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May 25, 2008, NY TIMES

Matchmaking, the Ultimate Government Service

By FRANCESCA SEGRÈ

NEXT month, Justin Mei, 20, will be on his way to the Love Boat.
That’s the nickname for a monthlong cultural tour of Taiwan sponsored and
partly subsidized by the Taiwanese government. The program – officially
called the Expatriate Youth Summer Formosa Study Tour to Taiwan – has
nothing to do with boats and it isn’t supposed to be about love. It is
designed to expose young people with Taiwanese roots like Mr. Mei to the
motherland through courses in Mandarin, sightseeing and traditional arts.
-I want to reconnect with my heritage,- said Mr. Mei, who was born in Dallas
and attends the University of Texas there. -I’ve been disconnected.-
But the trip has long had a reputation for flirtations, flings and wedding
proposals. Hence the nickname.

Michelle Hsieh, 23, who grew up in Anaheim Hills, Calif., and now lives in
New York, fantasized about the program since she first heard about it in
junior high school. She went on the study tour in 2004 and found a boyfriend
the first week. Of the roughly 500 men and 500 women on her tour, she
believes most found romance immediately.

-With no parent supervision, it’s bound to happen,- she said.
Kerry Liou, section chief of expatriate youth programs for the Taiwan
government Overseas Compatriot Affairs Commission, said in an e-mail message
from Taipei: -Given that the age of most program participants is only 20
years old, we don’t encourage any romance on the trip. However, we would
like to see the participants continue to keep in touch after they return to
their country of residence.-

The commission, according to its Web site, aims -to unite the strength of
all our people in Taiwan and abroad to help the government maintain its
national security and pursue sustainable development.- Those sturdy ideals
did not seem to be on the minds of many Love Boat participants.

-My parents didn’t know it was a big hookup fest,- Ms. Hsieh said. -They
thought it was about culture and heritage. I don’t think it would ever cross
their mind that people would go on the trip to find their soul mates.-

But perhaps Ms. Hsieh and other Love Boaters underestimate their parents.
According to a study using the latest Census Bureau figures, the percentage
of Asian women born in the United States who marry Asian men has declined to
37 percent from 59 percent since 1994. The proportion of American-born Asian
men who marry Asian women has also dropped, to 52 percent from 65 percent.
-Foreign-born parents are distraught over the assimilation process for their
kids,- said Daniel T. Lichter, a professor of policy analysis and management
at Cornell who has long studied marital assimilation and was the lead author
of the study. -They want their kids to be closely tied to the religion, the
race, the language.-

Ms. Hsieh said that her parents -always said they want me to keep within the
race or ethnicity – ideally, they want me to marry someone who is
Taiwanese.-

-The Love Boat definitely made me want to marry within my ethnicity,- she
added. -It made me realize how important it was to have that background of
being from a Taiwanese family.-

She is now dating a Taiwanese-American.

Mr. Mei, whose mother encouraged him to go on the trip, said that if his
parents were aware of the Love Boat’s reputation, which he doubts, -then I
guess they’re trying to suggest something to me.-
He insists that his focus is on Taiwan, not women. -I’m young,- he said.
-I’m not that obsessed with love. I’d like a girlfriend, but I’m not that
interested.-

Taglit-Birthright Israel, a program that sends young American Jews on 10-day
trips to Israel, is less guarded about its romantic record. In fact, one of
the program’s founders, the financier Michael Steinhardt, treats couples who
meet on the trip and then marry to a honeymoon at his Caribbean villa. The
eight-year-old program does not keep track of participants’ weddings, but at
least 30 couples have taken Mr. Steinhardt up on his offer.

-In Birthright there have been many successful matches, and that is the
unintended but happy outcome of the trip,- Mr. Steinhardt said. The program,
designed to strengthen Jewish identity and ties to Israel, will send 23,000
Americans to Israel this summer.

-We are demographically challenged,- Mr. Steinhardt added. -In the
non-Orthodox world, intermarriage rates have soared, and generally the
intermarried are less likely to have Jewish kids.-
A survey conducted in 2000 and 2001 by United Jewish Communities found that
American Jews who married since 1996 had an intermarriage rate of 47
percent.

The Israeli government partly sponsors Taglit (Hebrew for -discovery-), and
Jacob Dayan, the Israeli consul general in Los Angeles, said that when
marriages came out of the trip, -that’s fantastic.- But he said his
government was most interested in the program’s potential to address
misconceptions about Israel.

Lance Sager, 27, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Natalie Kline, 26, of
Potomac, Md., met on a Birthright Israel trip in 2006. They began talking as
they hiked down from the ruined fortress of Masada just after sunrise on the
second day.

Their first kiss was six days later, Ms. Kline remembers: -We were at a
kibbutz, it was late at night, the sprinklers were going, the moon was up,
the stars were out. It was like a movie.-

Mr. Sager said: -You’re with everyone who has the same faith. You have a
strong connection with someone off the bat. You’re seeing something you’ve
never seen before. You see things from the tops of mountains.-
Mr. Sager proposed to Ms. Kline in February, and they plan to marry in
November. Honeymoon location? Israel.

Sheila Sager, Mr. Sager’s mother, said she was thrilled that her son planned
to marry a Jewish woman, though if he had chosen someone of a different
faith, she -wouldn’t have disowned him.-

Having taken 160,000 people to Israel so far, Birthright may well be the
largest free cultural tour program. But it is not the oldest. The Expatriate
Youth Summer Formosa Study Tour has been running for more than 40 years; the
Irish Way and the Voyage of Discovery of the National Italian American
Foundation were both founded in the mid-1970s.

Birthright Armenia, a relative newcomer to summer cultural programs, was
established in 2003 and has sent 300 young people to Armenia. At least five
couples who met on the trip have married.

Marriage -was never in the short- or long-term vision for the program,- said
Edele Hovnanian of Middletown, N.J., the founder of Birthright Armenia. -But
it’s icing on the cake. All the better.-

The program focuses on community service, the Armenian churches and bringing
people of Armenian descent on visits to the motherland.

-Every single person is important when the population is so small,- Ms.
Hovnanian said. Of the 7 million Armenians worldwide, 3 million live in
Armenia and 1.5 million live in the United States, according to the Armenian
National Institute.

Birthright Armenia encourages those with any amount of Armenian blood to
participate and helps pay for the trips. -It’s like gaining an extra player
on the team when you get an Armenian who is a quarter Armenian,- said Ms.
Hovnanian, an executive with a family real estate development firm.

Talar Topjian said -it was love at first sight- when she spotted Raffi
Sarafian during a Birthright Armenia volunteer meeting in Yerevan, the
Armenian capital, in July 2005.

-I saw this girl coming down the stairs,- Mr. Sarafian said. -She was late.
She walked like a movie star.-

-There’s no way we would’ve met without the program,- Ms. Topjian said.
-Right after the meeting we went to a party and we were Armenian-dancing and
laughing, and that’s where it all started.-

Ms. Topjian, of Washington, and Mr. Sarafian, of Valence, France, are both
24. They said that looking for a mate was not on their minds, but they
formed a bond over things Armenian – church, music, dance and country.
They will marry in France on Aug. 2. -We joke,- Ms. Topjian said, -but we
have to marry to multiply the race and make a stronger Armenia.-

One can argue whether any of these programs really strengthen cultural and
political ties. But the romantic angle is undeniably clear.

-I have another daughter going to Israel in August,- Mrs. Sager said. -Maybe
lightning will strike twice.-

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress