Editor’s note: This article, translated from qq.com, reports on the story of a group of young men in a rural village who were simultaneously abandoned by their Vietnamese wives. Arranged marriages with Vietnamese women are an increasingly common phenomenon in rural China where the gender imbalance is felt more acutely than in the cities. This has led to a whole host of related issues, including an increase in human trafficking as well as marriage scams such as this one.

On December 11, in Ximaliangu, a small village in Hebei, Yuan Yingban sat on his marriage bed in a daze. His new Vietnamese wife had recently abandoned him. Another villager, Yuan Xinqiang, still has the last text that his Vietnamese bride sent him the day before she left him, saved in his cell phone. 

Photo: xinhua.net

This past November, many villagers from Quzhou county Hebei, reported that they had paid a matchmaker a high fee to be set up with a Vietnamese bride. However, soon after their marriages took place, half of the Vietnamese women who were brought in in the same group disappeared on the same day. The Vietnamese matchmaker who had received the money from the villagers, Wu Meiyu, disappeared along with the brides.

Statistics from the local police showed that more than 20 villages paid Wu Meiyu several thousand Yuan in order to be set up with Vietnamese brides. A group of brides soon disappeared in the case of alleged marriage fraud. Currently, the police have three key members of the operation in custody. One of the members is one of Wu Meiyu’s contacts in Guangxi. Wu Meiyu is now listed online as a wanted suspect.

Reporters found that in rural Hebei there are many more men than women and many men must pay to find a wife. Men frequently pay more than 200,000 Yuan for a wife, with prices rising every year. The idea of spending 10,000 to 100,000 Yuan for a Vietnamese wife has become a popular choice for many young men.

Wu Meiyu, a Vietnamese woman, had been able to bring in a high income as a matchmaker for rural young men and Vietnamese wives.

Local villager Yuan Xinqiang spent 100,000 Yuan to be matched up with a Vietnamese wife. On the afternoon of November 21, the day that the group of brides disappeared, hundreds of people flocked to the barbershop where Wu Meiyu ran her business. However, the Vietnamese matchmaker had already disappeared back to Vietnam.

Vietnamese brides leave together on the same day

Yuan Xinqiang said that on that morning, he had left to visit his sister’s house and his wife had gone out to have fun. She never returned home and seemed to have disappeared. Yuan Xinqiang’s neighbour Yuan Yingbin’s wife Yun Jiang also left that day. Villager Qian Longfei’s Vietnamese wife Xiao Hong left as well. She had told her husband that she was going to the birthday party of a fellow villager’s child.

In the afternoon, multiple witnesses saw Vietnamese wives abandoning their electric scooters and climbing onto three or four minibuses lined up on the street. The buses then headed to Anzhou, a larger town in Quzhou, Handan.

Local taxi driver Zhao Ziyang said that he had collected a “big living” that day. Two women had stopped his car and had wanted to go all the way to Zhengzhou. “The two women mumbled a bit and I had a hard time understanding them.” When they arrived in Zhengzhou they paid him a generous sum of 1,000 Yuan in cash.

Matchmaker Wu Meiyu lived in the village for 25 years

49 year old matchmaker Wu Meiyu had lived in the rural area for 25 years. When she first arrived she couldn’t speak a word of Chinese. At home in Vietnam, she had never done farm work but had loved to cook rice dishes. After she had mastered Chinese, she told Zhao Guosheng that she had been tricked into coming to Handan after being sold in Guangxi.

Wu Meiyu returned to Vietnam for a few months after giving birth to her first daughter. One day, her family in China received a phone call that she had once again been sold to Guangxi. Her grandfather borrowed money to take the long train ride to Guangxi to bring her back.

In Zhaozhuang, when older villagers talk about Wu Meiyu they often mention her intelligence and how she settled into Zhaozhuang with ease as a foreign woman. A few years ago, Wu Meiyu began her matchmaking business and originally charged a small referral fee for introductions. The women that she introduced men to all disappeared; however the fees that she had charged had been nominal. Wu Meiyu never settled the issue with the men. The more recent “blind date” campaign had included a larger number of villagers. 

Many of the villagers involved in Wu Meiyu’s match-ups had been set up with a Vietnamese wife who had no documentation. In other cases, Wu Meiyu had taken the Vietnamese women’s documentation and papers.

When villagers raised doubts about the Vietnamese women, Wu Meiyu said, “I’m here and have lived here for many years. I gave birth to two daughters. Have I run away?” Wu Meiyu presented herself as an example of a Vietnamese woman who had adapted well to rural life.

Local police reports filed on December 12 state that Wu Meiyu and five others collected thousands of Yuan for setting up 28 villagers with Vietnamese wives.

Local males outnumber females, men desperate for brides

Villager Qian Longfei’s Vietnamese bride was one of the women who fled on the morning of November 22. Qian Longfei received a phone call from his wife saying that she was in Handan. Finally, a family member called him and said that they saw his frail wife, Wu Xiaohong, at the bus stop in Handan.

Wu Xiaohong had been invited to a villager’s son’s birthday party. While at the party, she had seemed confused and distraught by all of the people and commotion. Qian Longfei said that because of the language barrier, he did not know why his wife had run away.

When his wife left, Qian Longfei said quietly, “I feel like marrying a Vietnamese woman was too impulsive. I still have a lot of lingering fears. If she ran away again, what could I do?”

Qian Longfei and other villagers had a variety of reasons for choosing to marry Vietnamese women. After the group of Vietnamese brides went missing, the parents of the young men who had married them were interviewed as well. It was determined that Wu Meiyu had probably seen the struggles of the young village men unable to find wives and decided to take advantage of the situation.

Source: news.qq.com

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Keywords: run away Vietnamese brides Vietnamese brides