Post: #1

Mail-order brides are not just for Western men anymore. The lonely men in Asia with some means are importing their women from the poorer South East Asian countries, just like their incel counterparts in the West.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/26/deco...a-vietnam/

Quote:On its website, J&N Viet-Bride Match-making Agencies promises “single, divorced or widow[ed]” men that it will help them “find their right/suitable lifetime wife” with “the shortest time & hassle.” Alongside pictures of smiling couples, the Singapore-based business pitches itself as a one-stop shop for prospective grooms looking for love outside the small island nation—specifically, a few hundred miles away in Vietnam.

J&N, which, among other services, arranges travel itineraries, first dates, and language classes so that new couples can communicate, is part of a growing trend: Across East Asia, a booming demand for brides is pushing (and sometimes forcing) women from poor countries—many of them in Southeast Asia—to wealthier ones. Altogether, more than half a million women have migrated to East Asia to wed since the early 2000s. In South Korea, as just one example, the percentage of men marrying noncitizens jumped from 1.6 percent in 1993 to 8 percent in 2013.

While international marriages have become a thriving industry in Asia, a dark underbelly also exists: Human trafficking plays a role in this migration, which has led some countries to enact restrictions on marriage brokering. Yet some women travel on their own terms, choosing to wed across borders for a more stable life, for long-term citizenship, or, yes, for love.
* * *

All the Single Ladies

The demand for foreign brides is particularly prevalent across affluent parts of East Asia: South Korea, Singapore, Japan, and Taiwan, for instance. As economists Daiji Kawaguchi and Soohyung Lee outlined in their 2012 paper, “Brides for Sale: Cross-Border Marriages and Female Immigration,” men look abroad because a growing number of women in their home countries are delaying marriage or even opting out altogether. As women become more educated and financially independent, many are electing to forgo what remain highly patriarchal partnerships. According to Kawaguchi and Lee, a college-educated woman in developed East Asia is 50 to 200 percent more likely to remain single than a less-educated counterpart.

No Country for 
Eligible Men

China is one of the nerve centers of the foreign-bride market because of its distended gender gap. The country reported that 116 boys were born for every 100 girls in 2014. This disparity is largely a consequence of a decades-old fertility policy: Most Chinese families are restricted to having only one child, and in a culture where men are prized, the availability of sex-selecting technologies—namely abortion—has fueled one of the world’s most unbalanced birth ratios. In 2020, there will be an estimated 30 million more Chinese men of marrying age than women in the same group.

Matchmaker, Matchmaker

A network of professional marriage brokers keeps the bride market buzzing. In some cases, these intermediaries organize male and female recruits—often attracted through “mail-order” websites—to meet collectively in prospective brides’ home countries. The young singles go on a series of group dates, eventually pair off, and, within a few days, apply for marriage licenses. In other cases, the process is less structured, with family, friends, or informal matchmakers coordinating connections abroad.

Love Does Cost a Thing

The costs of a foreign match, which can include broker payments, a dowry, and legal fees, typically run in the tens of thousands of dollars. J&N’s cheapest package, for example, runs a prospective groom around $4,500.

Bought and Sold

The marriage trade isn’t always transparent. Some women are entrapped under false pretenses, coerced, or even sold into marriage against their will by family members, according to human rights groups. In January, Cambodian authorities arrested three suspects for allegedly trafficking women into China to wed. The arrests came months after the two countries announced plans to draft a memorandum of understanding to curb the cross-border trafficking of brides.

Gray Areas

Often the circumstances of foreign brides don’t fit neatly into either legitimate matchmaking or forced marriage. For example, many women agree to marry voluntarily in the hopes of achieving upward socioeconomic mobility, but they may be given false information about the locations or incomes of their future spouses. Concerned about these more implicit forms of exploitation, a number of countries have tried to regulate bride migration. In South Korea, international-marriage brokers must register with the state; in Vietnam, commercial marriage agencies are outlawed altogether. (Weak rule of law, however, has allowed the practice to continue, and businesses like J&N regularly seek Vietnamese brides.)

