“爸妈说赶紧找个女朋友吧”：中国数百万孤独的“剩男们”，英国网友评

When Liu returned to his childhood village to celebrate Chinese New Year, his parents had arranged a familiar and depressing task for him: a series of speed dates. Over a week back in rural Jiangxi province, he met half a dozen potential wives in encounters he says felt more like job interviews. He expects to go through the same process next year, without much hope of success.

当刘回到自己童年的村庄过新年时，他的父母给他安排了一个熟悉却又压抑的任务：一系列快速约会。回到江西省乡下的家中已有一周多，他已经相了6个潜在的结婚对象。他说他觉得自己更像是在求职面试。他预计明年也会经历同样的事情，成功（结婚的）希望不大。

For Jin, who works with Liu in the factories of China’s Pearl River Delta, the cajoling matchmaker was his second cousin. “My cousin brought [the date] to meet me in a public square in the village, then left us together,” Jin recalls. “A few minutes in, this girl made it clear that owning an apartment would be essential, but she could wait till later for a car. And she’d be OK if the apartment wasn’t in the centre of the
town, but I had to have a deposit of at least 200,000 yuan [about ￡22,500].”

至于跟刘在珠三角工厂一起工作的金，那个花言巧语的媒人是他的远房亲戚。“我亲戚把人（相亲对象）带到村里的一个公共广场上和我见面，然后就留下我们两个走了”金回忆道。“在几分钟内，那个女孩明确表示拥有一套公寓是必不可少的，但车她不着急要。然后那套公寓如果不在镇中心也可以，但是这就意味着我至少要有20万元（22500英镑）的积蓄。”

In recent years, the patriarchal Chinese state has launched campaigns warning unmarried urban females over the age of 27 of the perils of becoming “leftover women”. But in reality – due to sex-selective abortions, a traditional preference for sons and the country’s one-child policy – there’s a far larger cohort of “leftover men”.

近年来，在中国重男轻女的国情下发布了对27岁以上还未婚的城市女性将有可能成为“剩女”的警示。然而现实情况是——由于性别选择性堕胎、传统上对儿子的偏爱和国家的一胎政策——中国出现了人数更为庞大的群体“剩男”。

Official state media put the male-to-female ratio at 136:100 among unmarried people born since the 1980s. Professor Jin Tiankui, an influential sociologist in China’s policy-making circle, predicts that by 2020 there will be 30 million more men than women in the 24–40 age bracket.

国家官方媒体称生于1980后的未婚人群中男女的比例为136：100。在中国决策圈内有影响力的社会学家景天魁预计称2020年在24-40岁的年龄组中，男性将比女性多3千万人。

Liu and Jin blame their lack of romantic success on their low social status as migrant workers from rural provinces. The state says there are about 278 million others like them, the backbone of the country’s wildly successful manufacturing, construction and service industries. They embody the nation’s most intractable problems of inequality – loneliness included.

刘和金认为他们的浪漫史没有成功的原因是因为他们低下的社会地位，即来自农村外来打工人员。国家称大约有2.78亿类似情况的人，他们是这个国家制造业、建筑业和服务业成功的主干力量。他们体现了国家最难处理的不平等问题——包括孤独问题。

In 2010, the main state-endorsed union surveyed thousands of rural migrants in 10 cities across the country, concluding that “the defining aspect of the migrant experience” is a sense of loneliness due to a lack of romantic prospects. A separate survey found that more than 70% of construction workers (almost exclusively rural migrants) reported emotional loneliness as the most painful aspect of their lives.

在2010年，国家主要工会对国家10座城市中的农村外来移民进行了调查，得出的结论是“对移民生活体验的定义”是因缺少浪漫前景而产生的孤独感，另一项调查则称情感孤独是他们生活中最苦痛的一面。

Liu is 33 and lonely. As a teenager he left school to help his parents on their farm, but soon ventured south to Shenzhen on the border with Hong Kong, hoping to make more money. When I first met him he was working 12 hours a day, six days a week assembling iPhones at one of the Foxconn plants where Jin now works.

刘33岁单身。在青少年时他就辍学帮助他父母务农，很快便南下到深圳靠近香港的边界上，期望能赚更多的钱。笔者第一次见他时他每天工作12个小时，每周上六天的班，在某个富士康工厂组装Iphone。

Without advanced education, Liu is only qualified for insecure, low-skilled jobs. The long hours and low pay make the practicalities of dating more daunting. “It’s not because I’m a shy person. I just don’t have enough money to feel confident,” he tells me. “When a man has money, every woman feels destined to be his girlfriend.”

