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C. H. Yeo is 42 years old, has a bachelor’s degree majoring in design from Australia, and works as an interior designer and part-time lecturer.
It is a pretty decent resume for any prospective girlfriend, but when it came to dating Singaporean women, Yeo thought his plump, 1.5m frame put him at a distinct disadvantage.
“I’ve heard the girls look for handsome guys and will start looking at you 360 degrees. I don’t want to be in that situation.” So he joined a growing band of higher-educated Singaporean men who go knocking on the doors of foreign bride agencies.
Last December, he tied the knot with a 23-year-old Vietnamese woman, Lu Thi Tham, who used to run a kiosk in Vietnam selling sugar cane. She is now four months’ pregnant.
Like Yeo, The Sunday Times said that one in four Singapore men married foreign brides last year, a phenomenon that has hit a 10-year high
Last year, 6,520 male Singaporeans and permanent residents married foreign brides, the highest number in 10 years, according to the Department of Statistics. The number is up from 5,210 the previous year and 4,425 in 2003. Traditionally, the paper said, matchmaking agencies have catered to men with lower academic qualifications, but now they are seeing more and more diploma and degree holders.
One agency, Mr Cupid, said seven out of every 10 customers have a bachelor’s degree or higher.
Five years ago, most clients had up to Secondary 2 education, said director Martin Wong. Mr Cupid gets six to seven clients a month.
Of the seven men who spoke to The Sunday Times about their foreign marriages, four said they preferred foreign women because they would be more demure and accommodating.
What they want, they said, is a woman who will put the family and husband first, rather than demand cars, condominiums and credit cards.
See Chee Hong, 35, a chef with Secondary 2 education, said: “Few Singaporean women will want to live with my parents and two sisters in our four-room HDB flat.”
He married a Vietnamese farmer’s daughter in 2004.
They have two sons, aged 17 months and seven months. His wife is 22.
“My wife takes care of the kids and all the housework. Her requests are simple: Care for me, don’t bully me and don’t go out to look for other women.”
Another reason more Singapore men are marrying foreigners, the experts say, is simply that they have more opportunities to meet.
Besides the 30 or so foreign bride agencies that are operating here at any one time, Singaporeans are travelling overseas more often, more foreign women are coming to work here and the Internet enables singles to meet online wherever they live. Figures on which nationalities Singaporean men prefer were not available, but back in 1998, Malaysians topped the chart, followed by women from Indonesia and China.
The Sunday Times understands Malaysians still form the bulk of foreign brides, but Vietnamese and China brides are gaining ground.
On the other hand, far fewer Singapore women than men marry foreigners. The possibility of having to leave the country may be part of the reason far fewer Singapore women than men marry foreigners.
Even so, the number of female Singaporeans and permanent residents marrying foreign men has gone up slightly over the past 10 years.
Last year, 1,596 local women married foreign men, up from 1,134 in 1996.
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