Hu, a resident of a remote village in Central China’s Hunan Province, bought his bride in 2008, who was kidnapped by human traffickers at the border between China and Vietnam. His worries began after hearing that several of his fellow villagers’ wives, also bought from Vietnam years ago, had recently disappeared.
The villagers suspect that these women have been abducted and resold by human traffickers, Southern Metropolis Daily reported.
Hu Xinfa’s wife is still with him, but Hu Jiahe from Shuizhou village is long gone. His wife has been missing for three months, leaving behind a 2-year-old daughter and unanswered questions for Hu’s family.
Hu Jiahe’s father spent 36,388 yuan ($5,633) on a bride for his son in 2008, after being introduced by Feng Zhicheng, a middleman at a matchmaking business in Shuangfeng county, Hunan Province.
“My son couldn’t go to other cities to work as he injured his feet working on a construction site years ago… and our place is far from the city, so I had to buy a wife for my son,” said Jiahe’s father.
After visiting some nearby villages and townships to gather information about his missing wife, Hu’s family found that dozens of local residents’ wives had also left home in recent days. One of them was his neighbor, whose wife had said she was going shopping on the morning she disappeared – the same excuse that Hu’s wife used – but never came back.
Lost wife resold?
In July, Hu Jiahe received a phone call from his wife, who begged him to send 20,000 yuan (US$3,131) to free her from human traffickers. She said she had been kidnapped and resold to a remote village in Southwest China’s Yunnan Province, but refused to reveal her specific whereabouts.
The same thing happened to a few other fellow villagers.
A large number of Vietnamese brides have been sold in the hinterlands of Hunan since 2008, according to Hu.
Police in Shuangfeng County, which has jurisdiction over Hu’s village, announced they would launch an investigation into the missing Vietnamese women Saturday.
The police department has begun its probe into trafficked women and fraudulent marriages in 16 townships and villages in the county.
The public security department in Shuangfeng confirmed to the Global Times that many villagers were involved in fake marriages with women trafficked to the region.
The bureau is seeking to identify the exact number of missing wives, as very few villagers reported them to police for fear their actions would be exposed.
“We have received two reports since September last year, in which four wives were found to be victims of trafficking,” a local policeman said, who refused to be named.
Hu Xinfa says he is lucky, since his wife has decided to stay with him in China.
“My wife was also trafficked from Vietnam, but we hope to maintain our marriage even though it’s illegal now,” he told the Global Times on Sunday.
Hu’s wife once received a call from an unknown person who spoke the same language as her, telling her if she wanted to go home, he could help her.
“I hesitated, but when I saw my 1-year-old daughter and my husband, I didn’t want them to bear the sorrow,” said Yang Jinmei, Hu’s wife.
When she was sold in Shuangfeng county together with another woman three years ago, she was only 15 years old.
Turning a blind eye
The local government turned a blind eye to the practice of purchasing brides since it was common for locals to do so, Hu Chunmei, former Party secretary of the village, told the Southern Metropolis Daily.
Hu Chunmei was actually the witness of several marriages involving Vietnamese brides.
The price for a bride ranges from 30,000 yuan to 40,000 yuan plus another 2,000-yuan “introduction fee” paid to the middlemen, who were also human traffickers.
These marriages were not protected by law, as they did not come with marriage certificates or residence permits. Their records did not exist in the police system, making them untraceable by local authorities.
“Some Vietnamese women were willing to marry Chinese husbands, but others, like me, were abducted or coaxed into it,” Yang told the newspaper.
Lu Jiehua, a sociology professor at Peking University, explained that economic factors were the main causes behind the trend of bride trafficking.
“Many young women from poor families in Vietnam are willing to marry Chinese men so as to lead a better life. At least that way they don’t need to struggle along on the verge of starvation,” he told the Global Times.
On the other hand, there are more males than females in Chinese rural areas, due to the general preference for boys. Some men in poor regions resort to buying wives since they cannot find women to marry them.
“Many women from rural areas hope to marry men in cities, which also leads to the result that men in villages have to buy women from other poor counties,” he added.