没有受过高等教育，刘只能做些没保障、低技能的工作。工时长工资低使得约会进程更难展开。“并不是因为我是个内向的人。而是因为我没有足够的钱让自己自信起来，”他告诉笔者，“当一个男人有钱时，任何女人都想成为他的女朋友。”

When Liu is not worrying about his own loneliness, he’s feeling guilty about letting his parents down. “They sacrificed so much to bring me up, and all they want to see is that I’m married. But I’m not able to give them that,” he tells me. “They try not to put too much pressure on me, but I know they’re under a lot of pressure from neighbours and relatives. I have two sisters and I’m their only son.” The tradition of continuing the family lineage is strong in China; many rural parents would consider it a terrible failure if their sons did not find a wife.

当刘不在忧愁自己一个人有多孤独时，他对让爸妈失望感到很惭愧。“他们牺牲那么多抚养我长大，最想看到的无非是我结婚，而我连这个都做不到，”他告诉笔者。“他们尽量不给我太多压力，但我知道他们承受着来自邻居和亲戚的巨大压力。我有两个妹妹，我是他们唯一的儿子。”延续香火的传统观念在中国根深蒂固；当自己的儿子没找到老婆时，很多农村的父母会认为这是个很可怕的后果。

By various metrics, China is ranked as one of the most unequal societies in the world. The architecture of this inequality is the system of hukou or household registration. Since the 1950s, hukou has cleaved the population into urban and rural categories, allowing China’s ruling elite to better control the lives of the country’s vast rural population in a planned economy. Today much of China’s economic life has been transformed, but key elements of hukou remain. This means that rural migrants who have lived and worked in a city for many years, contributing enormously to its prosperity, do not have the same access to employment, housing, education and healthcare as officially registered urban residents.

在各种指标判定下，中国被评为世界上最不平等的社会之一。造成这种不平等架构的是户口或户籍制度体系。1950年以来，户口制度将人口分为城市人口和农村人口两个类别，允许统治精英在计划经济下更好地控制全国广大农村人口的生活。现如今中国大部分的经济生活已经发生变化，但仍保留户口这个关键因素。这意味着农村外来移民即使在城市生活工作了多年，为这个城市的繁荣做出了巨大的贡献，也不会获得同正式登记的城市居民一样的就业、住房、教育和医疗保障。

Roughly two-thirds of the migrant workforce is aged under 35. I’ve interviewed dozens of men like Liu and Jin in Shenzhen, and most have little interest in rural life in villages that have been left behind by China’s economic boom. But their prospects for settling in big cities are little better than those of previous generations. They’re unlikely to earn enough to own a home or even a car, prerequisites to be considered marriage material by the urban middle class. Access to the tertiary education which can unlock better paying jobs is restricted by fiercely competitive entrance exams, where many young rural men are unsurprisingly outshone by their well-resourced urban counterparts.

大约三分之二的外来劳动力人群年龄在35岁以下。笔者在深圳访问了几十个像刘和金一样的人，在中国经济繁荣的情况下他们都对落后的农村生活兴趣甚微。但是他们对定居在大城市的前景远好于前几代。他们不太可能赚到足够的钱去买一套属于自己的房子甚至只是辆车，而这些在城市中产阶级中被认定是结婚的先决条件。获得高等教育就能得到更好的就业机会，然而获得高等教育的机会却受到各种竞争激烈的入学考试的限制，许多年轻的农村人口被其资源丰富的城市同龄人所超越也就不足为奇。

Increasingly, even workers in their late teens and early 20s are feeling the pressure.

越来越多的甚至连20岁左右的工人们都开始（对结婚）感觉有压力。

“These days, the only reason my parents call me is to tell me to hurry up and find a girlfriend. I’ve stopped answering their calls,” says Jiang, a 22-year-old Foxconn worker from Sichuan province.

在富士康工厂工作，来自四川省22岁的江说，“这些天，我爸妈给我打电话的唯一理由就是叫我赶快找个女朋友。我已经不再接他们的电话了。”

Lacking financial independence, young rural migrants rely on their parents for emotional and practical support more than their urban educated counterparts. They’re less likely to object to their parents arranging speed dates, or ultimately choosing them a partner and negotiating the caili (dowry payment).

