Mail order Brides from Vietnam | 盲盒新娘

上個世紀末，越南及其他東南亞國家的經濟相對落後，囿於出身和環境，許多越南女性嚮往來到東亞，希望通過工作或婚姻改變貧苦的人生。與此同時，東亞嚴重不均衡的男女比例以及男性的婚姻困境是這種跨國的婚姻的土壤。犯罪、欺詐和拐賣人口的非法行為與符合移民條例的正規婚姻仲介都在此環境下風生水起，形成了一種跨國婚姻「產業鏈」。


即使到了法治更為健全今天，非法活動或許不再如彼時猖獗，但我們仍可以在谷歌搜索裏找到「mail order brides from Vietnam」的網站，仍可以瀏覽一張張越南女性的自拍照片來對她們挑挑揀揀，仍可以在「分類檢索」中勾選符合自己口味的女性的外貌特徵。


這樣的婚姻裏，越南女性是一種在國際婚姻市場上流通的「出口貨品」；通過婚姻，連結的是生育，是商業，是市場，而不是文化、愛或親情。對男性來說，他們是救贖內地、港台、韓國單身漢的女神，她們是被筷子不斷翻動的菜品，是貨架上高矮胖瘦的飲料，是遙遠國度裏神秘而或許美好的盲盒。


我們以男性購買並拆封盲盒的行為來還願他們在婚姻仲介挑選越南新娘的過程。與現在所流行的公仔盲盒有所不同的是，男性在挑選盲盒新娘的過程中完全佔據主導地位——這個不行就再換下一個。在遙遠的東亞，被拆開看到的不是完整的女性個體，不是她的個性、尊嚴和對愛的亟待，而是身材、樣貌、婚姻和健康狀況。


對於越南的這些待嫁新娘來說，選擇走上跨國婚姻也好像把自己放進入一個封閉的盒子，退化為一個還未降臨到這個世界的胚胎——婚後的生活對於她們也是一種未知，所有的淚水與快樂，只有打開盒子以後才能了解。


我們不希望以性別研究、人類學或文化研究任何一種學術的視角來看待這件事，也很難把這件事情用父權社會、物化女性此類術語來輕描淡寫地一帶而過。我們希望以此記住我們在觀看越南新娘訪問視頻的時候留下的眼淚，記住她們複雜而動人的生活，記住在同一個婚姻體系下，對婚姻的憧憬與我們完全不同、也永遠無法相同的女性，留白她們無法被概括的、複雜的婚後經歷。


在我們目前生存的世界裏，愛是有疆界的，這個疆界可能是生育，可能是婚姻制度，可能是社會環境，可能是某種思想，但一定不是國籍和邊境。

At the end of the last century, Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries were relatively backward economically, and due to their origins and circumstances, many Vietnamese women aspired to come to East Asia, hoping to change their poor lives through work or marriage. At the same time, the grossly unbalanced gender ratio and the marital difficulties of men in East Asia were the breeding ground for such intercountry marriages. Crime, fraud, and human trafficking, as well as formal marriage brokering in compliance with immigration regulations, flourished in this environment, creating a "chain" of intercountry marriages.

Even today, when the rule of law is more robust, illegal activities may not be as rampant as they once were, but we can still find the website "mail order brides from Vietnam" in Google search, and we can still browse through selfies of Vietnamese women to pick them out, and we can still check the appearance of the women that match our tastes in the "category search".

In such marriages, Vietnamese women are a kind of "export goods" circulating in the international marriage market; through marriage, there is a link between procreation, commerce, and market, rather than culture, love, or affection. For men, they are the goddesses who redeem the bachelors from the Mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea; they are the dishes that are constantly turned by chopsticks, the tall, short and thin drinks on the shelves, the mysterious and perhaps beautiful blind boxes in a distant land.

The act of buying and unpacking a blind box is a reminder of the process of selecting a Vietnamese bride at a marriage agency. Unlike the popular blind boxes of figurines, the men are completely dominant in the process of selecting a blind box bride - if one doesn't work, the next one will. In distant East Asia, what is unpacked is not the complete female individual, not her personality, dignity and desperate need for love, but her body, her looks, her marriage and her health.

For these brides-to-be in Vietnam, choosing to enter into intercountry marriage is like putting themselves into a closed box, degenerating into an embryo that has not yet entered the world - their life after marriage is also an unknown to them, and all the tears and joys can only be understood after opening the box.

We do not want to look at this matter from the academic perspective of gender studies, anthropology or cultural studies, and it is difficult to gloss over this matter with terms like patriarchal society and objectification of women. We hope to remember the tears we shed while watching the video interview with the Vietnamese brides, their complex and moving lives, the women whose vision of marriage is completely different and never the same as ours under the same marital system, and the complexities of their post-marital experiences that cannot be summarized.

In the world we currently live in, love has boundaries. These boundaries may be fertility, the institution of marriage, the social environment, or a certain kind of thinking, but they are not nationality or boundaries.


#藝術
#Art
#越南新娘
#VietnamBride