A bridal shop owner in Hanoi has recently caused a polemic on Facebook, as she posted a photo with a caption describing how ideal foreign husbands are compared to Vietnamese men.

>> An audio version of the story is available here

The post on the Facebook page of Hien Vu, whose real name is Vu Thu Hien, has been liked for over 22,000 times and got 6,000 shares since it was uploaded on September 25.

Attaching a photo of a foreign man and a Vietnamese woman, Hien told a story about the couple who came to her shop to choose wedding dresses.

Saying men are different from place to place, Hien praised the foreign man for how sweet and gentle he was to his partner.

The bride, meanwhile, was described in Hien’s post as a woman who is not beautiful but who has a sweet voice.

While his woman was trying on a few dresses, the groom kept giving compliments to her, such as “You’re so beautiful” or “I’m proud of you,” besides expressing his love for her through sweet words, like “My love” and “I love you,” Hien wrote.

The groom was also praised for patiently and happily waiting for his bride for hours and being willing to pay for what the woman had picked.

In the next part of her story, Hien started to compare foreign and Vietnamese men, saying the biggest difference between them is the way they behave.

“I have met many Vietnamese men who took their brides to my shop to try on wedding gowns, but they kept their eyes stuck on their phone screens and then gave perfunctory comments, or impatiently waited and urged their brides to finish,” Hien said in the photo caption.

She added there were cases in which the grooms decried their brides for being fat or too skinny and looking bad in every dress they put on.

“In foreign countries, women are loved, respected and cosseted the most,” Hien wrote. “In Vietnam, women are always behind men and that prejudice can never be changed.”

“Women always live and sacrifice for their men, while they keep wondering if their husbands would sacrifice for them,” she said.

She then concluded that being smart and beautiful is not so important as being able to choose the right man to marry.

If Vietnamese men can focus less on saving their face and become less patriarchal, their women will feel truly happy, she said.

The post has drawn huge attention from netizens, who have divided themselves in two camps.

Numerous people, mostly women, shared the same feeling as Hien, saying what she wrote is true and that they wish to be as happy as the woman in the story.

Some even tagged their boyfriends or husbands for them to read.

The other side opposed the post, saying it is unreasonable to judge Vietnamese men based on it, and the writer should not hastily generalize just because of this particular experience.

“It’s undeniable how great Vietnamese women are,” Dinh Tran, a Facebook user, commented. “But there are people and people so you should not look down on all Vietnamese men through a few instances you have met.”

Nguyen Nam Thanh, another Facebook user, disagreed with those who complimented the foreign man and slammed all Vietnamese men.

He even gave an example that he saw a foreign man beat his wife to the extent that she did “not look like a human” anymore.

In response, Hien said she knew there are good and bad men everywhere, but Vietnamese men are always conservative and patriarchal.

“Western men are different, I like the way they respect their women,” she told newswire Zing in an interview.

Vietnamese men hardly express their love for their wives after marriage, she added.

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