缺乏经济独立，使得这些年轻的农村外来移民比他们受过教育的城市对手在情感和实际支持上更依赖父母。他们不太可能会反对父母给他们安排的快速约会，或者拥有选择其伴侣的最终决策权和彩礼（置办嫁妆）的协商。

This old tradition, banned in the era of Mao, has made a comeback in rural China. There are a number of reasons: the embrace of capitalist and entrepreneurial values; the imbalanced ratio of men to women, which drives a sellers market; and the persistence of patriarchal values which consider women to be properties, owned first by their parents and then their husband. The bride’s family would be seen to be getting a raw deal – losing both face and a rare opportunity for considerable economic gain – if a fee was not part of the bargain. The amount could range from the equivalent of a few thousand to tens of thousands of pounds, and often proves to be a deal breaker in these negotiations.

这个在毛泽东时代被禁止的古老传统，在中国农村又重新恢复了。原因有以下几点：在接受资本主义和创业价值观的情况之下；推动卖家市场的男女比例不平衡关系；和将妇女视为财产的父权文化价值观的延续，这种延续开始于父母然后是再传给其丈夫。如果费用不是协商的一部分，新娘的家庭会被认为是受到了不平等的待遇——不仅丢面子还失去了获得大笔经济利益（资金）的难得机会。这个金额在几千或几万英镑不等，经常成为协商破裂的始作俑者。

Even if a match is made, things don’t always end well. Hasty weddings can lead to hasty divorces; in one county in Henan province, up to 85% of all divorces in the period from 2013 to 2015 involved rural migrant couples. The government has signalled its concern about high divorce rates and “temporary couples” – made up of individuals who marry in their villages and then return to cities to form separate romantic relationships there.

就算这婚事成了，也不总是圆满结束。仓促地结婚可能会导致轻率的离婚；在河南省某县，2013-2015年期间涉及农民工外来夫妇的离婚事例占离婚总例的85%。政府已显示出对高离婚率和“临时夫妇”的担忧——所谓的“临时夫妇”是指在乡下结婚，回到城市时在那各自组建浪漫关系的夫妇。

In a one-party state that values social stability above all, this growing cohort of millions of disaffected and sexually frustrated young men is an unwelcome development. In a rare move, the Chinese Communist Party used an official policy document to declare its intention to “step up efforts to solve the problems facing second-generation rural migrant workers”.

在重视一党政策的国家中，这个持续增长的含数百万的不满和遭受性挫败感的年轻人群体并不是一个受人欢迎的发展。TG做出了一个罕见的决定，发布了一份官方政策文件，宣称其意图是为了“加紧解决第二代农民工问题。”

Of course, loneliness affects migrant women and men alike, and women suffer in myriad ways from broken relationships and disintegrated families. But it’s the image of sexually deprived migrant men that figures prominently in the state’s anxious imagination. There’s an obvious link between angry young men and social unrest, and history points to a connection between frustrated marital aspirations and upheaval, such as the tension caused by the demonisation of poor unmarried men by the Qing dynasty ruling class.

当然，孤独同等影响着外来移民女人和男人，同时女人在关系破裂和家庭瓦解等很多方面上遭受着磨难。但是，关于这些性被剥夺的外来移民男人的景象在国家的焦虑想象画面中显得尤为突出。社会动荡和愤怒的年轻男人之间存在着必然联系，历史也指出了挫败沮丧的婚姻期望和社会动荡有所关联，例如因清朝统治阶级对未婚男子形象的妖魔化而形成的紧张局势。

The abolition of hukou is crucial to bridging the rural-urban divide. Both central and local governments have tinkered with the system, but further reform is unlikely. That’s because increasing opportunity for rural migrants necessarily means increasing competition for the established urban middle class - themselves seen as a key stabilising social force in society. Unelected and perennially insecure, Communist Party leaders feel they can’t afford to risk instability by adopting meaningful redistributive social policies.

废除户口制度对缩小城乡差距至关重要。中央和地方政府都对这一政策进行了修改，然而再进一步的改革却是无法实现的。这是因为给农村移民提供越来越多的机会会导致其与已经建立起来的城市中产阶级之间的竞争愈演愈烈——而他们（城市中产阶级）被视为是稳定社会的主要社会力量。政府认为他们无力承担因采取有意义的再分配社会政策而要面临的风险和不稳定性。

Meanwhile, for millions like Liu and Jin, the search for love and intimacy – and with it dignity and social worth – goes on.

与此同时，数百万同刘和金一样，寻求爱情和亲密关系的人们——他们寻求其自我尊严和社会价值的旅程——还在继续。

英国网贴翻译

Fouquieria 18h ago
What an utter, despicable tragedy. Left to its own devices, nature is pretty good at balancing the sexes. Bureaucrats, social pressure and sex-selective abortion conspire to sentence millions upon millions of men to a lifetime without partnership. The human race never fails to take an opportunity to create misery.

