In China, Money can buy love
BEIJING — Money really can buy you love in China — or at least that seems to be a common belief in this increasingly materialistic country.
在中国，钱真的能买到爱情。至少，在这个逐步物质化的国家，‘金钱买得到爱情’似乎已经成了一种普遍观念。
Many personal stories seem to confirm that the ideal mate is the one who can deliver a home and a car, among other things; sentiment is secondary.
很多人的故事似乎能够证实这一点：理想伴侣一定要有房有车，当然还要有其它东西；感情已经退居其次了。
However widespread this mercantilist spirit, not everyone thinks it is a good thing. A spate of Chinese films, plays and television shows have raised the question: What is love in an age of breakneck economic growth?
不管这种重商思想有多普遍，并非所有人都认为这是件好事儿。中国有一大批电影、戏剧和电视剧提出了这样一个问题：在这个经济极速发展的时代，爱情究竟是什么？
Many Chinese were shocked this year when a female contestant on a popular TV dating show, “If You Are the One,” announced: “I’d rather cry in a BMW than smile on a bicycle.” But others insisted that the contestant, Ma Nuo, now popularly known as “the BMW woman,” was merely expressing a social reality.
今年，一个广受欢迎的电视相亲节目《非诚勿扰》中，一名女嘉宾的一句“宁愿在宝马里哭，也不愿在自行车上笑”着实让很多中国观众大吃一惊。但是很多人相信，被冠以“宝马女”称呼的嘉宾马诺只是表达出了一种社会现实。
Rocketing property prices in recent years have contributed to such feelings, with many people in Beijing and other cities accepting the idea that a woman will pursue a relationship with a man only if he already owns an apartment.
在北京和其它城市的很多人正在逐步接受这样的想法：女人只愿意跟有房的男人谈‘感情’，而近年来飙升的房价已然成了催化剂。
Feng Yuan, a 26-year-old who works in a government education company, tried to set up a friend with a man she thought suitable.
“When she heard he didn’t own an apartment, she refused even to meet him,” recalled Ms. Feng. “She said, ‘What’s the point? Without an apartment, love isn’t possible.”’
26岁的Feng Yuan在一家政府教育机构工作。她曾想把一个女性朋友介绍给一个自己觉得合适的男人。Feng Yuan说：“她听说他没房子的之后，根本见都不愿意见。她说：‘那样有什么意义？没房子，爱情根本没可能。’”
Fueling these attitudes is a drumbeat of fear. After three decades of fast-paced, uneven economic growth, there is enormous anxiety among those who feel they are being left behind, lacking the opportunities and contacts to make big money while all around them others prosper and prices soar.
强烈的恐惧刺激着这种态度。30年的快速、不均衡的经济发展之后，很多人富起来了，物价也飞速上涨，很多人感到在这样的大环境下自己被时代遗忘了、缺少赚大钱的机会和社会关系。
The new creed can be hard, as a 26-year-old cultural events organizer learned.
The man, who asked for anonymity to protect his privacy, earns about 4,000 renminbi, or $600, a month, making even a modest apartment in an unfashionable district of Beijing unaffordable. These homes can cost about $3,000 per square meter, or about $280 per square foot. Housing inflation is severe. Ten years ago, a similar apartment cost about $345 per square meter.
这种金钱至上的人生信条会很残酷，一名不愿透露姓名的男性受访者深有体会。这名文化活动组织者月收入4000人民币，就算是北京偏远区域的一套普通公寓都负担不起。那样的房子每平米两万以上。中国目前的房屋价格上涨严重。十年前，类似的公寓房大概只要两三千每平米。
Instead, he tried to impress his girlfriend of three years by saving for a year to buy aniPhone 3. The newer iPhone 4 — a hot status symbol — had just gone on sale. But at about $900, that was beyond his means.
The phone was not enough. Last week, she left him, citing pressure from her parents to find a richer mate.
所以他只能用其它办法讨女友欢心。他用攒了一年的钱买了一部iPhone3给交往了三年的女友。象征地位的iPhone4已经开始降价了，但五六千块的价格让他无能无力。一部手机是不够的。上周，女友以来自父母的要找个有钱老公的压力为由跟他分手了。
He is heartbroken, believing, despite all, that his girlfriend truly loved him. “Why else did she live with me for three years?” — albeit in a rented apartment. Yet, he is philosophical, too.
“I understand her situation and the pressure from her family,” he said. “I also understand that her parents want their daughter to find someone who can give her a better life.”
他伤心欲绝，但尽管如此，仍相信女友曾真心爱过他。“不然他为什么跟我一起住了三年？”尽管是在租住的公寓里。但他还能保持冷静：“我理解他的处境和来自家庭的压力。我也能理解她的父母想让自己的女儿找到一个能给她提供更优越生活的伴侣。”
The only way to find love, he said, is to become rich. “The most important thing for me now, is to work and earn a living.” he said. “I need to grow stronger, support myself and my parents, and then my future girlfriend can have a good life.”
