and administrators. Through a connection made with the parents of one of my children’s classmates, I was fortunate to get to

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know Professor Chih-Ling Hsieh 謝智玲 of Da-Yeh University 大葉大學 in Changhua County. She introduced me to teachers in central Taiwan whom I interviewed, and arranged a visit to Yuanlin Elementary School, the largest in Changhua County. Through other connections I made visits to schools in Ilan County, Yunlin County, and Hsinchu (to be discussed in Chapter 4). Finally, some interviews, mostly with foreign-born male spouses (discussed in Chapter 3), were conducted by students in a class I instructed at National Chiao Tung University. From 2007–2008 interviews were conducted with a total of 92 participants, including 30 elementary school teachers and/or administrators and 62 others: 39 foreign-born female spouses, five foreign-born male spouses, seven Taiwanese husbands (married to women from other countries), and 11 other (non-spousal) members of families with one or more foreign-born members. Countries of origin of foreign-born spouses include Vietnam (21), P. R. China (7), Cambodia (7), Indonesia (3), United States (2), and one each from the Philippines, United Kingdom, Mexico, Japan, Poland, Germany, and Malaysia. Each was asked questions about practices and beliefs followed in the country (culture) of origin, how Taiwan’s practices and beliefs were learned and/or adopted by the participant or his/her spouse, and how differing cultural practices and beliefs were resolved within the family. We also asked questions pertaining to children; if participants had any, as decisions regarding how to discipline and educate children are shaped by cultural belief systems and may differ greatly (Deloache & Gottlieb, 2000; Miller et al., 2002). In addition, I also talked with participants in settings when I did not record our talk, but wrote extensive field notes. For instance, one evening my brother-in-law took me to meet friends, who, as often happens in the evening, were sitting outside, drinking tea and Kinmen Kaoliang liquor, playing chess and chatting. Two of the men were previously married to women from China; after several years of marriage their wives had left them, and these men were willing to share their stories with me. My connection to Indonesia came through a chance meeting with Professor Sunny Lie at a conference in the U.S. in the summer of 2012. I was also helped by key people in Indonesia, including author, and journalist for Kompas, the largest newspaper in Indonesia, Iwan “Ong” Santosa, and Professor Aimee Dawis of the University of Indonesia; she is author of an original and important work on Chinese Indonesians’ history, culture, and communication (Dawis, 2009). Thus in August 2013 I left Macau and traveled to Indonesia, spending time in both Jakarta and Singkawang. Contacts with key

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participants were arranged in Jakarta by Iwan and Aimee. They helped me better understand the complex history of Chinese Indonesians, including such tragic events as the revolution of 1965 and the anti-Chinese violence of 1998. I hired Ulung Wijaya (Sunny Lie’s cousin) as my assistant in Singkawang. We spent ten days there visiting people in their homes and conducted formal interviews with 24 participants. These included one professional matchmaker (called mak comblang in Bahasa Indonesian), a man whose mother worked as a matchmaker (and his sister is married to a Taiwanese spouse), four women currently or formerly married to Taiwanese men (two divorced, one widowed, and one still married), 15 participants with a family member (i.e., daughter, sister, aunt) married to a Taiwanese spouse, and four people without a family member married to someone in Taiwan. (Singkawang is home to four ethnic groups, the largest being Hakka Chinese. Marriage to Taiwanese men is rare among non-Hakka groups. But among the Hakka it is very common: It was difficult to find a Hakka person whose family was not connected to Taiwan by marriage.) The third period of research in Taiwan followed my trip to Indonesia. I asked Professor Chung-hui Liang of National Chiao Tung University if she had any Hakka students who could help with our research. She posted a message on the university’s bulletin board service, and one student, Kuo Chung-Ru 郭忠儒, responded who had previously taken a class from her. Chung-Ru’s mother grew up in a small community in Miaoli County, and his grandmother worked as a professional matchmaker who—over a period of twenty years—arranged more than 30 marriages, traveling to Indonesia, including Singkawang, to arrange marriages with local Taiwanese men. Jointly we made visits on two occasions and conducted interviews with 15 participants including nine foreign-born female spouses (8 Indonesian and one Hakka woman from China), two Taiwanese husbands, Chung-Ru’s grandmother, and two other community members.

