Backstory: A town of foreign marriages

From the busy street outside, Tsai Huang-jin's one-room noodle shop looks like any other no-nonsense eatery in this tiny village. It has metal tables, grimy condiment jars, and rotating fans that cut through the air that smells of chicken stock and diesel emissions from passing trucks.

But to the Vietnamese wives in this mountain town, it offers a taste of home: dark-roasted iced coffee blended with sweetened milk, chased by a steaming bowl of "pho," or Vietnamese soup. It's where they go to relax and share stories of married life in Taiwan, their new home, before going back to their daily routines of cooking, cleaning, and caring.

Over the past decade, 187 sons of Shihding (population: 7,800) have brought home a foreign bride, part of a wave of marriages that is reshaping Taiwan's demographics and sending ripples through a monocultural nation more accustomed to outbound than inbound migration. For the wives, who are expected to bear the children that this prosperous society increasingly lacks, it's a path out of poverty that is strewn with hazards, from isolation to subjugation.

Last year, 1 in 5 marriages in Taiwan were to a foreigner. Most were to women from China, Vietnam, and other Southeast Asian countries who met their husbands through marriage brokers. Dozens of agencies in Taiwan offer foreign tours for men to pick a bride; marriages can be arranged on the spot. Since 1987, Taiwan has registered more than 370,000 marriages to foreigners, and their share of national births has doubled in the last five years.

"In a traditional Taiwanese family, the men have the responsibility to carry on the family line," says Ke Yu-ling, executive director of the Pearl S. Buck Foundation, a nonprofit that helps foreign brides and their children. "They definitely need to have children, so when they reach 30 [or] 40, they're under a lot of pressure and might look for a foreign wife."

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Set amid undulating mountains a half hour south of Taipei, Shihding is a town of squat concrete houses. Once a coal-mining town, it is mostly agricultural today, with fields of green tea climbing steep hillsides. Life is languid here. Traditions run deep. Inside his noodle shop, Mr. Tsai explains how he met his wife, Tran Kieu Thanh Thuy, on an arranged trip to Vietnam. Seven years on, they have three children who live with them and Tsai's extended family, across the street from their restaurant. He says that he went to Vietnam after failing to find a mate locally.

"Taiwanese women are too difficult," he says. "They won't take care of my parents when they get old. In Vietnam, it's more like Taiwan was in the 1960s – the traditions are still strong."

In recent decades, Taiwan's expanding economy has absorbed a female workforce that is increasingly educated and assertive, particularly when it comes to relationships. Women are delaying getting married – the average bride is 29 – and having fewer children. Taiwan's birthrate is among the world's lowest: 1.2 births per woman.

As a result, fewer women want to marry into traditional families in rural towns like Shihding. Childless men are instead traveling overseas to find a bride who will keep house and bear children without complaint. "Taiwanese women are well educated and have good jobs," says Tsai Chao-lan, a marriage broker in Taipei. "They have high demands and criteria for husbands, and I think it's difficult for men to keep up."

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