Page 30 - Community Living Magazine 36-1

history
Securing marriage with a free wife

Marriage was vital in Taiwan but immigrant ex-soldiers could Another described being tricked after
only afford to marry women with no bride price, such as those he was introduced to a woman then
married to her younger sister who had
with disabilities. This had lasting effects, says Susanna Shapland learning disabilities. Although he was
angry, he conceded that he was at least
married and this was “good enough”.
n Taiwan, parents of children with Families were happy to see their
learning disabilities were so keen for learning-disabled members married off
Itheir offspring to be married that they due in part to a desire for grandchildren
looked overseas for “foreign brides” for but also because care for relatives was a
their sons or tried to marry their family responsibility under the Civil Code.
daughters to “elderly veterans”, according Even today, an estimated 90% of the
to a Taipei Times report in 2000. 100,000 people with learning disabilities in
Primary motivating factors were Taiwan still live with their original families.
to secure care for their child and to The Disability Act of 1980 provided
continue the family line, said the services and financial support to Taiwanese
article, headed “Marriage among the people with learning disabilities but,
mentally disabled”. before that, there was no support. With
The context to the news report is what marriage, caring responsibilities passed
happened after Japan’s defeat at the end from the family to the husband.
of the Second World War. In 1945, the
victorious allied forces (Great Britain, the From marriage to institution
United States and the Soviet Union) This was the case with Jenny, now in her
entrusted the island of Taiwan to the A family shopping in Taihoku in the 1940s: identity 60s, whose story is told by Yueh-Ching
Republic of China, led by Chiang Kai-Shek. and livelihoods depended on kinship networks Chou (2020); only her first name is given.
The subsequent resumption of the Her grandmother had married her to an
Chinese Civil War between nationalist and In an effort to put down roots and start old taro in the hope they would start a
communist forces on mainland China and families, many old taro looked to marry. family and he could become Jenny’s carer.
the ascendancy of the fortunes of Mao This was not easy, as their influx had However, the marriage was a case of “old
Zedong’s Chinese Communist Party, skewed the ratio of men to women to husband, young wife”, fairly typical for this
forced Generalissimo Chiang to evacuate possibly as much as 3:1. type of arrangement, and Jenny’s husband
his government to Taiwan in 1949. This Moreover, many were impoverished died when she was around 30 years old.
made Taipei the Republic of China’s – and alienated from mainstream society, She was then sent to an institution.
supposedly temporary – capital. and regarded as second-class citizens. Until 2000, institutions requested that
Chinese marriage customs demanded a residents were sterilised, but decisions to
Displaced soldiers arrive pin jin (bride price) be paid to the bride’s sterilise were typically made by relatives.
Chiang brought with him around one parents, typically in a range of 8,000-30,000 Jenny’s grandmother decided to sterilise
million displaced persons, an estimated New Taiwan dollars. To raise such a sum on her after she had borne two children,
600,000 of whom were soldiers. These their paltry pay (around a couple of both of whom were sent for adoption.
people and their descendants were hundred New Taiwan dollars a month), Institutionalisation is on the increase in
known as mainlanders (waishengren) as soldiers needed to save or borrow from Taiwan. However, after successful
their ancestral home was not Taiwan. their equally cash-strapped comrades. community living reform and social
Although many waishengren were change over the past four decades, there
perceived as privileged by the local Unmarriageable daughters, cheap wives are examples of people living
population as they were part of the ruling Another option was to find cheaper wives. independently, earning enough money to
power structure in Taiwan, in reality many Some soldiers found such women among pay their rent and being educated about
were hugely disadvantaged. the impoverished aboriginal rural their rights under the UN Convention on
Many Republic of China army veterans communities. For others, there were the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
(known as “old taro”) were discharged families who considered their daughters But older people such as Jenny, her life
without pensions or any provision in a simply unmarriageable, so potential restricted and regimented, her movements
country where they were perceived as husbands would not have to pay a bride largely dictated by institution staff who
outsiders. This was at a time when price at all. These women were widows, residents are encouraged to call “teachers”,
identities and livelihoods were based divorcees, prostitutes and also those with remain untouched by such changes. n
primarily on family and kinship networks. physical and learning disabilities.
Historian Joshua Fan, assistant professor One veteran brutally described Chou YC. “My life in the institution” and “my
at the University of Texas, calls them the “compromise marriages”, such as his own, life in the community”: policies and practices Li Huozeng/Wikimedia Commons
in Taiwan. In: Jarrett S, Walmsley, J, eds.
“homeless generation” and highlights that using the dehumanising metaphor of Intellectual Disability in the Twentieth Century:
they were not only ethnic but also “picking up rotten oranges from the bottom Transnational Perspectives on People, Policy
economic outcasts. of the barrel that no one else wants”. and Practice. Policy Press; 2021

30 Vol 36 No 1 | Autumn 2022 Community Living www.cl-initiatives.co.uk