Negotiating Access As I often tell my students, conducting research often means that you must bother a person. If you want to talk with someone and ask them questions, regardless of the topic or nature of the questions, you are at the very least bothering them by taking up their time when they could be doing something else. If done ethically, there should be some reason why a person is willing to participate in your research, one that is understandable, reasonable, and

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voluntarily accepted. In the case of most research done in the U.S. in such social scientific fields as communication or psychology, this is done by offering “course credit” to undergraduate students who participate in research, something that I have done in other studies. Yet when conducting research in non-academic settings, such as Taiwan or Indonesia, other reasons and incentives for participating in research must be offered, and these should be tailored to match local and cultural expectations. The procedure we followed was similar for most interviews. A contact person would take me (and sometimes others who were assisting me) to a person’s home. Most often the participant had previously been contacted by the contact person through a phone call or conversation prior to our arrival. We would arrive and I would be introduced as a “professor” interested in learning more about this topic. If the participant was literate (many women from Southeast Asia and older women in Taiwan were not), I would present the person with an informed consent form that explained the purpose of the research. However, if the person could not read it, either my assistant or I would explain it orally, telling the person what we wanted to do, the kinds of questions that would be asked, the expected time, and the purpose of the research—academic and not commercial or governmental. If the person consented, I (or assistant) would ask if he or she would consent to recording the interview. In most instances I could then proceed. Sometimes, however, the participant was unsure or reluctant. I would then explain that I myself was a “foreign spouse” or waiji peiou 外籍配偶, married to a Taiwanese spouse, with children, who was in a similar family situation. I would carry pictures of my wife and children with me and show them to the participant. This often helped create a personal bond that facilitated the interaction. At the end of the interview I would thank the participant and usually provide a small gift, such as pencils, stickers, or a small item for the participant’s child(ren). A cash gift was not offered in Taiwan. As was explained to me by a number of people, in Taiwan personal connections are most important, and an offer of cash would “complicate” the situation in inadvisable ways. However, in Indonesia I was told that giving a small cash gift was expected. (Participants who were “wealthy” and/or highly educated were not given cash.) Thus at the end of the interview in Indonesia I gave participants a small cash gift inside a “red envelope.” The most important criterion for conducting research is trust; and trust came through personal relationships. I depended upon friends, colleagues, and family members who had relationships with persons I was interested in talking

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with, to set up a time and place to do an interview. In most instances this worked well. For instance, one of the earliest interviews I did was arranged by my wife’s oldest sister. Her husband’s sister had two sons (one of the sons later died of cancer and his wife returned to Vietnam), each of whom married Vietnamese women—related to each other as cousins. My sister-in-law took us to her sister-in-law’s home, which we visited twice, and we spoke with these two women, one of the husbands, the mother-in-law (my sister-in-law’s sisterin-law), and two other Vietnamese women who were friends and neighbors, who also came to Taiwan for marriage. I was assisted by my wife, Donna. Her help at this initial stage was important for two reasons: One because I was concerned that as a male, it would be awkward for me to ask women questions about their family relationships; two was because the sister-in-law spoke little Mandarin Chinese, and it was easier for her to conduct the interview in Taiwanese. Evidence supporting the fidelity of this method emerged at one point in our talk with the mother-in-law (my sister-in-law’s sister-in-law). She said that other “outside” people—apparently from the government or official organizations—had previously come to her house requesting to interview her Vietnamese daughters-in-law. She, however, dismissed these efforts by saying that her daughters-in-law were unavailable: “They came to ask. I said they [daughters-in-law] are not here, they went to work. [They wanted to] ask some questions about something, [and] kept asking.” She then explained that this matter was discussed by the family, and her father, the oldest male member of the extended family, said: “If they are [people] we don’t know, don’t let them come and ask.” We, however, were granted access: “You already know that you are [my daughters-in-laws’] aunt’s sister; so you can ask [us questions].” In another community in Taiwan my wife’s second sister facilitated connections. By this time I had already done a number of interviews and it was not necessary for my wife to accompany me. My sister-in-law took me to visit people she knew, including women from China, Cambodia, and local, older Taiwanese women. My sister-in-law would take me to someone’s home, make introductions and engage in small talk; after a period of time she would leave the room or house, returning about half an hour or hour later. The women I spoke with seemed very open and frank with me. One woman from China began by asking if I wanted to hear the “real” story behind her marriage. She told me that she paid a broker to arrange her marriage (unlike most where the broker’s fee was paid by the Taiwanese husband), and that

