Abstract
This paper explores the intimate lives of Taiwanese wives whose husbands have gone
to China to invest or work as expatriate managers or professional for various
Taiwanese firms by the forces of economic integration between Taiwan and China and
of rising Chinese market economy in the last three decades. Either as left behind
caregivers for their families in Taiwan or migrating with their husbands to set up new
homes in China, these wives’ intimate lives are re-configured by the long-term
absence of their husbands or by the process of relocating to China, in particular, under
the shadow of being possibly cheated by their husbands with Chinese women. While
the sexuality of migrants is still a field that needs more scholarly investigations, the
intimate and sexual lives of those who are left behind or those who migrate as spouses,
not as main actors in the process of migration are even much overlooked. Based on
ethnographic fieldwork and secondary documents conducted and gathered in Taiwan
and in coastal China between 1999 and 2007, this chapter examines the so-called
“first wives’” intimate lives across the Taiwan Strait. It shows how the migration of
their spouses or of themselves has become as both gendered constrain and resource in
shaping some Taiwanese women’s intimate lives and identity. It also reveals the
gender and social implications of their changing intimate lives to the societies
involved.