“The convenience of the high trees” [Ted Hughes]
“高树的便利”[Ted Hughes]
Convenience is a hot topic in China. There is much talk of the convenience of life here, all of us app-tapping our way to easy food, shopping and travel. Convenience had a super-boost with the advent of translation apps, allowing many to bypass or completely abandon their Chinese learning efforts in favour of waving a phone in a stranger’s face. And of course everything got that much more convenient after the lifting of the COVID restrictions.
便利在中国是一个热门话题。 这里有很多关于生活便利的讨论，我们所有人都在应用程序上轻松享受美食、购物和旅行。 随着翻译应用程序的出现，便利性得到了超级提升，允许许多人绕过或完全放弃他们的中文学习努力，而是在陌生人面前挥舞手机。 当然，在解除新冠肺炎限制后，一切都变得更加方便了。
The flip side of this, as you may already have sensed, is that what we gain in convenience, we can lose the attendant rewards for the struggle.
正如你可能已经感觉到的那样，这的另一面是，我们在便利中获得的东西，我们可能会失去斗争的回报。
Small daily interactions get minimised, shrunk down to saying “xie xie” to the Meituan delivery driver.
日常小互动被最小化，缩减到对美团送货司机说“xie xie”。
Many studies have shown that the fragmenting of our social lives and communities is detrimental to mental health and community cohesion.
许多研究表明，我们社会生活和社区的分裂不利于心理健康和社区凝聚力。
Trying and trying again to get the tone right for a taxi to the (correct!) train station is left behind, along with the chance to gradually get better at saying that tone. But don’t worry, I won’t pretend there’s a positive flip side to losing the COVID restrictions.
一次又一次地嘗試，為出租車（正確！）找到正確的音調 火车站被抛在后面，同时有机会逐渐更好地说这种语气。 但别担心，我不会假装失去新冠病毒限制有积极的一面。
So it appears convenience can be a double-edged sword; we must balance what we gain in ease with what we lose in human terms.
因此，便利似乎是一把双刃剑；我们必须平衡我们轻松获得的东西和我们失去的东西。
Whether or not you actively pursue a more “convenient” life is something you may not have thought about explicitly. But it is something worth thinking about.
你是否积极追求更“方便”的生活是你可能没有明确想过的事情。 但这是值得思考的事情。
What values drive you? Do you want ease and a frictionless life? Or is the struggle sometimes worth it?
什么价值观驱使你？ 你想要轻松无摩擦的生活吗？ 还是挣扎有时值得？
One area this self-reflection and idealism breaks down is the world of work. There has been much discussion since the pandemic of burnout, overwork and sustainability. If you actively seek a convenient and relaxed life (which is not a sin), how does this stack up with the need to earn money? And what if this comes piled with extra pressures of over-work and under-pay?
这种自我反思和理想主义打破的一个领域是工作世界。 自倦怠、过度劳累和可持续性的疫情以来，有很多讨论。 如果你积极寻求一种方便和轻松的生活（这不是罪过），这与赚钱的需要有什么影响？ 如果这伴随着工作过度和工资不足的额外压力呢？
An interesting trend has risen, as is so often the case, from Douyin (well, its western wing, TikTok): the “lazy girl job”. This provocative name invites an interesting debate on convenience. In essence, the lazy girl job fights back at overwork culture and China’s 996 working hour system (09:00 – 18:00, 6 days a week) by demanding a healthier work environment where workers have time for themselves and their own hobbies, interests and lives.
抖音（嗯，其西翼抖音）掀起了一种有趣的趋势：“懒惰的女孩工作”。 这个挑衅性的名字引发了一场关于便利性的有趣辩论。 从本质上讲，懒惰女孩的工作反击了超工文化和中国的996工作时间制（每周6天（09:00-18:00），要求一个更健康的工作环境，让工人有时间为自己以及自己的爱好、兴趣和生活。
While there is no strict definition, a lazy girl job should give a sense of safety (no dangerous working conditions or punishingly long shifts), a “comfortable” salary, a healthy work-life balance and should be remote or hybrid compatible.
虽然没有严格的定义，但懒惰女孩的工作应该给人一种安全感（没有危险的工作条件或惩罚性的长班次），“舒适”的工资，健康的工作与生活的平衡，并且应该是远程或混合兼容的。
This last point does raise a chuckle from me and other teachers in the room, but I can still appreciate the sentiment.
