Taipei - Wang Hsiu-lien, a mainland Chinese woman who married a man from Taiwan and has been living on the island for eight years, hates going to the market to buy vegetables. Some vegetable sellers, knowing she is a mainlander, would ask her: "Do you want to buy dalumei?"
Dalumei means "mainland sister," a pejorative term for mainland brides, but also a nickname for a kind of lettuce.
"They do that on purpose. So I turn around and walk to another vegetable stand," Wang said.
The lettuce, properly called a-cai, began to be called "dalumei" a dozen years ago, when Chinese brides began to arrive in Taiwan. The origin of the term is unknown, but a hint may lie in the fact that a- cai is cheap and nutritious, just as mainland brides are perceived to be inexpensive and hard-working.
Taiwan began to import brides from both mainland China and South- East Asia because some middle-aged or even older local men, mostly farmers and workers, could not find wives in Taiwan.
Dating agencies took these men to China to pair them with young Chinese women who dreamed of better lives in prosperous Taiwan.
This gave rise to exploitation and crime - with some agencies arranging fake marriages to get Chinese women to go to Taiwan, only to exploit them as prostitutes or illegal factory workers.
Many of the mainland brides were disillusioned to arrive in Taiwan to discover that streets were not paved with gold.
"My husband's family members look down on me, neighbours look down on me, everyone looks down on me. I envy the women in my village who went to work in Singapore or Britain. They make more money and send back money to build large houses," Wang said.
According to the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), there are some 170,000 mainland brides in Taiwan, while an unofficial estimate puts the figure at 270,000.
Most of them got married with the help of agencies who arranged for men from Taiwan to go to China for speed-dating.
In Hsiu-lien's hometown in Fujian province, some agencies charge local women 30,000 yuan (4,400 US dollars) to arrange the marriage, while other agencies ask the Taiwan man to pay the mainland bride a dowry of 10,000 yuan.
If both parties like each other, they go to a photographer for a wedding photo and apply for a marriage certificate.
Then the man returns home to apply for an entry permit for his wife, so that she can live in Taiwan.
Landing at Taiwan airports, mainland brides have to attend an interview to prove they are not fake wives. Some mainland wives have wept because the questions were humiliating, press reports said.
Even after receiving a Taiwan ID card, which takes six years, and getting citizenship, mainland brides have difficulty finding work because Taiwan does not recognize China's college degrees or job licences.
In recent years, mainland brides have held several rallies in Taipei to demand the right to live and work in Taiwan.
Their top demands are that the wait for a Taiwan ID card be reduced to four years, as accorded to other foreign spouses, and recognition of mainland college degrees and work licences.
But the MAC, which sets policies toward China, has denied the discrimination allegations.
"When a foreign spouse applies for a Taiwan ID card, the spouse must renounce his or her citizenship, pass the naturalization exam and must stay in Taiwan for a number of days each year while waiting for the ID card. We have no such requirement for mainland spouses," Hu Hsin-ju of the MAC's legal-affairs section told the German Press Agency dpa.
Regarding degrees and licences, Chang Li-ching of the MAC's culture and education section said that the MAC was seeking to amend the law to recognize China's college degrees.
Currently, Taiwan recognizes only China's primary, middle and high school degrees.
"Once China's college degrees are recognized, mainland spouses can take exams to get licences in various fields, the same way Taiwan people do," she said.
Chen Wu of the Taiwan New Inhabitants Association believes that Taiwan people looking down on mainland brides arises from the six- decade divide between China and Taiwan and Taiwan's propaganda that China was poor and backward.
"But I must admit that many mainland brides have not had a good education and cannot even write a proper resume," he said. "I tell them that in order to be respected, they have to raise their own level first."
