中国式相亲现实排第一 条件互相比

　　BEIJING —Dating is hard at the best of times. In China the stakesare high from the outset: the expectation is that it should lead to marriage; never mind love for love’s sake.
　　即使万事俱备，相亲也不是一件容易的事。在中国，相亲从一开始就存在高风险：人们期望一段相亲可以最终带领他们走向婚姻，至于爱情，就显得无关紧要了。

　　A friend recently went on a blind date in Beijing. Arriving at the coffee shop, he found not only the girl but her mother, too. Within minutes she bombardedhim with questions: What does he earn? Where did he study? Does he own a house?
　　我的一位朋友最近参加了北京的一场相亲会。当他到达那家咖啡店时，他发现和相亲对象同时出现的还有她的母亲。短短几分钟内那位母亲向他扔出了一连串的问题：你赚多少钱？你从哪里毕业的？你有房子吗？

　　Romance in China is often sacrificed to practicality; dating has largely become a commercial transaction. In Beijing parents gather in parks to introduce their children to one another. Singles’ clubs set people up according to requirements —height, income, property. And tens of thousands descendon matchmaking events in cities like Shanghai looking for the perfect mate.
　　在中国，浪漫总是败给现实；相亲从很大程度上已经变成了一种交易。在北京，有许多父母聚集在公园里，把自己的孩子介绍给多位异性。单身俱乐部把客户按照他们的要求进行划分——身高、收入、财产。在上海这样的城市里，成千上万的人们涌向各种相亲活动，期待找到那个完美伴侣。

　　For Chinese men today, being the perfect mate means having a car, an apartment, a good salary and, preferably, a tall stature. Women, meanwhile, must be married by 27; after that they are branded sheng nu or “leftover women.” (This derogatoryterm —whose prefix “sheng” is the same word used in “leftover food” —was listed as a new word in 2007 by the Chinese Ministry of Education).
　　对于当今中国的男人们来说，完美老公的定义是有车有房，高收入，如果身高也不错就更完美了。而女人们一定要在27岁之前嫁出去，否则就会被贴上“剩女”的标签。（“剩女”是一个贬义词，其中“剩”和“剩饭”里的“剩”是一个意思，而这个词已经在2007年被中国教育部收录为新词。）

　　“Marriage in many ways in China is a way of pulling resources,” says Roseann Lake, a Beijing-based journalist researching a book on sheng nu. In one direction, at least. “The idea that a woman, no matter how successful she is professionally, is absolutely nothing until she is married —it still comes down to that.”
　　“中国的婚姻在许多方面就是财力的比拼，”一名常驻北京的记者罗斯安-雷克说。她正在研究一本关于剩女的书。至少在某种程度上来说是这样的。“有一种观点认为，一个女人无论在事业上多么成功，如果没有结婚她就依然一无所有。而这种观念依然大行其道。”

　　Matchmaking —through work units and family —was, and still is, commonplace. The one-child policy has further reinforced these expectations. With no welfare system in China, the young are expected to provide for the old: whom you marry matters for your entire family.
　　不管是过去还是现在，牵线配对依然非常普遍，无论是在工作单位还是在家庭环境中。计划生育政策又进一步助长了这种观念。由于中国欠缺社会福利体系，人们普遍认为年轻人应该供养老人。因此你和谁结婚事关整个家庭。

　　These concerns aren’t evenly shared, and they expose something of a generation gap. Children of the 1980s and 1990s —who were born in better economic times and fed on pop music and movies —are in less of a hurry to get married than their parents were.
　　并不是所有人都认同这种观念，这也从某种程度上反映出了代沟。生于80和90年代的孩子享受了更好的经济环境，他们听着流行音乐、看着电影长大——他们对于婚姻的渴望并不像他们的父辈那样强烈。

　　The best-selling author Wang Hailing, who wrote “Divorce with Chinese Characteristics,” relays stories of pushy mothers on her micro-blog. One told her daughter to attend blind dates while she’s still at a “valuable” age.
　　畅销书作家、《中国式离婚》的作者王海鸰在她的微博上连载心急的妈妈们的故事。有一位母亲让自己的女儿去相亲，虽然她的女儿还没有到“剩女”的年纪。

　　Xie Yujie, a 26-year-old resident of Wenzhou, a city of more than nine million some 230 miles south of Shanghai, is unmarried. Despite a promising career as a nurse, her parents remind her daily of her filialduties to find a husband. Xie is looking for love, but her parents chastiseher for not being more practical. “Money worship and materialism is the reality,” she explained last week.
　　26岁的谢玉洁（音）还是单身，她来自温州，一个有900多万人口、位于上海以南大约230英里的城市。她是一名护士，虽然这个职业不错，她的父母依然每天提醒她要找老公以尽孝道。谢玉洁想要追寻真爱，可她的父母却怪她太不现实。“拜金主义和物质主义才是现实，” 她解释说。

　　And so now some single women in Chengdu, in southwest China, pay more than $3,100 for a special training course in how to snag a millionaire husband.
　　而在中国西南部的城市成都，有些单身女性花了3100多美元参加特殊训练课，培训的主题是如何钓到富豪老公。

　　These are extremes, of course, but the pressures are real. Although China’s skewed birth rate means there will be a surplusof about 24 million men in China by 2020, the majority of these bachelors will live in rural areas. In major cities —where the rate of housing costs to income can reach 12:1 —finding a good match is a constant worry for educated, ambitious women.
　　当然这些都是极端的例子，但这种压力是真实存在的。虽然中国畸形的出生率意味着到2020年，中国会有2400万男性可能会打光棍，但这些人大部分还是会生活在农村地区。而在一些房价和收入的比例高达12:1的大城市，对于那些受过良好教育、有雄心壮志的女性来说，找一个好老公依然是让她们一直焦虑的问题。

　　They’ll be looking not just for a fetching smile or that spark of chemistry, but also for the promise of money and connections.
　　对于那些参加相亲会的人来说，他们不仅仅在寻找一个迷人的微笑或是爱情的火花，他们更期待的是金钱和关系上的保证。