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her original intent was to engage in a “fake” marriage. Yet when she met the man she was supposed to marry, she discovered that he was acceptable, and it became a “real” marriage. There were times, however, when gaining access to participants was difficult. In one community a fellow Fulbright scholar connected me with two families of Indonesian-born foreign spouses. I went to this community and spoke with the two Taiwanese husbands. However, due to scheduling issues I was unable to speak with their wives and made arrangements to come and talk with them at another time. Yet when I returned, both women said that they did not want to talk with me, and I could not conduct an interview. On another occasion I went to a community in Ilan County on Taiwan’s northeast coast. The connection came through an American Fulbrighter who was assigned to work at a local elementary school. She introduced me to her Chinese “co-teacher” who I thought would take me to visit families in the community. However, she did not accompany me, and instead asked her father to take me to visit homes. We went to one home and I spoke with a Filipina woman who had a very difficult and complicated marriage. She said that her husband and mother-in-law did not treat her well. Prior to my visit she had “run away” from her husband and spent several months with a Filipino man. But she then returned to him because she had no money and means to support herself. We then went to another home, where a Taiwanese mother-in-law had a son married to Vietnamese-born wife. This woman spoke very little Mandarin, and I asked questions in Taiwanese. However, as I later read the transcript, I found that I did not do a good job: On several occasions the woman asked what was the purpose of my visit, and I did not respond well. That evening I received a phone call from the father who explained that he could not take me to interview any people the next day as was planned. Access was denied. It may have been that he felt embarrassed by the way I conducted myself in the interview with the mother-in-law. Or, it may have been that he felt that the interview with the Filipina woman exposed problems that should not have been made public, or told to me, an outsider. I did not write down what he said in my field notes, but a phrase that I have often heard is: “Bu yao tan renjia de shi” 不要談人家的事 (Don’t talk about other people’s affairs). There were times when it seemed that the contact person wanted to introduce me to “good” families, where relationships were good and the family had a positive reputation in town. (As will be discussed in later chapters, this was not always the case and I met many participants living in

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very difficult situations.) I also believe that the personal relationship I had with the contact person in this town, made indirectly through others, was too tenuous for the purposes of this research. Research conducted in Indonesia in 2013, as noted above, was facilitated by personal connections and paid assistants. Even though I came as an outsider with little prior knowledge, these personal connections were strong and provided me with access at a very high level. The biggest challenge that I faced, however, was linguistic. Some people spoke English and/or Mandarin, and I could speak with them directly. However, most spoke either Bahasa Indonesian and/or Hakka, and in these instances I had to rely upon interpreters. Fortunately my assistants (in Jakarta, Iwan Santosa, a well-known journalist for Kompas and author of many books on Indonesia, and Ulung Wijaya in Singkawang) were excellent. (Hakka is a “dialect” of Chinese that is mutually unintelligible with Mandarin, differing as such Romance languages as Portuguese, French, and Italian differ.) Following the collection of interview data I worked with students to write verbatim transcripts in the original language(s). In Taiwan Professor Liang had a grant to hire student assistants: Chang Ya-ching 張雅晴, Su Jyun-wei 蘇俊瑋, Liu Shu-yu 劉書瑜, Lin Chi-wen 林紀汶, and Hou Hsiao-ying 侯曉穎. Each interview was transcribed into Chinese and checked by a second person. I then read through all transcripts and did initial thematic coding, writing comments in the margins of the text. We met regularly during my time in Taiwan and talked about what the students saw as they were transcribing the data. I then coded across the corpus of transcripts, creating an Excel file where responses to individual questions, demographic data, and emergent themes were copied into individual cells. This coding was later checked by an undergraduate student, Connie Liu (fluent in English, Mandarin, and Taiwanese), who read through the transcripts and added to it. Similar procedures were used for working with data collected in Indonesia in 2013. Supported by a grant from the University of Macau, I hired a team of graduate and undergraduate students, with diverse linguistic skills, including Mandarin, Hakka, English, and Bahasa Indonesian: Anastasia Lijadi, Fiona Wu, Hazel Wan, Julie Zhong, Florence Fok, Melissa Chen, Siau Thung, Jenny Zhi, and Agy Yan. Finally, I have translated excerpts from Chinese (Mandarin, Taiwanese, and Hakka) and Bahasa Indonesian into English. Those interested in reading excerpts in the original language(s) may contact me.

