Earlier in 2018, Sammi Zhao, a returnee and a holder of Australian permanent residence, slurped her drink and thudded the tall glass on a table at The Loop, a favourite hangout spot in Nanjing. Complaining about “the hell” she had for Spring Festival, she said that her mother had turned everyone in the family against her for not being married at the age of 30.
2018 年初，海归、澳大利亚永久居留权持有者赵秀文在南京最受喜爱的聚会地点河套区喝了一口饮料，并将高脚玻璃杯重重地摔在了桌子上。她抱怨春节过得“太糟糕了”，她说她母亲因为她30岁还没有结婚而让家里所有人都反对她。
Sammi won’t be entering the dating market anytime soon.
Sammi短期内不会进入约会市场。
“Is it a crime for women to be thirty?” she asked, telling The Nanjinger that she wants to settle down. “I’m not even a feminist. I want have a man to share the bills with. But, hey, at least the man needs to be capable of that, right?”
“女人到了三十岁有罪吗？”她问道，并告诉《南京人》，她想安定下来。 “我什至不是女权主义者。我想要一个男人来分担账单。但是，嘿，至少这个男人需要有能力做到这一点，对吧？”
But to her dismay, all the men she went on the blind dates with are either, in her words, “whackos or wusses”, who, for instance, hurled it right in her face on their first date that he wasn’t going to do anything in the house once they get married.
但令她沮丧的是，用她的话说，所有和她相亲的男人要么是“疯子，要么是胆小鬼”，例如，他们在第一次约会时就当着她的面说，一旦他们结婚了，他就不会在家里做任何事情了。
“It’s all me. (He) said that I need to be presentable around the clock so I don’t shame him.”
“都是我。（他）说我需要全天候保持得体，这样我才不会让他感到羞耻。”
Sammi swigged her drink in three gulps and continued. “The cherry on top is that the pig is f****** ugly! No, ugly does not even justify the magnitude of his ugliness! I pride myself for having the guts to sit in front of that horrifying face of a tumour for nearly an hour and a half! But you know what my mum did? She called me shallow! So what the man is a little chubby?”
Sammi喝了三口酒，继续说道。 “最重要的是，这头猪太丑了！不，丑陋甚至不能证明他有多丑！我为自己有勇气在肿瘤那张可怕的脸前坐了近一个半小时而感到自豪！但你知道我妈妈做了什么吗？她说我肤浅！那这个男人有点胖乎乎的？”
“’Ugly is better than a pretty cheater’”, she said. Be a good wife to him and he’ll give you his money to keep you around. OMG! Does she not have a clue that the last dynasty of Chinese feudalism was toppled over 100 years ago?”
“‘丑陋的人比漂亮的骗子好’”，她说。做他的好妻子，他会给你钱来留住你。我的天啊！她难道不知道中国封建最后一个王朝在一百多年前就已经被推翻了吗？”
Sami’s problem put The Nanjinger on the spot with a barrage of more questions. For starters, since when did ugliness become the insurance against cheating? And why is it that Chinese women need to consume thousand dollars of lipsticks a year and go as far as having numerous plastic surgeries to please men, while men don’t even bother put on deodorant?
萨米的问题让《南京人》陷入了困境，并引发了一系列更多问题。首先，从什么时候开始，丑陋成为了防止作弊的保险呢？为什么中国女性每年需要消耗数千美元的口红，甚至进行无数次整容手术来取悦男性，而男性却懒得涂除臭剂？
Who or what has accoladed men with such privilege in China?
在中国，谁或什么赋予了男性如此特权？
Ugliness surely does not guarantee one’s rectitude. As Oscar Wilde once quipped, “Everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.”
丑陋并不能保证一个人的正直。正如奥斯卡·王尔德曾经打趣的那样：“世界上的一切都与性有关，除了性。性与权力有关。”
Whoever gets the upper hand, may it be the money or the face, powers up in the algorithm of sex. Being deeply aware of the gospel truth, both Chinese men and women have organised their own cults to play to win in the dating market.
无论是金钱还是面子，谁占了上风，谁就在性的算法中获得了优势。深刻认识到福音真理的中国男人和女人都组织了自己的邪教，以在约会市场上获胜。
Ayawawa, a polarising self-help guru who had her Weibo account suspended earlier in May, due to “inappropriate comments” on comfort women, is a good case in point. Ayawawa, whose real name is Yang Bingyang, and alleged to run the world’s largest “love consultancy”, is revered by a whopping number of Chinese women as a relationship expert. Her teaching of women’s manipulation of men through a display of absolute obedience to them is canonised as the salvation for single women nationwide.