Marriage Is Hard Work

The divorce rate among couples that meet through the bride market is high. In South Korea, four in 10 mixed-race marriages break down in the first five years, according to a survey by the Seoul-based Korean Women’s Development Institute. In response, last year the country placed new restrictions on such marriages: A prospective foreign bride must be fluent in at least one language her groom speaks, and Koreans are now limited to a single marriage-visa request every five years. In fact, South Korea has budgeted more than $100 million annually to fund counseling, interpreting services, and language classes for marriage migrants, among other foreigners, and their families. Other wealthy countries are also investing public resources in helping women adjust to their new communities. Local governments in Taiwan, for example, have organized cultural training programs for foreign brides.

Tone done the language about forcing women into these marriages, and the trafficking nonsense, and you're left with a decent article that points to one conclusion. Even places outside of the West have decidedly unfriendly pussy markets for the average guy.

Post: #2

Meanwhile RVF is free and plane tickets are only a few hundred bucks.

Post: #3

Sounds like a business opportunity for RVF members with boots on the ground. Plus, you could game the better looking ones.

Post: #4

Quote:The divorce rate among couples that meet through the bride market is high. In South Korea, four in 10 mixed-race marriages break down in the first five years, according to a survey by the Seoul-based Korean Women’s Development Institute.

So each Asian country consider themselves a separate race So a Korean guy dating a girl from Thailand is in an interracial relationship

Post: #5

(03-27-2015 06:41 AM)Parlay44 Wrote:  

Quote:The divorce rate among couples that meet through the bride market is high. In South Korea, four in 10 mixed-race marriages break down in the first five years, according to a survey by the Seoul-based Korean Women’s Development Institute.

So each Asian country consider themselves a separate race So a Korean guy dating a girl from Thailand is in an interracial relationship

Basically, yes. At least the Koreans and Japanese certainly think that they are unique peoples, although they may not use the term "race". They don't see any commonality with South East Asians. Rather like English people in the past didn't see any commonality between themselves and the "dagoes" and "wops" of southern Europe, but even more so.

Post: #6

Just out today in the malls, it is beyond my emotional endurance to open all the hot chicks here in the Phils, in a lower-middle class area at edge of Cebu (Lower middle class for Phils, working poor for USA) . Plus there are SO MANY younger children running around who will be 18 in a while, there can't be a famine in Philippines no matter what the outlier guys in Korea or Japan do. There's some increased fatness here I suspect, but also more 5'6" + flat out exotic model looking girls with thigh gaps, long legs and perfect skins-- almost always with local Alphas however.

Post: #7

Apparently there's a problem with brides "escaping" and fleeing back home. Some of the agencies have started offering money back guarantees because of it...!

Post: #8

It's a big thing here in Taiwan. The government had to put restrictions on the industry a few years ago because Vietnamese women were being abused by matchmaking agencies. That said, recruitment agencies all have a bad reputation over here, whether for matchmaking or finding labour.

In the south and east of Taiwan, ~25% of children are now born to one foreign parent (usually the mother), and a straw poll of students I used to teach revealed that to be accurate. I live in a town that is a farming community. There are lots and lots of Vietnamese brides here. It's because of hypergamy run completely amok. Most Taiwanese women won't marry a farmer or other blue collar guy from the countryside. It doesn't make sense financially because those guys are often much better off financially than the metrosexual urban males. They/their families frequently own a decent amount of land or another business, and the cost of living in the countryside is cheaper.

That's what happens when women think getting a PhD, living near a Starbucks and yoga studio, etc. is the reason for living. That's also why Taiwan's birthrate has plummeted in the past decade or so. Basic bitches are not confined to the West.

Post: #9

My brother often says that the Japanese are the most racist people in the world. Yes, many of them do consider other Asians to be a different race. Most of these countries have a history of war against each other.

Post: #10

(03-27-2015 07:43 AM)RawGod Wrote:  

(03-27-2015 06:41 AM)Parlay44 Wrote:  

Quote:The divorce rate among couples that meet through the bride market is high. In South Korea, four in 10 mixed-race marriages break down in the first five years, according to a survey by the Seoul-based Korean Women’s Development Institute.

