Life and Leisure

Marriage has no borders

By Guo Shuhan (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-11-25 08:01

Like many other women who have followed the same wedding path to China, A Rui is shy in front of strangers.

She is reluctant to talk about her family in Vietnam and her present life in Beijing.

She prefers sitting quietly behind her husband when the family has guests and watch TV dramas, though she doesn't understand them either.

Vietnamese bride A Xiang is also unwilling to meet friends of her husband Du Jianming's, since arriving in Beijing, in September.

"She was even cold to my sister and relatives at first," says Du, who works for an electronic component trading company. "It's quite embarrassing and some of them thought she was impolite."

A Xiang was so depressed when traveling to Beijing that she ate just half a bowl of rice a day. She called home five times over the first two days and wept because she felt so homesick.

Since her Vietnamese family has no Internet access they have to go to an Internet caf and have only managed one webcam call.

Du has installed Vietnamese language tools onto his computer to assist his wife, so she can go online and chat to her friends.

"I cannot communicate clearly my feelings to my husband and his mother," A Xiang says, struggling to express herself in Chinese. "But I accept the situation."

A period of adjustment is quite normal, says Dai Wensheng, who has been organizing monthly marriage tours to Vietnam for Chinese men since last September and has been a matchmaker for nearly 100 couples.

"A one-to-three-month transitional period is normal for each bride," Dai says. "They face homesickness and the language barrier creates misunderstandings. But the adjustment period and difficulty varies from person to person."

In order to help the Vietnamese brides bridge the language barrier, Dai and "adopted mother" A Zhen have set up a free one-month-long Chinese training class, in Vietnam.

Each class has some 20 Vietnamese women who are willing to settle in China.

In October, Dai made a visit to Beijing. He invited A Zhen to accompany him and witness the living conditions of the prospective brides.

The matchmakers were treated as distinguished guests by the couples that they had helped, who treated them to dinners and tours.

Accommodation expenses were paid for by one of the couples, as a token of appreciation.

"There are just two couples out of 30 whose quarreling has been bad," Dai says. "But you know, even couples with the same cultural background don't always agree."

All the problems will disappear gradually, Dai says, confidently.

He cites the case of Huang Gen Ven. She was introduced to Li Jialei three years ago and they live in Dongxing city, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

In the beginning, they depended on drawing and translation websites to communicate.

Li bought kindergarten textbooks and asked primary school pupils to help his wife learn Chinese.

"The dictionary is a big help," Huang says in fluent Mandarin with a Guangxi accent, during a telephone interview. "But for me, the most efficient way is to watch TV news and dramas and learn from subtitles."

She had little problem communicating one-and-a-half years after marrying and helped out in Li's cake shop, dealing with Vietnamese clients.

Though Huang is still not accustomed to what she calls the greasy food and Li cannot understand why his 15-month-old twin daughters are regarded as the younger sisters of Huang's elder brother's newborn girl, according to Vietnamese convention, the couple feel blessed.

"The first step is always the most troublesome," Huang says. "But I never lost confidence that things would improve."

Li Tianmao with Guangxi TV Station contributed to the story.