中國兒童中的小皇帝和拜金女

Young people in China get a bad rap. Conventional wisdom says the boys are spoilt and fat, the girls flighty gold diggers — and the whole lot of them lazy, selfish and greedy. I have lived in China for seven years, and have met precious few mainland youths who fit those descriptions (except for maybe the plump part).

中國的年輕人名聲很差。人們普遍認爲，男孩太寵溺又肥胖，女孩則是輕浮的拜金女——而且不管男孩女孩都懶惰、自私、貪婪。我在中國生活了7年，但遇到過的符合這種表述的內地年輕人少得可憐（可能除了胖墩那部分）。

But don’t take it from me: I’m old enough to be their granny. Jemimah Steinfeld, on the other hand, has studied the Chinese twenty to thirtysomething in its own habitat: the bars, sex shops, online dating sites and matchmaking corners where the country’s complex, controversial and confusing youth culture is being made.

但是別輕信我的話：我都老得可以當他們的奶奶了。另一方面，耶米馬•斯坦菲爾德(Jemimah Steinfeld)深入第一線，在近距離對中國二、三十歲的年輕人進行了研究，其中包括酒吧、性用品店、交友網站、相親角，這些地方孕育着複雜、有爭議、令人困惑的中國年輕人文化。

Little Emperors and Material Girls: Sex and Youth in Modern China is based on extensive field research on the male and female of the species by Steinfeld, a London-based journalist and “self-confessed sinophile, feminist and history junkie” who has lived and worked in Shanghai and Beijing.

《小皇帝和拜金女：現代中國的性和年輕人》(Little Emperors and Material Girls: Sex and Youth in Modern China)基於斯坦菲爾德對中國年輕男女的大量實地調研。斯坦菲爾德是一名駐倫敦的記者，曾在上海和北京生活、工作，是一名“自己承認的中國粉、女權主義者以及歷史迷”。

This generation will end up running the nation — at which point who they are, how they think and how they were raised will really matter. And Steinfeld, too, thinks they are not as bad as advertised.

這一代人最終將統治這個國家——到那時，他們是誰、他們的思維習慣和成長環境將會很重要。而斯坦菲爾德也認爲，中國的年輕人並不像傳說中那麼糟糕。

Nor are they easy to stereotype. China has as many people under the age of 30 as the US has people of any age, notes Steinfeld. Not surprisingly, they don’t all fit neatly into categories.

也不容易對他們進行分類。斯坦菲爾德指出，中國30歲以下的人口與美國的總人口相當。並不奇怪的是，他們並非都完美符合各個類別的定義。

This meticulously researched but highly readable book lets the people in question prove that themselves (I’m glad she asked these questions and not me, since sex in China is still a very sensitive issue). She allows a dozen or so young people to speak at length, from “leFTover women” and “bare branches” (spinsters and bachelors), through the gamut of mistresses, gays, sexual rebels, Christians and even Communist party members who populate the younger generation. And the one thing she finds she can say about them with certainty is: they are very different from their parents.

這本書調查嚴謹但可讀性極高，讓調查對象自己傾述（我很高興她問了這些問題而不用我來問，因爲性在中國仍然是個非常敏感的話題）。她讓十幾個年輕人娓娓道來，其中既有“剩女”和“光棍”（大齡單身女人和單身漢），還有“二奶”、同性戀者、性反叛者、基督徒、甚至共產黨員，這些人構成了年輕一代。她發現她能確定的一點是：這些年輕人與父輩截然不同。

In fact, she avers, China has one of the world’s biggest generation gaps. “It’s a fundamental difference between them and us,” she writes. “While the West continues to change, it does so at a slower pace. It’s a gentle gradient rather than a steep slope and therefore the schism between old and young is much less pronounced.”

事實上，她斷言，中國有着世界最大的的代溝之一。“他們與我們有着根本上的區別，”她寫道，“雖然西方也在持續改變，但步伐較慢。西方的改變是平緩而不是陡坡式的，因此年長者與年輕人之間的代溝遠沒那麼明顯。”

Many parents of her subjects grew up during the Cultural Revolution, and suffered famine as toddlers. Their grandparents may even remember when women had bound feet, she points out. But those born in the 1980s and 1990s — the balinghou and jiulinghou — are the first generation to grow up rich. And therein lies their biggest problem, Steinfeld writes: their parents and grandparents want to live through them, counting on their only offspring to make up for the privations of decades.