So each Asian country consider themselves a separate race So a Korean guy dating a girl from Thailand is in an interracial relationship

Basically, yes. At least the Koreans and Japanese certainly think that they are unique peoples, although they may not use the term "race". They don't see any commonality with South East Asians. Rather like

The word "Asia" is a European invention. The definition originally referred to the areas east of ancient Greece and has moved east over the years. People see themselves as Chinese, Thai etc., rather than "Asian".

(03-27-2015 07:43 AM)RawGod Wrote:  English people in the past didn't see any commonality between themselves and the "dagoes" and "wops" of southern Europe, but even more so.

Apart from liberal faggots, the average Englishman still doesn't consider himself a European. To him, Europe is the area on the other side of the English Channel.

The mail order bride business has been going in since the 1990s:

South Korea’s foreign brides

Quote:IN THE mid-1990s posters plastered on the subway in Seoul, South Korea’s capital, exhorted local girls to marry farmers. Young women had left their villages in droves since the 1960s for a better life in the booming city. Sons, however, stayed behind to tend family farms and fisheries.

The campaign was futile. Last year over a fifth of South Korean farmers and fishermen who tied the knot did so with a foreigner. The province of South Jeolla has the highest concentration of international marriages in the country—half of those getting married at the peak a decade ago. In those days, the business of broking unions with Chinese or South-East Asian women boomed, with matches made in the space of a few days. Not long ago placards in the provinces sang the praises of Vietnamese wives “who never run away”. Now, on the Seoul subway, banners encourage acceptance of multicultural families.
They are expected to exceed 1.5m by 2020, in a population of 50m. That is remarkable for a country that has long prided itself on its ethnic uniformity. But a preference for sons has led to a serious imbalance of the sexes. In 2010 half of all middle-aged men in South Korea were single, a fivefold increase since 1995. The birth rate has fallen to 1.3 children per woman of childbearing age, down from six in 1960. It is one of the lowest fertility rates in the world. Without immigration, the country’s labour force will shrink drastically.


The government is the biggest enthusiast for a multi-ethnic country. Its budget for multicultural families has shot up 24-fold since 2007, to 107 billion won ($105m). Some 200 support centres offer interpreting services, language classes, child care and counselling. School textbooks now include a section on mixed-race families. And in 2012 mixed-race Koreans could join the army for the first time. When four Mongolians working illegally in South Korea pulled a dozen Korean colleagues from a fire in 2007, locals urged the government to grant them residency (it did).

Still, assimilation remains elusive. Four in ten mixed-race marriages break down in the first five years, according to a survey by the Korean Women’s Development Institute, a think-tank. In 2009 almost a fifth of children from mixed-race households who should have been in school were not. Many mothers have limited Korean. And discrimination lurks.

The government is now tightening up the marriage rules. Last month two new requirements came into force: a foreign bride must speak Korean, and a Korean groom must support her financially. Koreans are now limited to a single marriage-visa request every five years.

Critics say making marriage more difficult will only serve to speed up the greying of the workforce. The pool of eligible women will shrink, says Lee In-su, a marriage broker in Daegu in the south-east. Most foreign brides come from rural areas lacking language schools. Meanwhile, competition for brides from China, where men also outnumber women, is fierce.

In fact, the number of Korean men taking foreign brides is dropping, from 31,000 a year in 2005 to 18,000 last year. And nine-tenths of matches are now urban, says Mr Lee. Vietnamese girls no longer want to languish in the Korean countryside, says Kim Young-shin of the Korea-Vietnam Cultural Centre in Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital. They like watching Korean dramas and listening to K-pop—urban pursuits.

As for Korean clients, says Lee Chang-min, a broker in Seoul, they are increasingly better educated and better-off; some are among the country’s top earners. Many are simply on lower rungs of the eligibility ladder in a culture captivated by credentials, whether in looks, age or family connections. Others, Mr Lee says, are wary of the stereotype of the doenjangnyeo (a disparaging term for a class of Korean women seen as latte-loving gold-diggers). They prefer a wife who can assume a more traditional role than one many Korean women are nowadays willing to play. These men, the brokers lament, are now more likely to be introduced to their foreign wives through friends than through brokers. Perhaps a modest win for melting-pot Korea after all.

