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Waiting for the one who has a red thread in his finger, who will chase away my lonely fate.

I deepen the marital-yuan line in my palm and erase the crying mole in my face. Waiting for you ~~~ to take my hand and treasure me.

Red thread (ang sua), Jianghue, 2002412

In Chapter 2 I explain the gendered (global and local) political economy that pushes women into cross-border marriages as well as the demographic factors that drive Taiwanese men to marry foreign women. When examining these structural factors I observe that they cannot fully explain the mate choice regarding ethnicity and origins of both brides and bridegrooms. At that point I develop an assumption that mediators - - the marriage brokers and/or matchmakers -- play an important role in influencing mate choice. In Chapter 3 I argue that one of the reasons that cross-strait marriages are seen as inferior is attributed to the commercialisation of these marriages (maimai hunyin). This chapter looks at the matchmaking practices, mate choices and money transactions of cross-strait marriages in order to investigate the role of brokers/matchmakers in cross-border marriages and by doing so, questions what commercialisation of marriage means and why is it a less sanctioned form of marriage.

Two flows of reasoning are laid out: the first is to examine the similarity and deviation of matchmaking practices and money transactions in cross-border marriages as compared to that of the “normal” marriages among locals in the light of traditional ideals and contemporary practices in Taiwan and China, which I sketch in Chapter 1. The second is to challenge current feminist scholarship, both western and indigenous, the claims of women’s movements and established international conventions on trafficking and trade in women, which set the universal moral standard of modern marriage regimes and have profound impacts on how the commercially arranged marriages are understood. These two reasonings attempt to answer one question: does commercially arranged marriage necessarily make women and brides traded commodities?

I will start by explaining several concepts used by feminist scholars, the women’s movement as well as local terms used by the media reports in Taiwan and China to refer to “mediated” cross-border marriages. I use the term “mediated

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Red thread (ang sua) is a popular Fokkienese song in Jianghue＇s album “Ang Sua＂released in 2002 by Dongneng Record company in Taiwan. Red thread is a metaphor for marital yuan. For discussion of yuan see Chapter 1, 1.4.4.

marriage” to describe a marriage in which the potential brides and bridegrooms are introduced with a prior motivation of marriage. Mediated marriage is a neutral term that acknowledges the mediators, mediation process and prior motivation of marriage without a loaded moral connotation on the economic transactions involved in the process. Then the majority of this chapter will be devoted to describing the practices of intermediation and matchmaking, in which I develop a typology of marriage brokers/matchmakers based on their relationship with the cross-border couples and their families prior and after marriage. In the conclusion I will compare the perspectives of the actors and the meanings they attach to matchmaking practices and economic transactions with the existing concepts and discourses I mention in the beginning of this chapter. By doing so, I will discuss the problematics of the definition of commercially arranged marriage and of the dichotomous distinction between a love marriage and a commercially arranged marriage.

In this chapter I draw on empirical data of cross-border marriages of Taiwanese men and women from both mainland China and Southeast Asia, in view that they share striking similarities in matchmaking patterns as well as that they are both regarded as commercialised forms of marriages, as mentioned in chapter 3.

4.1. Existing concepts associated with commercially arranged marriages

4.1.1

The trafficking in women and girls has been a highlighted agenda item in the United Nations, EU, international organisations (IOM, ILO) and international human rights and women’s movements. According to the “Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the UN Convention against Organised Crime” (2003), human trafficking is defined as “the transport of human beings or human parts, by means of threat or coercion, for the purpose of exploitation”. Three aspects are emphasised in the trafficking discourse: 1) the use of force, including deception and manipulation of consent; 2) its exploitative nature and the vulnerability of its suffering victims, at times described as “slavery”; 3) illegality, especially by organised crime networks. Although not limited to it, the trafficking of women and young girls into prostitution or other forms of sexual exploitation is the most highlighted part of the agenda against trafficking.

The concept of trafficking has been much criticised for its problematic definitions of force and deception and for its ignoring migrants’ power and agency. Central to the feminist debates around the issue of trafficking, sexual slavery and objectification of women’s body arise from long-standing feminist dispute over the meaning of prostitution. The “abolitionist” and the sex workers activists’ positions on

trafficking are part of a larger contention between radical feminists and prostitution rights advocates. Radical feminists regard the selling of the body as the selling of the self. They therefore characterise prostitution as a self-estranging activity that carries grave psychological and physical consequences for women (Barry, 1995). Because prostitution corresponds to the sexual (ab)use of a woman’s body, and sexuality is understood as inherently private/intimate and not separable from the self, a woman’s selling of her sexuality, i.e. the self, to a man is an act of the objectification of her body (Pateman, 1988). The sex worker activists’ position associates prostitutes with other oppressed sexual minorities and emphasises the challenge prostitution represents for normative monogamous heterosexual sexuality (Andrijasevic, 2004:65).

