VietNamNet Bridge - Not only are Vietnamese woman victims of broken marriages to foreigners,there are many foreign men (especially Chinese) who pay a lot of money to marriage brokers to marry Vietnamese women, only to see their wives flee.

Ly Trang (left) seeks help from a law office in HCMC.

Ly Trang, 47, a mechanic from Hubei, China went to Vietnam to find his Vietnamese wife, who confessed to “purchasing” her for 6,000 yuan ($10,000).

Ly Trang said he travelled to Vietnam in early May to find his wife, Mrs. Nguyen Thi Thuy Hong, a former resident of Thanh Tho 3 village, Phu Lam commune in Tan Phu district, Dong Nai province, but could not find her. He said his wife is over 30 years old and he is her second husband.

Ly Trang said he did not know anything about his wife before marriage. Nearly two years ago, through a broker in Hunan, he travelled to Vietnam to get married to her.

His marriage with the Vietnamese wife was good the first year, when Hong was not fluent in Mandarin. When she began to know everything about her husband’s hometown and better at the Chinese language, the woman insisted on returning to Vietnam. Ly Trang did not agree, so Hong wanted to divorce and left in early 2014.

Again, Ly Trang went to Vietnam to find his wife. "At first I wanted to take my wife home because after two years of marriage we have not had any children. I’m now in debt because I had to pay a lot of money for the marriage, but now I'm discouraged," the Chinese man said.

He said he visited his wife’s home but he did not see her there. A Vietnamese woman in his wife’s village, who also got married to a Chinese man, took Ly Trang to see the local government but the authorities could not help him because he and his wife did not fulfil marriage registration in Vietnam, and did not send their note of marriage from China to Vietnam.

Ly Trang, who was tired after a long time wandering in Vietnam to search for his wife, asked for consultancy service at a law firm in HCM City.

He said that he was not eager to take his wife back China, and did not regret spending the money. He just wanted to find her to complete the divorce procedures at a court in Hubei.

If he cannot find the woman, he will lose 6,000 yuan and will have to wait for a long time to marry another woman.

The woman who married Chinese men twice

Mrs. Be Em, 35, has returned home to the town of Co Do, Co Do district, Can Tho city, from Fujian, China, after two marriages with Chinese men.

She said after divorcing her Vietnamese husband, she got married to a man in Fujian through the matchmaking service. After six months, when she learnt a little Mandarin, Be Em fled to Vietnam. Three months later she married another Chinese man, also in Fujian.

And after less than one year, Be Em once again returned home.

"This time I asked for a divorce, but he did not agree so I left him immediately. If he wants to divorce, now he has to come here to beg me," she said calmly.

According to a judicial official in Co Do District, there are three other women who got married to Chinese men and then returned home to marry another Chinese man. They intentionally did not fulfil marriage procedures to get married twice.

In Xuan Thang commune of Thoi Lai District, Can Tho City, Mr. Le Hoang Sang – the commune chair – said last year no woman registered to marry a Chinese man, but several weddings with Chinese grooms were held.

Taiwanese man kneels down to claim his son

Many people in O Mon District of Can Tho Province feel pity for Cheng Yin Chun, 26, a man from the city of Keelung (Taiwan), who travelled to Vietnam to beg his wife to give their son to him.

His wife is Mrs. Tran Hoai Hoa. They got married four years ago and have a son more than three years old. One day Hoa took her son to Vietnam and gave him to her parents, and then returned to Taiwan to live alone.

Cheng Yin Chun said his wife was granted a Taiwanese passport and had a stable job so she did not want to continue the marriage.

Missing his son, Cheng Yin Chun and his parents went to Vietnam to beg his parents-in-law to see his son and to take him back to Taiwan, but he failed.

Hoa’s neighbor said they saw the Taiwanese man kneeling in front of the house of his parents-in-law to beg to reclaim his son.

Seeing Cheng when his visa deadline was running out, he said he had asked for lawyers’ assistance but they could not help because of the difference between the laws of Vietnam and Taiwan.

Specifically, the law of Vietnam does not consider a mother who separates her child from the father and takes the child to her parents’ home as an act of "child abduction", so the court cannot intervene. If the couple divorces, the child is young enough that the mother has the right to take care of the baby.

Recently in Vinh Thanh district, Can Tho city, a Taiwanese man stood crying on the road for several days to claim back his child from his Vietnamese wife’s family. The local authorities had to organize a meeting to resolve the case.

"It was also to encourage Taiwanese husbands. To claim back their children, they have only one way of bringing the case to court," said Ms. Nguyen Thi Phuong Thu, from the Can Tho City Department of Justice.

VNN/Tuoi Tre

Translated by My Lan