Post: #11

Shockingly, Korean children of international marriages (Korean men and foreign women) underperform those of dual-Korean-parent heritage (Youngdal & Hi-Won, 2010).

Must be racism, or something.

Post: #12

(03-27-2015 01:27 PM)Kabal Wrote:  Shockingly, Korean children of international marriages (Korean men and foreign women) underperform those of dual-Korean-parent heritage (Youngdal & Hi-Won, 2010).

Must be racism, or something.

I've found a picture of those responsible for this travesty.

Post: #13

That strait-laced, reputable looking Korean guy looks like he bought a no-housekeeping, likes-to-drink bar girl. Could be wrong....but I'm wondering why the divorce rate is so high. A typical good girl Filipino won't ditch out for no reason at all.

Post: #14

(03-27-2015 12:11 PM)Feisbook Control Wrote:  That's what happens when women think getting a PhD, living near a Starbucks and yoga studio, etc. is the reason for living. That's also why Taiwan's birthrate has plummeted in the past decade or so. Basic bitches are not confined to the West.

Amen brother.

But I gotta say it's appalling to see it happening outside the West so much these days. Ughhh.

And the fact that it's so easy to sell "empowerment" to women and even men these days is scary. Almost everything that they throw at you is pretty much detrimental to self-improvement and getting back to nature to better your lifestyle, from reality TV to Starbucks to Instagram or whatever. How in the hell these women don't stop for a second and consider biology and human history in terms of what they are here on earth for is beyond me.

I almost can't believe this is happening in Asia. In the Anglosphere I get it what with rampant Feminism and all the self-entitled land whales running amok. But Korean and Chinese women are slim and attractive!

Post: #15

(03-27-2015 06:21 AM)tarquin Wrote:  Sounds like a business opportunity for RVF members with boots on the ground. Plus, you could game the better looking ones.

I actually had a chance to buy a similar business in Colombia a few years back. I get a strong sense that the people who run those businesses aren't putting a serious effort into finding the best women possible. I would be out approaching as much as possible to both keep the best ones for myself and try to get better ones to join the agency.

Post: #16

(03-27-2015 06:25 PM)Akula Wrote:  

(03-27-2015 12:11 PM)Feisbook Control Wrote:  That's what happens when women think getting a PhD, living near a Starbucks and yoga studio, etc. is the reason for living. That's also why Taiwan's birthrate has plummeted in the past decade or so. Basic bitches are not confined to the West.

Amen brother.

But I gotta say it's appalling to see it happening outside the West so much these days. Ughhh.

And the fact that it's so easy to sell "empowerment" to women and even men these days is scary. Almost everything that they throw at you is pretty much detrimental to self-improvement and getting back to nature to better your lifestyle, from reality TV to Starbucks to Instagram or whatever. How in the hell these women don't stop for a second and consider biology and human history in terms of what they are here on earth for is beyond me.

I almost can't believe this is happening in Asia. In the Anglosphere I get it what with rampant Feminism and all the self-entitled land whales running amok. But Korean and Chinese women are slim and attractive!

I don't considered it empowerment. I think it's consumer culture. The powers that be want people to stay dumb and spend money.

Some women in the far East are some of the most materialistic and shallow bitches out there. They like to waste money on useless shit like handbags. They'd rather travel the world and get strange dick, rather than stay at home and raise a family.

It's easy to sell this shit to people - if somebody said to the average guy, you can travel the world and bang different women, or stay at home and raise kids with the same woman, what do you think a lot of them would choose?

Korean/Chinese/Japanese women are slim because there's a massive fat shaming culture. I can't see that changing any time soon because the men wouldn't stand for it. Compare that with the Anglosphere, where a fat 5 would have a line of thirsty guys waiting to eat her out under her floppy fat stomach.

Post: #17

(03-27-2015 07:09 PM)WalterBlack Wrote:  Compare that with the Anglosphere, where a fat 5 would have a line of thirsty guys waiting to eat her out under her floppy fat stomach.

