WATERING THE NEIGHBOUR'S GARDEN: THE GROWING - CICRED

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LE BACH D. –D. BÉLANGER –KHUAT T. H.
Many women in the sample left their home villages and crossed
the border with the expectation of a better life with a Chinese husband.
Most of them, however, had been deceived either involuntarily by wellintentioned
relatives and friends who were poorly informed themselves,
or by traffickers who lured women into wishing for something
that rarely exists.
“We live here and often travelled to China to sell goods.
We know some Chinese words, enough for simple communication.
Because we were abandoned by our husbands,
when someone came and asked if we wanted to get married
with a Chinese, the offer sounded very interesting.
They were saying getting married with a Chinese is very
good, because of this and of that, he will take care you very
well, you do not have to work hard, do not have to sell
goods in market, poor you to be abandoned by your husband
etc. Even women friends said ‘we should not work
this hard. We should get married to the Chinese to have
plenty of yuan (the Chinese currency) to spend.’”
As such, social pressure for marriage and to have children, have
produced vulnerabilities for women. Getting married was thus widely
reported by most of respondents in the present study as the main
factor attracting adult single or divorced women (or women with
unhappy family situations) to go to China.
While some women voluntarily go to China, a relatively high percentage
(29.1 percent, or close to one third) reported having been sold
to Chinese men as “wives”. It is reported in government reports and
other research that many Vietnamese women are forced to marry old
and disabled men. Another study on trafficking reported the cases of
women who were married to more than one men (one case in a family
of four brothers and one case to four different men) (Vu and Nguyen,
2002). The present study also includes similar cases.
“She [daughter] was sold to get married with an old [Chinese]
man aged like her grandfather for 5,000 yuan (625
US$). She [the trafficker] told my daughter that she gave
me 2,000 yuan but I in fact received less than 500,000
dong (31 US$). She [daughter] has a child with the old
man. Then he got blind and forced her to marry his
younger brother. Then she ran away... See, he gets blind
then transfers his wife to his brother... just to keep their
family line [to have children with the younger brother]
(Mother of a trafficked woman).”