这真是一个惨绝人寰的悲剧。撇开各种设备（政策措施）来看，自然很擅长平衡性别关系（男女人口比例）。官僚、社会压力和选择性堕胎联合密谋起来使数百万的男人被判终身没有伴侣。人类从来不放过任何能制造苦难的机会。

theoldManxman Fouquieria 18h ago
Actually nature usually provides a slight surplus of boys (about 105 to every 100 girls) which traditionally counteracts a slightly higher natural male mortality rate. But in the case of China it's now looking as if quite a lot of the the 'missing' girls were there all along . What seems to have happened (especially in rural areas) is that female births weren't registered because parents wanted to try for a second child. The 'missing' girls had to be registered eventually - when they went to secondary school or even later on marriage - and so are reappearing in the records. Since the one child policy was dropped in 2015, this is easier of course.

事实上，自然提供男生的人数会稍微多点（大概105个男孩对100个女孩）这往往与稍偏高的男性自然死亡率相抵消。但就中国来说，现如今还得考量那些“丢失”的女孩们这一因素。看起来发生的事情是（特别是在农村地区）父母并没有登记那些女孩，因为他们想要再生一个孩子。这些“失踪”的女孩最后不得不登记户口的时间是——当她们上中学甚至更晚在结婚的时候——只有这样她们才会重新出现在记录中。当然这种情况在2015年废除一胎政策后有所缓和。

There has been some criticism that Kennedy and Yaojiang's work overstates the number of girls who have 'reappeared', but it does look as if the demographic problem isn't as bad as had been feared.

人们批评肯尼迪和姚江夸大这些“重新出现”的女孩人口数量的这一行为，但是这的确使人口问题看起来没有我们所害怕的那么糟糕。

What this article makes clear is that at least as big a problem is the economic one caused by economic inequality and insecure employment. Those are problems not restricted to China, though they are particularly strong there.

这篇文章清楚地表明，经济不平等和不安全就业造成的问题同经济问题一样严峻。这些问题不局限于中国，但在中国形势更严重而已。

Traditionalme Fouquieria 16h ago
Think of the business opportunity that emerges here for sex robots.

想想当性爱机器人出现在这里的时候所带来的商机。

spoofed Fouquieria 16h ago
*sex-selective abortion conspire to sentence millions upon millions of men to a lifetime without partnership*

“选择性堕胎联合密谋起来使数百万的男人被判终身没有伴侣”。

Funny how the systematic abortion and infanticide of girls only really becomes a problem when it is realised that there may be negative consequences for men...

真有趣，当司空见惯的女婴流产和死亡严重到对男人造成负面影响时，人们才会将其视为问题...

Fortescue99 Fouquieria 16h ago
What about a woman's right to choose?

女人的选择权去哪儿了？

Billy Gerant Fortescue99 15h ago
From reading the headline I would say they have exercised that right in earnest!

看过这个标题，我可以说他们真的有好好行使这个权力！

Fouquieria Traditionalme 15h ago
Think of the business opportunity that emerges here for sex robots.

“想想当性爱机器人出现在这里的时候所带来的商机。”

Even if sexbots become indistinguishable from humans, these men would be the ones assembling them but on wages too low to buy them.

即使那些性爱机器人从外形看起来与人类别无二致，这些男人也只是组装她们的工人，而不是购买她们的消费者因为薪水太低。

swanpride theoldManxman 15h ago
Huh...I always though that nature provides slightly more females to counteract the fact that women have a higher mortality rate due to giving birth being a really dangerous task. At least in the past, the average live expectation of women was considerably lower compared to men...naturally that changed once giving birth became less dangerous, and now it is the women who have a higher live expectation.

恩....我一直以为自然会提供多点的女性是为了抵消女性因自然分娩这个艰巨的任务所造成的偏高的死亡率。至少在过去，女性对生活水平的平均期望值比男性低...自然而然当女性分娩的风险率降低使这情况有所改变，现如今是女性对生活有更高的期望值。

farabundovive spoofed 13h ago
Funny how the systematic abortion and infanticide of girls only really becomes a problem when it is realised that there may be negative consequences for men...

“真有趣，当司空见惯的女婴流产和死亡严重到对男人造成负面影响时，人们才会将其视为问题...”

If you have a daughter or two to sell... er... marry off, and can expect a fat dowry in return, the consequences won't be quite so negative.
Can't have it both ways.