Post: #18

(03-27-2015 07:09 PM)WalterBlack Wrote:  Korean/Chinese/Japanese women are slim because there's a massive fat shaming culture. I can't see that changing any time soon because the men wouldn't stand for it. Compare that with the Anglosphere, where a fat 5 would have a line of thirsty guys waiting to eat her out under her floppy fat stomach.

Unfortunately, East Asian guys are quite thirsty, as well. Check out the average age of first marriage for East Asian women, and prepare to Oedipus Rex your eyes.



South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore checking in at 30, 30, 29, 29, and 29, respectively. Even accounting for the better aging of East Asian women, it's clear that women well-passed their primes are being wife'd up en masse.

A lot of the European countries are vomit-inducing, as well.

I remember almost falling out of my office chair at work the first time I looked this up.

Post: #19

(03-27-2015 07:41 PM)Kabal Wrote:  

(03-27-2015 07:09 PM)WalterBlack Wrote:  Korean/Chinese/Japanese women are slim because there's a massive fat shaming culture. I can't see that changing any time soon because the men wouldn't stand for it. Compare that with the Anglosphere, where a fat 5 would have a line of thirsty guys waiting to eat her out under her floppy fat stomach.

Unfortunately, East Asian guys are quite thirsty, as well. Check out the average age of first marriage for East Asian women, and prepare to Oedipus Rex your eyes.



South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore checking in at 30, 30, 29, 29, and 29, respectively. Even accounting for the better aging of East Asian women, it's clear that women well-passed their primes are being wife'd up en masse.

A lot of the European countries are vomit-inducing, as well.

I remember almost falling out of my office chair at work the first time I looked this up.

I get that, but how many of these women are fat and don't take care of their appearance? The average 29 year old woman from the Far East is in a lot better shape than of woman of the same age from the Anglosphere.

Would a marriage like this ever take place in Korea? How thirsty is this guy?!



Regarding their ages - that's the price paid for encouraging women to go to university and to have a career. They want to get a few years of that out of the way (at least) before they commit to marriage (if ever).

I've seen a lot of British Muslim women marry young, have kids, then go to university. They get the family stuff out of the way, and then look at career. It's the exact opposite in the Far East and many Western countries.
---------------
EDIT I just added the Wikipedia marriage data - Average age of female marriage

Iran 22.1
India 22.2
Indonesia 22.3
Tajikistan 22.4
Uzbekistan 22.4
Vietnam 22.8
Kyrgyzstan 23.4
Kazakhstan 24.1
Mongolia 24.2
Armenia 24.5
Philippines 25.3
Malaysia 25.7
Kuwait 27
Singapore 28.5
Israel 28.8
Lebanon 28.8
Hong Kong 28.9
Japan 29.3
Taiwan 29.5
South Korea 29.6

Looking at the list it seems that from top to bottom there is a very rough correlation between the availability of (and local interest in)western movies/TV/culture + universities and the age of marriage.

Post: #20

WalterBlack: Culture plays an enormous role in this. There are a number of considerations.

The first is how East Asians regard education. Due to historical reasons (the ancient Mandarin exams and attempts to stamp out nepotism in modern times), they are obsessed with education here. To most East Asians, education is only ever a good thing. They don't understand that there is not only a point where any returns are marginal, but that there's actually a point where the opportunity cost may outweigh the benefits. They just don't get that at all.

I have known people who went to study English abroad, or to get a foreign degree, whose parents must have dropped tens of thousands to do so, only to return to Taiwan and be able to earn a couple hundred dollars a month more. Some of them are never going to see a return on their investment. Of course, there is an education bubble in the West also, but it's nothing like here.

Further to this, everyone is obsessed with government jobs. In the past, they had incredible benefits (e.g. the government guaranteed teachers an 18% return on their retirement investments), but these are changing. More than that, there simply aren't enough such jobs around. The competition is incredibly harsh. For instance, there are something like 4,000 education graduates every year here and only 100 jobs for teachers due to declining birthrates and school closures. To become a teacher, one must sit an exam (after acquiring an education degree), and such exams require a minimum of one year of either independent study or attendance of private preparatory classes. This is true for many other government jobs also. Some people sit the exams multiple times and never pass.

