The Chinese Brides from Kampung Belakang

Tuesday, January 9, 2007

TAIWANESE men are coming in droves to Kampung Belakang to find girls of poor families of Chinese descent in the poor village west of Jakarta, to marry. With the help of molang, the matchmakers, and a dowry of only Rp5 million, they could return with a girl of their dreams after a brief marriage process known in Chinese as sangjitan. Poverty is driving girls in the village to take a short cut out of privation. Some make it but many end up with no future in a foreign land. Tempos Istiqomatul Hayati traces the quickie marriage practice from Kampung Belakang to Taiwan.

. tempo : 178039639895.

THE wedding picture looks unusual: A middle-aged man posing with a very young woman, the man trying to look intimately close to the woman and the woman smiling without expression. The heavy makeup cannot conceal her young age.

I was then only 13, says Keke, the girl in the picture. The man is a 50-year-old Taiwanese named Ahian and the picture was taken after the couple had gone through the process of a quickie marriage known as chesaw.

It was Keke

...