Wost1001Sec2

Globalization of Marraige

The article about the Vietnamese marraige really made me think about my own culture and how similar it is to the Vietnamese one. Many of the Hmong men here in the United States, who are not yet married, want to go back to Thailand and marry Hmong women from there because they think that us Hmong women here are too modern and don't know how to respect our husbands. However, the majority of the time, young beautiful women there only marry men from here in order to come to the United States. I know many older relatives in their forties and fifties who have married teenagers from Thailand and was taken advantage of. Most of the girls come over, use the men's money, get educated, then leave him for another younger man. I know that it's sad, but these men are just setting themselves up most of the time. In addition to that, the girls over here have much more modesty and respect for elders/husbands. I see videos of the women from there and I wonder what is happening to the Hmong culture, but that's another story.

Okay, back to the article again. There was another part that really made me think. Minh's status had increased because he was able to send money home to his family so that they can live a comfortable life, but what they didn't realize is that he is living well below the poverty line here in the United States. The people in Vietnam are living off of the relatives over here and they don't stop to think about how difficult it is to make a living here. My family has relatives still in Thailand and Laos to whom we send money. Becasue of our hard work, they are living much more comfortable lives than we are here. They take advantage of the fact that they can rely on us to send money. They have better homes, better clothing, cell phones, and nice cars to drive while we can hardly make ends meet. Sometimes we get calls from them asking why we don't send them money because they want to buy such and such, that we are greedy and don't care for them, but they don't realize that we don't even have the money to buy ourselves such commodities. It really angers me when I think about it sometimes, but I have to accept the fact that they are family and blood is much thicker than water.