So, people are going to be at least 24 by the time they have a Master's degree, and if they then study for a government exam, you can add a year to that. Men also have compulsory military service, which most do immediately after university.

For some people, studying is a way to prolong actually having to think about life, but increasingly, it's a necessary part of the arms race to get any job that doesn't completely suck. Additionally, especially for middle class parents, it's a disgrace if a child is "uneducated". There are massive societal pressures to be educated here, regardless of whether it accomplishes anything. There just isn't the culture of skepticism towards bullshit arts degrees as there is in the West. There isn't the culture of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. There isn't the culture of dropping out of formal education to tinker around in your garage or start a business.

Then there is the employment market itself, which has been stagnant for years. It's impossible for young people to get on the property ladder in a big city these days. They absolutely must get help from their parents, and they absolutely must live with their parents to do so.

Likewise, it's possible for many men and women not to actually interact in a working environment. Women here can go through their daily life without interacting with a single male of their own age who is not a relative. Men end up in huge engineering firms and women end up in busy work office jobs, and never the twain shall meet, and this is true at university also.

Then there is the broader culture. East Asia is entirely set up to round off all of the sharp edges of life. They have the most comfortable, shallow, materialistic cultures on the planet. They have appropriated all of the worst aspects of Western materialism and added plenty more of their own. They are racing towards an end point of modernity where everything they could ever want, but nothing they actually need, is right there at their fingertips. When combined with everything else, it is crushing them. Even those who could do better don't because they are surrounded by consumer culture and succumb to that. It's not edgy or cool here to have old stuff. Old stuff is for poor people and older generations.

The parents are also a large part of the problem. As mentioned above, there is an obsession with education. Also, because their parents allow, or even expect, them to live at home, it means that all of the money these young people earn is essentially play money. They can, and do, live as perpetual adolescents. This is encouraged, especially for women, because their parents live in the past in some other ways. When it comes to dating, the parents just don't like their daughters going out and doing that. So whilst many may not be sluts (some are, of course), they have the opposite problem. They are like eternal pre-adolescent children in grown-up bodies. You see teenagers and older hanging out with their parents on weekends and so on. University students who study away from where they grew up typically go home every weekend to stay with their families. At no point do they ever cut the umbilical cord.

The result of this is omega males on the one hand, and gaggles of asexual females on the other who all have lots of hobbies and who all travel abroad at least once a year. Plus, they're obsessed with consumer culture. The whole thing is a mess. Just yesterday, I had a group of seven young women rent out my property in a touristy location. Two were obviously lesbians. All were massively into fashion, gadgets, travel, etc. They were driving a car that probably cost twice the median national salary. Where were the men? I bet that that gaggle of women travel about and do that kind of thing all the time, and that maybe only one or two of them have boyfriends.

Even when they do have boyfriends, I don't know what that's all about. I have known such couples who have been dating since junior high school who are still not married by their late twenties. They've been dating for fifteen years in many cases. Wrap your head around that one. I wouldn't be surprised if several of the couples either rarely have sex, or maybe haven't even had sex.

There are many things wrong with the West, for sure. Yet don't be fooled into thinking that just because East Asian women are not fat harpies that this neck of the woods is in better shape. This part of the world is in demographic and cultural free-fall. It's going to completely fall apart within the next two decades on the course it is on. I believe that feminism is not really the culprit it is in the West. Rather, it's a curse of modernity that is at the heart of all of this.

Seeing the degree to which school age children are coddled by parents here, I am not inspired with hope that things are about to turn around either.

Post: #21

(03-28-2015 06:46 AM)Feisbook Control Wrote:  WalterBlack: Culture plays an enormous role in this. There are a number of considerations.

The first is how East Asians regard education. Due to historical reasons (the ancient Mandarin exams and attempts to stamp out nepotism in modern times), they are obsessed with education here. To most East Asians, education is only ever a good thing. They don't understand that there is not only a point where any returns are marginal, but that there's actually a point where the opportunity cost may outweigh the benefits. They just don't get that at all.