在她的研究對象中，很多人的父母是在文化大革命期間長大的，幼年時曾經歷過饑荒。而他們的祖父母也許還記得女人裹小腳的時代。出生在上世紀80和90年代的年輕人——80後和90後——是在富裕條件下長大的第一代人。斯坦菲爾德寫道，這就帶來了他們最大的問題：父母及祖父母把希望全寄託在他們身上，指望自己唯一的後代彌補數十年的艱辛。

Unlike in the west, many of these children are willing at least to make the effort. Steinfeld points out that, while 21st century China is unrecognisable from that of the 20th century, one cultural thread remains: children’s powerful duty of filial piety. And duty number one is to marry and bear offspring. Love and sex today are still very much Mum and Dad’s business. Steinfeld even profiles one rake who takes Mummy along on dates in his Porsche.

與西方不同，這些孩子中有很多人至少願意付出努力。斯坦菲爾德指出，儘管21世紀的中國與20世紀已經不可同日而語，但一條文化脈絡依然存在：子女孝敬長輩的重大責任。而第一要務就是結婚生子。如今，子女的愛情和性生活在很大程度上仍然是爸媽要操心的事。斯坦菲爾德甚至描述了一個浪子開着保時捷帶上老媽去約會的事。

But there’s a statistical problem. A preference for boys, exacerbated by the one-child policy, will leave China with an estimated 20m more men under 30 than women by 2020, according to government research.

但是，這裏存在一個統計學問題。政府研究顯示，獨生子女政策加劇的重男輕女傾向意味着，到2020年中國30歲以下的男性估計會比女性多出2000萬。

And, since the existing men like to marry beneath them, that leaves “alpha women and beta men” without partners. Perhaps as a result, extramarital sex is on the increase. Steinfeld says the percentage of urbanites who have premarital sex — a big taboo before China opened up to the west a generation ago, and even since — quadrupled between 1989 and 2010 to 60 per cent. Yet 80 per cent of men still say they want to marry a virgin. Good luck with that.

而且，由於男性喜歡與不如自己的女性結婚，這導致“A檔女人和B檔男人”找不到伴侶。也許是因爲這一點，婚外性行爲呈上升趨勢。斯坦菲爾德稱，2010年，有過婚前性行爲（在一代人之前，即中國改革開放前，甚至是開放以來，這都是一大禁忌）的城市人口比例達到60%，是1989年的四倍。不過，竟有80%的男性仍然稱，他們希望娶一個處女。祝他們好運吧。

So spare a thought for China’s poor conflicted young people: caught between village and skyscraper, between one millennium and the next. They are sexual adventurers who still live at home with Mummy. They may be gay but still plan to marry to keep up appearances. And increasingly large numbers have no interest in bearing children but must do so to satisfy Granny. And I thought growing up in the 1960s was difficult.

所以，想想中國那些可憐而又矛盾的年輕人吧：他們被夾在鄉村和摩天大樓之間，一個千年和下一個千年之間。他們進行着性的探索，卻仍然與老媽住在一起。他們也許是同性戀，卻仍計劃結婚來顧全面子。越來越多的年輕人對生兒育女不感興趣，但又必須生個孩子讓爸媽滿意。我原本還以爲在上世紀60年代長大很艱難呢。

The writer is the FT’s Shanghai correspondent

本文作者爲英國《金融時報》駐上海記者

Little Emperors and Material Girls: Sex and Youth in Modern China, by Jemimah Steinfeld, I. B. Tauris (RRP£14.99, $19.95)

《小皇帝和拜金女：現代中國的性和年輕人》(Little Emperors and Material Girls: Sex and Youth in Modern China)，耶米馬•斯坦菲爾德(Jemimah Steinfeld)著，is出版社，建議零售價14.99英鎊/19.95美元