如果你有一个或者两个女儿，卖...不不不....把她们嫁出去的话，你可以得到一笔丰厚的嫁妆，所谓的后果也就没有那么消极。
当然鱼和熊掌不能兼得。

zz9pluralzalpha 18h ago
Can't end well. I can't imagine a life working like a slave with no realistic prospect of a meaningful relationship. Why would you bother?

不能善终。我无法想象像个奴隶一样辛劳工作一辈子却收获不到一段有意义的伴侣关系。你费这个劲做啥？

Traditionalme zz9pluralzalpha 16h ago
In China perhaps women shall have two men.

在中国，可能会出现一女二夫。

250022 Traditionalme 16h ago
64% of them can't.

其中64%是不可能的。

paulchristo 15h ago
Hanging around an abondoned sofa with your belly out is probably not a good strategy for meeting women.

在一个废弃的沙发处无所事事乱晃荡，而且还露着肚皮可能并不是一个邂逅女性的好方式吧。

SAMcG 16h ago
I've never understood why some cultures reject daughters. Who do they think their sons will marry? Who will have their grandchildren? It is it totally illogical.

我永远也无法理解为什么有些文化拒绝女儿呢。他们以为自己的儿子将来要跟谁结婚？谁将给他们带来孙子？这完全不符合逻辑。

jakeleehutch SAMcG 16h ago
First of all, most of the undeveloped societies are terribly patriarchal. Secondly, in many such societies, you have to fork up a hell of a lot of money to marry your daughter off.

首先，大多数不发达的社会奉行极端的父权主义。其次，在许多这样的社会里，你必须挣一大笔钱把自己的女儿嫁出去。

QueenofWonderland SAMcG 16h ago
This is clearly because you haven't looked into other cultures. Often it is as simple as who will support them in old age. The son's and their wives look after their parents in old age while daughters look after their husbands parents. If you only have daughters then you will not have any security in your old age. Then on top of this if you have to pay another family to look after your daughter then it is an extra cost.

很显然你并不了解其他文化。最常被涉及到的问题是谁给他们养老。当他们老了儿子和其妻子会照顾他们，同时自己的女儿则去照顾其公婆。如果你只有女儿的话，那你老年的时候就没有任何保障。除此之外，你还必须付钱给另外一个家庭让其照顾你的女儿，这就造成一笔额外的开销了。

Lime83 jakeleehutch 15h ago
"Most of the u developed societies are terribly patriarchal"

“大多数不发达的社会奉行极端的父权主义”。

I know people like to think that it is only those poor, u civilised countries that are terrible, but marital rape was legal until the 80s in the uk. Women only got the right to have a bank account in the late seventies in France.
Etc, etc.

我知道人们喜欢这么想，认为只有那些贫困的、不文明的国家才会出现这种可怕的事情，但是在英国80年代以前，婚内强暴是合法的。在法国70年代末女性只有拥有银行账户这一项权利。
诸如此类还有很多。

Patriarchy is found everywhere one finds men. And men are everywhere. So....

有男人的地方就会出现父权主义。而男人遍布全世界。所以....

QueenofWonderland xxyx 15h ago
Given the times when you post I assume you live in Europe or at least the west. Traditional western countries yes often daughters do look after parents. That is not the case in other countries. IN china daughters are expected to look after their in-laws, traditionally specking. Baring in mind if you are talking about the communist country 30 years ago. Girls born today may experience a different life but that wont impact the gender imbalance for a couple of decades.

考虑到你发布的时间，我想你可能生活在欧洲或者至少是在西方。传统的西方国家，没错经常是由女儿来赡养自己的父母。但是在其他国家并非如此。在中国，有女儿是用来照顾公婆的传统习俗。考虑到你说的是30年前的共产主义国家。现如今出生的女孩会体验到不同的生活，但这并不会影响持续了几十年的性别失衡现象。

Lynne James 17h ago
This was always going to happen with the traditional preference for boy children and the one-child per family policy. At least now young women have a market value that they never had before and can pick and choose their mates. Misogyny just got slapped.

如果传统上选择男孩和一胎政策，总会发生这种事情，至少现在的年轻女性具有其从未有过的市场价值，可以挑选自己的伴侣。贬低女性（的人）被打脸了。

reluctanttorontonian Lynne James 16h ago
Or, young women are being sold to the highest bidder by their parents. Dowries don't equal liberation.

或者，这些年轻的女人被自己的父母卖给最高出价者。嫁妆并不等同于解放。

（译者：masamaso）

（来源：http://www.ltaaa.com/wtfy/23351.html）