I have known people who went to study English abroad, or to get a foreign degree, whose parents must have dropped tens of thousands to do so, only to return to Taiwan and be able to earn a couple hundred dollars a month more. Some of them are never going to see a return on their investment. Of course, there is an education bubble in the West also, but it's nothing like here.

Further to this, everyone is obsessed with government jobs. In the past, they had incredible benefits (e.g. the government guaranteed teachers an 18% return on their retirement investments), but these are changing. More than that, there simply aren't enough such jobs around. The competition is incredibly harsh. For instance, there are something like 4,000 education graduates every year here and only 100 jobs for teachers due to declining birthrates and school closures. To become a teacher, one must sit an exam (after acquiring an education degree), and such exams require a minimum of one year of either independent study or attendance of private preparatory classes. This is true for many other government jobs also. Some people sit the exams multiple times and never pass.

So, people are going to be at least 24 by the time they have a Master's degree, and if they then study for a government exam, you can add a year to that. Men also have compulsory military service, which most do immediately after university.

For some people, studying is a way to prolong actually having to think about life, but increasingly, it's a necessary part of the arms race to get any job that doesn't completely suck. Additionally, especially for middle class parents, it's a disgrace if a child is "uneducated". There are massive societal pressures to be educated here, regardless of whether it accomplishes anything. There just isn't the culture of skepticism towards bullshit arts degrees as there is in the West. There isn't the culture of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. There isn't the culture of dropping out of formal education to tinker around in your garage or start a business.

Then there is the employment market itself, which has been stagnant for years. It's impossible for young people to get on the property ladder in a big city these days. They absolutely must get help from their parents, and they absolutely must live with their parents to do so.

Likewise, it's possible for many men and women not to actually interact in a working environment. Women here can go through their daily life without interacting with a single male of their own age who is not a relative. Men end up in huge engineering firms and women end up in busy work office jobs, and never the twain shall meet, and this is true at university also.

Then there is the broader culture. East Asia is entirely set up to round off all of the sharp edges of life. They have the most comfortable, shallow, materialistic cultures on the planet. They have appropriated all of the worst aspects of Western materialism and added plenty more of their own. They are racing towards an end point of modernity where everything they could ever want, but nothing they actually need, is right there at their fingertips. When combined with everything else, it is crushing them. Even those who could do better don't because they are surrounded by consumer culture and succumb to that. It's not edgy or cool here to have old stuff. Old stuff is for poor people and older generations.

The parents are also a large part of the problem. As mentioned above, there is an obsession with education. Also, because their parents allow, or even expect, them to live at home, it means that all of the money these young people earn is essentially play money. They can, and do, live as perpetual adolescents. This is encouraged, especially for women, because their parents live in the past in some other ways. When it comes to dating, the parents just don't like their daughters going out and doing that. So whilst many may not be sluts (some are, of course), they have the opposite problem. They are like eternal pre-adolescent children in grown-up bodies. You see teenagers and older hanging out with their parents on weekends and so on. University students who study away from where they grew up typically go home every weekend to stay with their families. At no point do they ever cut the umbilical cord.

The result of this is omega males on the one hand, and gaggles of asexual females on the other who all have lots of hobbies and who all travel abroad at least once a year. Plus, they're obsessed with consumer culture. The whole thing is a mess. Just yesterday, I had a group of seven young women rent out my property in a touristy location. Two were obviously lesbians. All were massively into fashion, gadgets, travel, etc. They were driving a car that probably cost twice the median national salary. Where were the men? I bet that that gaggle of women travel about and do that kind of thing all the time, and that maybe only one or two of them have boyfriends.

Even when they do have boyfriends, I don't know what that's all about. I have known such couples who have been dating since junior high school who are still not married by their late twenties. They've been dating for fifteen years in many cases. Wrap your head around that one. I wouldn't be surprised if several of the couples either rarely have sex, or maybe haven't even had sex.

