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Double Happiness

Chien-Chi Chang's Double Happiness (65 photographs and four videos) on view in 2009 Asian Art Biennial, Taichung City, Taiwan. 56 artists and teams from 20 Asian-Pacific countries are invited to give their views on the current situations in Asia.

On Double Happiness:
The disjunction between the needs of men and women in Asia have led to an odd phenomenon: When women from more developed countries are unwilling to enter into old-fashioned marriages based on subservience to parents-in-law and procreation of children, men from that country may search out women from another, more traditional one, to marry. Many such marriages are made in Vietnam where marriage brokers recruit young Vietnamese women to come to Ho Chi Minh City to be viewed by groups of men, often from Korea or Taiwan. Each man pays a fee of as much as US$8000 to pick a suitable bride. Within just a few days of meeting, the couples are legally married, filling out all the attendant paperwork to procure visas. These unions, of course, often lead to a collision of cultures when a couple returns to the man's home country.