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Overview of the Book Chapter 1, The “Advertized” Foreign Bride: A Semiotic and Discourse Analysis, looks at roadside signs that formerly were ubiquitous across Taiwan, and advertized services for arranging marriages with “foreign brides,” known as “waiji xinniang” in Chinese. The text and embedded placement of these signs are analyzed semiotically, as they communicate the image of the “foreign bride” as a commodity for sale. The chapter then examines the language and terms used to reference, categorize, and index foreign-born women in Taiwan. Referential and indexical meanings of a number of Chinese language terms used to describe those who are “foreign” are unpacked. This unpacking is continued in the next section that presents accounts from interview participants, as they explain meanings and uses associated with these terms. I first present one set of meanings, a discourse of the foreign bride as conniving and untrustworthy, as uttered by some Taiwanese men. Then a counter discourse, given voice by four Vietnamese born women, is presented. As participants in a local elementary school that hosts a “New Immigrant Center,” they and other community members have created signs and images of foreign-born women creating and contributing to their community, school, and families. Chapter 2 situates cross-border marriage as a contemporary manifestation of culturally situated ideas about marriage. When we look at historical practices and associated folk beliefs of what constituted an appropriate match, we see that control of a daughter-in-law was a prominent concern of parents. For example, prior to 1960 one form of marriage that was very common across much of Taiwan was the so-called “sim-pua” marriage, or the practice of adopting a baby girl, who would then grow up and marry a brother in her adoptive family. This form of marriage was seen as advantageous because the daughter/daughterin-law, from a young age would learn how to obey her mother/mother-in-law, and there would be no training or adjustment period after marriage. Yet this practice ended abruptly by 1960 as a changing economy meant young people had the means to support themselves, and rebelled against their parents. This link between cultural practices and changes to the economy is then explored as it relates to the rise of the “foreign bride” marriage that began in the late 1980s and quickly grew in number. This form of marriage, once again gave the husband and his parents greater control over the wife/daughter-in-law. This is built upon and furthers traditional folk beliefs about marriage, and the role of the wife/daughter-in-law in a Taiwanese family. The chapter then personalizes the issue by presenting stories from Mr. Chiu, a man who married a woman from

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Vietnam, Ms. Xu, a woman from China who came to Taiwan, initially intending to enter into a fake marriage, and Ms. Lin of Cambodia, who was motivated by economic concerns. These different paths to marriage demonstrate how individual and cultural issues intersect. Chapter 3 builds upon work in ethnomethodology and membership categorization to understand what it means to be a foreign spouse from a gendered perspective. Ethnomethodology, the study of ways social actors create order in everyday life, draws attention to such simple activities as standing in line, or receiving service from a shopkeeper. Membership categorization analysis shows how terms of reference, such as “wife” or “mother” carry a set of expectations about activities and/or relationships. The chapter begins with my personal, ethnomethodological reflections what it means to be a male, foreign spouse in Taiwan, and how people interact with and categorize me. It then examines what others, female and male foreign spouses, say about their experiences and understandings of the role of husband, wife, son-in-law and/ or daughter-in-law. This chapter highlights how gender and power affect the positioning of the spouse in the family and community. While women are more likely to be perceived as a threat than men, the children of the former marriages are seen as “Taiwanese” while the children of male-foreign-spouse families are seen as other. These show that gendered understandings are complex and should not be perceived as simplistic claims that one is better than the other. Rather, both genders face challenges of positioning that are communicated through interactions with others. Chapter 4 is drawn from my visits to elementary schools and interviews with teachers and administrators at a number of sites across Taiwan. Teachers have a unique vantage point from which to view the students of families from “foreign spouse” or waipei families. Such families are identified by educational authorities as one of a class of “disadvantaged families,” and require that the teacher record not only the child’s academic performance and behavior in school, but also the family situation. Thus, many teachers make home visits, and are able to observe the home environment and talk with family members. Elementary schools also serve as places where Southeast Asian born mothers may come and take Chinese literacy and parenting skills classes. Teachers are able to see the issue from many angles and claim that when a mother gains literacy skills, she is able to help her child complete homework assignments; the child may also feel more self-confident and willing to say his mother comes from another country when he sees his mother possesses important skills, strengths and abilities. Therefore, educators demonstrate that immigrant mothers should

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not be viewed as a threat, but as a treasure, and that an atmosphere of mutual respect will bring benefits to Taiwan. In Chapter 5 I describe Singkawang, Indonesia, a Chinese majority community that for decades has been a “marriage sending” place. Since the late 1960s, hundreds or perhaps thousands of women have left their homes to marry Taiwanese men, often arranged through the practice of professional “brokered” matchmakers. The practice reached its peak roughly from the 1990s until the late 2000s, and has impacted almost every Chinese family in the community. Yet when I visited in 2013 the practice had mostly ended. While some women continue the migration to Taiwan, none wanted to be “chosen” to be married to a Taiwanese man that they did not know. I explain the reasons for the end of this practice, through presenting and analyzing a changing master story about what it means to marry a man in Taiwan. While in the past such a marriage was narrated as good, in recent years it is seen as bad, because many Taiwanese men are frauds who chew beetle nut, drink until they are drunk, and beat their wives. The chapter also explains how changes in communication technology, namely the availability of cell phones and social media applications, has changed this story. Whereas in the past a daughter living in faraway Taiwan was both technologically unable, and culturally constrained to tell bad news of her marriage to her parents, today’s daughter can share bad news readily with her same generation sisters through Facebook or WeChat. Yet even though the narrative has changed and brokered marriage has mostly ceased, migration from Singkawang to Taiwan continues, even for the purpose of marriage, as young women from poor families see Taiwan as a place that if “fate” allows, may lead to a better life. The chapter ends with a postscript, explaining what we learned from our visit to a Hakka community in Taiwan. In the final chapter I revisit the main arguments of the book, and discuss both theoretical and practical implications. While this book focuses on Taiwan as a context, and the issues are shaped by it, the issues that are addressed have broader applications. These are explicated in this last section.

References Bèlanger, D., & Linh, T. G. (2011). The impact of transnational migration on gender and marriage in sending communities of Vietnam. Current Sociology, 59(1), 59–77. Bèlanger, D., & Oanh, K. T. (2009). Second-trimester abortions and sex-selection of children in Hanoi, Vietnam. Population Studies, 63(2), 163–171.

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Bèlanger, D., Lee, H.-K., & Wang, H.-Z. (2010). Ethnic diversity and statistics in East Asia: “Foreign brides” surveys in Taiwan and South Korea. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 33(6), 1108–1130. Bèlanger, D., Linh, T. G., & Duong, L. B. (2011). Marriage migrants as emigrants: Remittances of marriage migrant women from Vietnam to their natal families. Asian Population Studies, 7(2), 89–105. Carbaugh, D., Boromisza-Habash, D., & Ge, X. (2006). Dialogue in cross-cultural perspective: Deciphering communication codes. In N. Aalto & E. Reuter (Eds.), Aspects of intercultural dialogue: Theory, research, applications (pp. 27–46). Köln, Germany: Saxa Verlag. Carbaugh, D., Nuciforo, E. N., Saito, M., & Shin, D.-S. (2011). “Dialogue” in cross-cultural perspective: Japanese, Korean, and Russian discourses. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 4(2), 87–108. Cho, G. E., Sandel, T. L., Miller, P. J., & Wang, S. H. (2005). What do grandmothers think about self-esteem? American and Taiwanese folk theories revisited. Social Development, 14(4), 701–721. Chu, J. (2001). Prenatal sex determination and sex-selective abortion in rural central China. Population and Development Review, 27(2), 259–281. Chuang, Y.-C., & Wolf, A. P. (1995). Marriage in Taiwan, 1881–1905: An example of regional diversity. The Journal of Asian Studies, 54(3), 781–795. Constable, N. (1996). Guest people: Hakka identity in China and abroad. (N. Constable, Ed.) Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press. Constable, N. (2005). Introduction: Cross-border marriages, gendered mobility, and global hypergamy. In N. Constable (Ed.), Cross-border marriages, gender and mobility in transnational Asia (pp. 1–16). Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Constable, N. E. (Ed.) (2005). Cross-border marriages: Gender and mobility in transnational Asia. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Dawis, A. (2009). The Chinese of Indonesia and their search for identity: The relationship between collective memory and the media. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press. DeLoache, J., & Gottlieb, A. (Eds.) (2000). A world of babies: Imagined childcare guides for seven societies. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Dennis, C.-L., Fung, K., Grigoriadis, S., Robinson, G. E., Romans, S., & Ross, L. (2007). Traditional postpartum practices and rituals: A qualitative systematic review. Women’s Health, 3(4), 487–502. Fincher, L. H. (2014). Leftover women: The resurgence of gender inequality in China. New York, NY: Zed Books. Freeman, C. (2011). Making and faking kinship: Marriage and labor migration between China and South Korea. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Hsia, H. C. (2002). 流離尋岸: 資本國際化下的 “外籍新娘” 現象 [Drifty shores: The “foreign brides” phenomenon in capitalist globalization.]. Taipei, Taiwan: A Radical Quarterly in Social Studies Research. Hsia, H. C. (2007). Imaged and imagined threat to the nation: The media construction of  “foreign brides’ phenomenon” as social problems in Taiwan. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 8(1), 55–85.

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