他说，得到爱情的唯一途径就是赚钱。“现在，对我来说最重要的事情就是工作和谋生。我得变强大，不仅要自食其力还要供养父母，那样我未来的女朋友就能生活得好一点。”
Such calculations have their critics. The hard-nosed attitude of Ms. Ma, the BMW woman, earned her a gentle reprimand recently from the film director Zhang Yimou. In an interview in The South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong newspaper, he urged young people to re-examine their values.
“I don’t think economic advancement and our yearning for love are mutually exclusive,” he said.
这样的想法也受到了各种批评。‘宝马女’马诺的现实态度受到了著名导演张艺谋温和的指责。在接受香港《南华早报》采访时，张艺谋呼吁年轻人重审自己的价值观。他说：“我认为经济发展和我们对爱情的渴望并不是互相排斥的。”
Mr. Zhang, who turns 59 on Sunday, represents an older generation that remembers the more egalitarian, if also poorer and more politically repressive, Maoist era, before the economic changes that unleashed the scramble for material advancement.
刚满59岁的张艺谋代表了毛泽东时代平等主义背景下更贫穷和政治压抑的一代人。那时，经济变化尚未引起人们对物质的追求。
His latest film, “Under the Hawthorn Tree,” depicts the innocent love between a teacher, Jing Qiu, and a geologist, Lao San. Set in 1975 toward the end of the Cultural Revolution, and without a BMW in sight, the film shows the teacher spending quite a lot of time smiling on her sweetheart’s bicycle. Love is the thing, it concludes.
张艺谋的最新影片《山楂树之恋》讲述了女教师静秋和地质工作者老三之间纯洁的爱情故事。发生在1975年、文革即将结束的背景之下，故事里没有宝马，只有静秋坐在老三的自行车上甜笑。爱令一切无往不胜。
Other productions have joined the debate.
“Fight the Landlord,” a play by Sun Yue that premiered in Shanghai last month, is another ringing defense of love in an age of materialism.
A character known as B, grilled by a potential mother-in-law about her very ordinary income, yells: “Don’t think that because I have nothing to be proud of you can insult and destroy me!”
“I have my dignity and pride,” B says, “and I don’t want to turn love, which I value so much, into something vulgar and pale!”
其它影视作品也纷纷加入这场关于爱情和现实的辩论。
由孙悦改编的话剧《斗地主》上个月在上海首演，这又是这个物欲横流的年代里一场响亮的‘爱情保卫战’。主角B的普通收入被准婆婆诟病，忍不住大喊：“别以为我没什么可骄傲的你就可以随便侮辱我！”B说：“我也有骄傲和自尊。我不愿把自己珍视的爱情变的庸俗、苍白!”
A new film, “Color Me Love,” celebrates the cult of materialism but also comes down, somewhat, on the side of love. Modeled on “The Devil Wears Prada,” and with product placement for Hermès, Versace and Diesel, it follows poor but gorgeous Fei as she arrives in Beijing to intern at a fashion magazine.
另一部影片《爱出色》大肆吹捧了对物质主义的狂热，但也稍稍赞美了下爱情。以影片《时尚女魔头》为蓝本的《爱出色》讲述了美丽窘迫的汪小菲来到北京在一家时尚杂志实习的故事，片中不乏爱马仕、范思哲和迪赛尔的植入广告。
“Fei, one day you’ll understand,” Zoe, her glamorous editor, cautions her. “Nothing is as important as the person you’ll spend the rest of your life with.”
A tumultuous courtship with a wacky artist named Yihong ends up with the couple united in New York. A closing shot shows her in his arms, a diamond on her finger. The real fantasy, perhaps, is love plus money.
杂志社的编辑Zoe提醒她说：“小菲，有一天你会明白，没有什么比能跟你共度余生的那个人还重要。”
在经历了一段轰轰烈烈的爱情纠葛后，小菲和先锋艺术家亦鸿在纽约重逢。小菲依偎在亦鸿怀里，手上闪耀着钻戒的光芒。也许，最终的梦想应该是爱情加财富。
Ms. Feng, who had failed to find a match for her apartmentless friend, said the demands that many Chinese women make on prospective mates reflected weakness, not power. Lower in status, they fear not getting what they want in life, and look to men to provide it.
“Women are very dependent,” she said. “I blame them. Why can’t they work hard and buy a house together with their man? But very few women today think like that.”
上文中提到的没能帮自己没房子的朋友介绍到女友的冯小姐说很多中国女性对未来伴侣的要求体现出的不是力量，而是软弱。由于地位较低，女性害怕得不到她们想要的，只能指望男人来提供一切。
冯小姐说：“现在的女性非常想依赖别人。这都怪她们自己。为什么不能自己努力工作然后跟自己的男人一起买套房子？但是现在很少有女性这么想。”
Few Chinese men do either, reinforcing the rules of the game. For the 26-year-old events organizer, losing his love to money was justifiable.
“We didn’t need to waste time on a relationship that was doomed to vanish,” he said.
其实，也很少有男人这么想，这更强化了游戏规则。对于那位26岁的活动组织人员来说，爱情败给金钱看似合理。他说：“我们没必要在注定要消失的爱情上浪费时间。”
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