Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men by Mara Hvistendahl

Author:Mara Hvistendahl [Hvistendahl, Mara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, History, Science, politics, Sociology, Psychology, Feminism
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2011-06-07T00:00:00+00:00

They wedded in Nguyen’s village, and Cheng brought Nguyen back to his farm near Taiwan’s western coast, in the rolling hills outside Taichung. When they reached his driveway, she looked out the car window to see persimmon trees marching up the hills in orderly rows, their trunks held rigid by metal bars. Her parents, like Cheng, farmed fruit, and at first there was that to latch onto: in some ways, raising persimmons in Taiwan was not so different from growing longans in Vietnam. But in Taiwan a farm was a lonely place—mechanized, organized, and mostly devoid of people—and Nguyen struggled until she got word that a Vietnamese wife who had arrived before her had set up a small café in the area. With time more local men bought the brides who had eluded them, the houses surrounding Cheng’s farm filled with Vietnamese women, and life got better for Nguyen. She had two children, a girl and a boy. She learned to make chicken in the Taiwanese style, to flavor noodles to Cheng’s liking, and finally to speak Mandarin. In this way the years passed.

Eleven years after they married, I find the couple sitting on overturned buckets in their storehouse, boxing persimmons. Nguyen has full lips and small wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. She is wearing a coral mock turtleneck and dangly silver earrings, and next to Cheng, who is clad in a black and red leather bomber jacket that accentuates his stocky figure, she looks slight. Her personality is also smaller, and at first only Cheng talks, reflecting on their marriage as he slips the fiery orange fruits into protective Styrofoam sheaths. “We fell in love after we got married,” Cheng declares happily, chuckling. “And we’re still falling in love.” Nguyen says nothing. A few minutes later, as if in silent reply, she raises herself from the bucket, strolls over to her husband, and carefully removes a fleck of Styrofoam from his right eyebrow.

I spend the day with them, and by the time I leave it is clear to me that the marriage has improved Cheng’s life. Relatives say he was always funloving and personable, but it is easy to believe that his outgoing personality blossomed after finding a wife, with the benefits that brought: two sweet children, a companion on the farm, a kitchen fragrant with rich broths and spices. The marriage also expanded Cheng’s horizons. He has returned to Vietnam a few times with his wife to visit Nguyen’s family, and he enjoys drinking rice wine with her father and uncles. He speaks only a few words of Vietnamese, but he finds his inability to communicate oddly freeing. “In Vietnam I can give my brain a rest,” he says. After lunch he shows me to his family’s den, where he puts on a home movie he filmed on a recent visit. The television fills with garishly colored houses, men on Honda Dream motorcycles, and children running alongside muddy, swollen rivers. Over the top of these images comes Cheng’s voice, narrating in enthusiastic Mandarin.

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