阿亚瓦瓦（Ayawawa）是一位两极分化的自助大师，她的微博帐户因对慰安妇的“不当言论”而于五月初被暂停，她就是一个很好的例子。阿亚瓦瓦的真名是杨冰洋，据称经营着全球最大的“爱情咨询公司”，被众多中国女性尊为感情专家。她教导女性通过表现出对男性的绝对服从来操纵男性，这被认为是全国单身女性的救赎。
“Life is hard for women”, Ayawawa said in her online talk show a while back. “I give them survival strategies.”
“女人的生活很艰难”，Ayawawa 不久前在她的在线脱口秀节目中说道。 “我给他们生存策略。”
What constitutes the issue of 30s women as left-over has a striking parallel with the situation that is also its condition. It first captured international attention when the BBC reported China’s problem with “left-over” women back in the early 2010s. These women are often highly educated, career-driven and last but not least, in their 30s. Being a 30-something, for a woman, as far as the trend is concerned, is synonymous with being left-over, if not worse, because throughout the Chinese history, marriage has always been the gauge of a woman’s success.
30多岁女性“剩女”问题的构成与其所处的状况有着惊人的相似之处。早在 2010 年代初，当英国广播公司 (BBC) 报道中国的“剩女”问题时，它首次引起了国际关注。这些女性通常受过高等教育，有事业心，而且年龄在 30 多岁。三十多岁的女人，就潮流而言，就等于被剩女，甚至更糟，因为纵观中国历史，婚姻一直是衡量女性成功与否的标准。
Being single at 30 goes beyond an unfilial act, scathed by all the kin in the extended family, composed of distant relatives and long term friends; it is the final announcement of personal failure.
30岁单身不仅是不孝的行为，还会受到由远亲和长期朋友组成的大家庭中所有亲属的伤害；这是个人失败的最后宣告。
As regards the dating market, “It’s a bliss for a girl to be without a talent”. In other words, the more stupid is the girl, the less likely will she act out to change her fate. Whereas Chinese families inculcate in their girls the thousand-year-old belief that they can secure a good life by tethering a man if they fawn on him, they never begrudge spending extras on their daughters’ education; in school, girls are as much flogged as are boys to realise their best potential.
对于相亲市场来说，“女子无才也是福”。换句话说，越是愚蠢的女孩，就越不可能采取行动来改变自己的命运。尽管中国家庭向女儿们灌输了千年以来的信念，即只要对一个男人阿谀奉承，就可以拴住他，从而过上好日子，但她们却从不吝惜在女儿的教育上多花钱。在学校里，女孩和男孩一样受到鞭打，无法发挥自己的最佳潜力。
Yet, they do not understand until later in their womanhood that the education provided by their parents is more of dowry, one of the checks on the list of approvals for an ideal marriage, say, to a rich man.
然而，她们直到成年后才明白，父母提供的教育更多的是嫁妆，是批准理想婚姻（例如与富人结婚）的检查之一。
Likewise, Chinese parenting of boys is also problematic. Seldom are boys asked to do any chores, or “women’s work”. Being at centre of the family and protected by layers of parents, grands and great-grands, these mummy’s boys can hardly evade the fate of being a self-absorbed whacko-doddle.
同样，中国人对男孩的养育也存在问题。很少有人要求男孩做任何家务，或“女人的工作”。作为家庭的中心，受到父母、祖辈和曾祖辈的层层保护，这些木乃伊男孩很难逃脱成为一个自恋的混蛋的命运。
Whereas women scheme to tether men, men play their game to tame girls. Besides love consultancies for women, rampaging the country meanwhile is pickup artistry organisations that has made being an asshole into a profession. Their techniques entail steps of “trapping” and emotional manipulation.
女人计划束缚男人，而男人则玩弄她们的游戏来驯服女孩。除了针对女性的爱情咨询之外，与此同时，在全国肆虐的还有把混蛋变成了一种职业的把妹艺术组织。他们的技术包括“诱捕”和情绪操纵的步骤。
In today’s dating market, love is off the table. Against the context of consumerism where everything must sell, and where it is our fictions (bonds, stocks, and the idea of money), not productions, that really make the deal, few are eager to lean in and make a difference. By contrast, we want to lean on something, or someone, and lie down because our education has made us obedient adaptors to our given milieu. Smart, but not necessarily wise.
在当今的约会市场上，爱情已经不在讨论范围之内了。在消费主义的背景下，一切都必须出售，而且真正促成交易的是我们的虚构（债券、股票和金钱观念），而不是作品，很少有人渴望投入并有所作为。相比之下，我们想要依靠某物或某人，然后躺下，因为我们所受的教育使我们成为顺从的适应者，以适应特定的环境。聪明，但不一定聪明。