最后一点确实引起了我和房间里的其他老师的笑声，但我仍然可以欣赏这种情绪。
Pause a moment and examine your response to these criteria.
暂停片刻，检查您对这些标准的回应。
If you scoff and disregard them as, well, lazy, why? Are these (perhaps minus the remote requirement!) not reasonable demands for a healthy job? To be clear, the trend does not advocate actually doing your job lazily or badly. The idea is still that workers should meet requirements and perform competently. But by packaging the demands up under the title “lazy girl job”, attention is drawn to the fact that the overwork is now viewed as normal, and that the idea of just doing a job has been diminished to not doing enough.
如果你嘲笑并无视他们，嗯，懒惰，为什么？ 是这些（也许减去远程要求！） 对一份健康工作的要求不合理吗？ 说白了，这种趋势并不提倡真正懒惰或糟糕地做你的工作。 人们的想法仍然是，工人应该满足要求并胜任。 但通过将需求包装在“懒惰的女孩工作”的标题下，人们注意到一个事实，即过度劳累现在被视为正常，只是做一份工作的想法已经减少到做得不够。
How did we get here? And who does it benefit? Or who is it conveniencing?
我们是怎么到这里的？ 它对谁有好处？ 或者它在方便谁？
It is clear in China that 996 work culture is immensely inconvenient for almost everyone, except those reaping the profits. According to China’s state-owned media People’s Daily, a 2013 survey showed that 98.8 percent of Chinese IT industry workers self-reported health problems. It is not difficult to imagine it hasn’t improved much in the intervening decade.
在中国，很明显，996工作文化对几乎每个人来说都是非常不方便的，除了那些获得利润的人。 据中国国有媒体《人民日报》报道，2013年的一项调查显示，98.8%的中国IT行业工人自我报告了健康问题。 不难想象，在过去的十年里，它并没有有太大的改善。
Having limited access to family, friends, downtime and exercise has obvious disbenefits. Unhappy workers are inefficient workers, so it is strange as well that employers push for untrammelled productivity at the cost of humanity. In August 2021, the Supreme People’s Court deemed 996 working hours illegal, but there is no confidence that companies will follow the ruling.
与家人、朋友、休息时间和锻炼的接触有限，有明显的不利。 不快乐的工人是低效的工人，所以雇主以人性为代价推动不受制的生产力，这也很奇怪。 2021年8月，最高人民法院认为996个工作小时是非法的，但对公司是否会遵守该裁决没有信心。
To return to the opening quote… the phrase comes from the poem, “Hawk Roosting”, written from the perspective of the titular bird of prey, sat at the top of the forest, surveying the world below him and his power over it.
回到开场白……这句话来自《鹰栖息》这首诗，从名义上的猛禽的角度写成，它坐在森林的顶部，观察着他下面的世界以及他对它的力量。
The personified bird describes his ability to fly, swoop and soar over his domain, to hunt and kill at ease, and the culmination of the powers of Creation that led to his being.
这只人格化的鸟描述了他飞翔、俯冲和翱翔的能力，轻松地狩猎和杀戮，以及导致他存在的创造力量的高潮。
The bird interestingly contrasts the purity, directness and brutality of the animal world (“my manners are tearing off heads”) with a “falsifying dream”, presumably human life.
有趣的是，这只鸟将动物世界的纯洁、直接和残暴（“我的举止是撕掉头”）与“伪造梦”（可能是人类生活）进行了对比。
Many have taken the hawk as a metaphor for a dictator, perhaps even a tyrant. Someone who rules his world with an iron fist and brooks no challenge to his dominance. But I like to see, in some of the softer, gentler images of the poem (such as “the air’s buoyancy and the sun’s ray”) a more positive image; that of a being in harmony with its surroundings, not in friction against them.
许多人把鹰当作独裁者的隐喻，甚至可能是暴君。 一个用铁拳统治他的世界的人，不挑战他的统治地位。 但我喜欢在诗歌中一些更柔和、更温和的图像（如“空气的浮力和太阳光”）中看到一个更积极的形象；一个与周围环境和谐相处的存在，而不是与周围环境摩擦。
An image somewhere between the frivolity of the lazy girl job and the life-risking grind of 996.
一个介于懒惰女孩工作的轻浮和996的冒着生命危险的磨练之间的形象。
In “the convenience of the high trees”, perhaps we could all find our balance between ease and struggle.
在《高大的樹木的便利》中，也許我們都可以在輕鬆和奮鬥之間找到平衡。