There are many things wrong with the West, for sure. Yet don't be fooled into thinking that just because East Asian women are not fat harpies that this neck of the woods is in better shape. This part of the world is in demographic and cultural free-fall. It's going to completely fall apart within the next two decades on the course it is on. I believe that feminism is not really the culprit it is in the West. Rather, it's a curse of modernity that is at the heart of all of this.

Seeing the degree to which school age children are coddled by parents here, I am not inspired with hope that things are about to turn around either.

Damn, spitting some serious knowledge... well done.

Post: #22

Makes sense. However, it is also getting more expensive to raise children as mortgages keep rising due to the lack of space on such a tiny island such as Taiwan.

There are substantial benefits once getting promoted to a certain level in the Taiwanese Navy such as relatives getting great discounts on utility bills, etc. My grandfather did it rather easily back in the day though my cousin is about to get there albeit at a slower pace (increased competition).

Post: #23

booshala: Thanks.

(03-28-2015 11:01 PM)Brosemite Wrote:  Makes sense. However, it is also getting more expensive to raise children as mortgages keep rising due to the lack of space on such a tiny island such as Taiwan.

Mortgage prices are not just due to lack of space. There are actually plenty of parts of Taiwan with reasonable population density. Pretty much anywhere outside of Taipei City or New Taipei City is reasonable. There is spillover now into neighbouring Taoyuan and Yilan Counties, and even Xinzhu City and County due to the high speed rail. There is still plenty of space in those places. I wouldn't want to live there, but it's still feasible. Even parts of New Taipei City, such as Linkou, still have a reasonable amount of land. Farther south and east, the norm is three storey houses. Taizhong, Tainan and Gaoxiong are all quite viable options.

The problem with housing prices, in my opinion, is a combination of things. Of course, some of the problem is that everyone is moving to Taipei, but that could have been solved to a large extent by better planning and/or tax incentives to move/remain elsewhere. The deeper issue there is often corruption with what gets built where by whom. There are also all sorts of issues with a lot of black money floating around in and outside Taiwan. There were attempts to bring it back to Taiwan via an amnesty several years ago, and that money went straight into the property market. It had to. Where else was it going to go? Monetary policy here is as daft as in the US and many other countries. With close to ZIRP, there are massive disincentives on keeping money in cash and massive incentives to load up on debt. The result is an enormous speculative bubble. There is also word that there is a decent amount of Chinese money here, though I can't say if that is actually true.[/i][/u]

Quote:There are substantial benefits once getting promoted to a certain level in the Taiwanese Navy such as relatives getting great discounts on utility bills, etc. My grandfather did it rather easily back in the day though my cousin is about to get there albeit at a slower pace (increased competition).

I can't speak specifically about that, but I do know that they have changed some of the other benefits. Until about three years ago, elementary school teachers, junior high school teachers (though not senior high school teachers, oddly) and the military didn't pay tax. Teachers only have to work for twenty five years before being eligible for retirement benefits, and they only teach fifteen hours per week. So these kinds of jobs are not as cushy as they once were, though they're still quite cushy. The biggest shock for me was the guaranteed 18% returns on pension contributions. That's a doubling period of four years. The money they put in during their first year would have increased sixfold by the time they retired twenty five years later. I don't know whether there was any kind of cap on that, but that's insane. They also had/have fixed housing loans of something like 1.5%. That's why everyone wants one of those jobs. These changes occurred due to a combination of public outcry and the government figuring out that it would be screwed with future obligations. Recently, there was a story of two generations of retired government workers living in the same family household. Their combined monthly pensions were about 1.8 times the median annual wage.

Post: #24

Sigh, you really think a country's ethno-chauvinist culture will beat the masses of men who experience loneliness, lack of sex & the desire of having a family?

In that sense humanity really is universal. Men will easily pick a foreign mate if the alternative means no mate at all.

Post: #25

I browsed a few MOB sites for fun a while ago, and I wouldn't date most of them for free. There was a site from Vietnam, I don't recall the name, but they had over 2,000 brides on the list. I made a search "Children: 0" and it returned 25 matches. Probably an agency that gathers all damaged girls to sell them to thirsty balding foreigners.