4.1.2 Mail Order Brides (MOB) and commodified marriage (shangpinhua hunyin

商品化婚姻)

MOB is generally defined as a system of introduction provided by commercial institutions for the prime purpose of marriage with a foreign national, or more specifically for the women entering into international marriages by the use of such a system (del Rosario, 1994:2). Three elements are emphasized: 1) profit making; 2) institutional matchmaking operations; 3) cross-border situations. What is not reflected in the definition is that the term “mail-order” carries the connotation of women for sale as commodities as advertised in catalogues. However, it is not clear whether the commercial element involves the actual price of buying the commodity or the fee charged for providing services to meet such women.413 The latter can be so broad as to include a dating service and online love club. Another problem is that it does not point out that MOB often refers to women from economically less developed countries that are to marry men from richer countries. Few people would consider a British woman who is dating a German man via a commercial friendship club a mail order bride.

The term “mail-order bride” is not commonly used in academic scholarship and popular representation. Instead, the term “commodified marriage” (shangpinhua hunyin 商品化婚姻) is used, firstly by Hsia, who is the first Taiwanese scholar to have written about mediated marriage between Taiwanese men and Indonesian women in the mid-1990s (2002). As briefly explained in Chapter 2, Hsia adopts the framework of world system theory and considers mediated marriages, together with capital and labour, a commodity in the capitalist system. She does not clarify what is

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The proposed International Marriage Broker Act in the USA defines it as broadly as “providing dating, matrimonial and social referrals, or matching services between United States citizens or legal permanent residents and non-resident aliens by providing information that would permit individuals to contact each other”.

commodified (women’s body, labour, relationship, sexuality or the marriage itself?) and how it is so. Nevertheless, the term shangpinhua hunyin has found its place at the centre of virtually all of the literature on the subject in Taiwanese scholarship, and as a result, has a profound impact on popular discourse and imagination. The only scholars who care to develop a definition are Wang and Chang, in their study of the marriage brokerage industry in Vietnam, in which they argue that “the process of international marriage is gradually being transformed to enhance profits to various intermediaries, which we call commodification” (2002:95). This definition is not far from the definition of the MOB mentioned above. However, they also acknowledge that not all international marriages are mediated, and definitely not all by institutions. Other scholars argue that cross-border marriages are increasingly mediated by social networks rather than by institutional marriage brokers (e.g. Tseng, forthcoming). Wang himself does not attach a negative label on “commodification” and is not in favour of a prohibition of marriage brokering.

4.1.3 Trade marriages (maimai hunyina 買賣婚姻)

Commonly used by the Taiwanese and Chinese, the term maimai hunyin has negative connotations of buying and/or selling wives. It is not necessarily used in a cross- border context, but the current phenomenon of cross-border marriage in Taiwan is predominantly considered as a trade marriage. The Marriage Law in the PRC (1950) defined maimai hunyin as a feudal practice and clearly outlawed any economic transaction, i.e. brideprice and dowry. The ban on marriage transactions was later lifted in the 1980’s revised draft, and but gives no clear definition of maimai hunyin. In Taiwan the term has never entered any legal documents and stays in the popular discourse without clear definition.

When I investigated people’s perceptions of this term I came across several diverse yet confusing meanings. No one seems to be able to give a clear definition of maimai hunyin, but it is clear what is “not” maimai hunyin. Below I will discuss briefly the terms used to compare or contrast to maimai hunyin.

Blind marriage and arranged marriage: Both terms refer to marriage decisions and mate choices made by parents without consulting the potential couples, especially the brides. In the PRC it is called baoban hunyin (包辦婚姻). While blind marriage is considered a feudal, out-dated practice and outlawed in the PRC, “arranged marriage” is a more neutral term that in modern times refers to parental choice with the consent of the couple. Arranged marriages require matchmakers, whose role has been described earlier in Chapter 1. Arranged marriage is considered “traditional”, neither