On Christmas Day just a week ago a FB post sparked some controversy. 17-year-old Miss Miss Nguyen is looking for a Singapore man no older than 35 years old and with a minimum monthly income of $4,800. Miss Nguyen is represented by B & G Vietnamese Bride Marriage Agency established by Mr Eric Koh in 2018 aiming to “help local men find Vietnamese ladies to become their partners for life”. The post raised some eyebrows. Anyone not meeting these basic requirements will not even get to interact with Miss Nguyen, who will be open to marriage after she turns 18.
Tongues are wagging in online forums, with the woke netizens labelling Miss Nguyen as a gold digger. That really puzzled me. Singapore’s median monthly salary in 2022 was $5,070. Asking for $4,800 in 2023 is a gold digger? Ironically, I just made a video on a self-confessed Singaporean gold digger not too long ago. Go check it out.
Fortunately, there are those who don’t give a hoot to wokeness and pointed out that the demands were realistic as “there is inflation everywhere”.
Mr Koh said “My intention is to help Vietnamese ladies find good husbands. There are too many of them who married Singaporeans but ended up being divorced. I want to nip this issue in the bud.”
And I agree with Mr Koh who should know the main underlying reason for the failure of these marriages better than anyone else. However, it’s not surprising that these agencies have been getting a lot of bad rap from idealists. But before we slap the label of gold digger on women who set certain criteria for a marriage partner, let’s be clear that this is a marriage agency. Love is unconditional but marriage must be grounded in reality. If you can’t even support yourself, by all means love all you want but don’t get married. If a Singaporean woman like Ms Gold Digger on the YouTube channel were to put herself up for matchmaking, she would definitely set some “respectable” criteria. For example? Automatically reject those below a certain height, automatically reject those below a certain educational level and automatically reject those below a certain income. Maybe even automatically reject those above a certain weight. What’s wrong with that? You are paying for a service that helps you narrow down your choices. Would you call these women gold diggers? Why is it that only local women can set their criteria while foreign women can’t? Because Singaporean guys who CMI can’t catch up?
Ideally, everyone wants to meet the man/woman of his/her dreams by chance on a sunny day at the beach, park, or library – just like in the movies. Few people in this busy new age can be as lucky as Qiong Yao’s characters. Yet people who seek help to find a life partner still get mocked, especially those who seek foreign brides. These guys are often stereotyped as losers, guys who CMI. While this may not be the case within my social circle, there are certainly guys who CMI but still want to get married, hoping that despite being CMI, they could be accepted elsewhere. These 牛粪 think that the 鲜花 from some poorer country would want them. I remember watching one Chinese documentary on mail order brides in Vietnam. I was shocked that the awful, goofy, inarticulate men agreed to speak in front of the camera. I really pitied the Vietnamese women. Did they know what they were getting themselves into? In their shoes, my family would need to be starving for me to consider marrying one of these men. Over the years, the once desperate 鲜花 have gotten smarter and harder to get. Income is not everything, but setting the bar a little higher should help to improve the chances of successful marriages.
I see the benefit as two-fold. Apart from increasing success rate of these cross-cultural marriages, the stigma of marrying foreign brides can also be busted. Guys who married foreign brides may no longer be seen as losers. YouTuber Miss Gold Digger can no longer claim that men who married foreigners are losers with poor education and low income. Those who CMI will no longer be able to kio from some poorer country. They’ll just have to buck up.
Then, there is this view that importing foreign brides is like importing more foreigners. We’ve got to distinguish between foreigners who are genuinely settling down and becoming part of a Singaporean family with those who are coming as a foreign family because they have been offered a job. I welcome the former because even if we can’t integrate these women, we can certainly integrate their children. Many of our Chinese-looking, Singlish-speaking school children and army boys have Vietnamese mothers. It’s also a myth that they don’t contribute to our economy. Many former mail order brides from Vietnam run food stalls in our coffeeshops and hawker centres. Some earn more than their husbands oe ex-husbands.
The thing is, times have changed and standards are different now. Like it or not, this modern twist to traditional matchmaking will get more and more exclusive as foreign women are empowered to set their own criteria. A bit tough for the guys who are left behind, but you just can’t buck the trend. Anyway, it has been proven that “scientifically” matchmade couples have a significantly higher success rate than those who randomly fell in love following the Qiong Yao narrative.