经济学人514:幻灭的上班族 屌丝之梦

　　Disillusioned 1 office workers

幻灭的上班族

China's losers

中国失败者

Amid spreading prosperity, a generation of self-styled also-rans emerges

繁荣之中产生的“失败”一代

Man wearing suit on escalator

自动扶梯上的穿西装者

ZHU GUANG, a 25-year-old product tester, projects casual cool in his red Adidas jacket and canvas shoes. He sports the shadowy wisps of a moustache and goatee, as if he has the ambition to grow a beard but not the ability. On paper he is one of the millions of up-and-coming winners of the Chinese economy: a university graduate, the only child of factory workers in Shanghai, working for Lenovo, one of China's leading computer-makers.

25岁的朱广是个产品测试员，红色的阿迪达斯夹克和帆布鞋显出他的随性。他的嘴唇和下巴上都留着稀疏的几缕胡子，似乎是想长一圈络腮胡子却没得逞。按理说，他是中国经济中千百万个有前途的成功者之一：他是大学毕业生，上海工人家庭的独子，并在中国最大的电脑制造商联想公司上班。

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But Mr Zhu considers himself a loser, not a winner. He earns 4,000 yuan a month after tax and says he feels like a faceless drone at work. He eats at the office canteen and goes home at night to a rented, 20-square-metre room in a shared flat, where he plays online games. He does not have a girlfriend or any prospect 2 of finding one. “Lack of confidence”, he explains when asked why not. Like millions of others, he mockingly calls himself, in evocative modern street slang, a diaosi, the term for a loser that literally 3 translates as “male pubic hair”. Figuratively it is a declaration of powerlessness in an economy where it is getting harder for the regular guy to succeed. Calling himself by this derisive 4 nickname is a way of crying out, “like Gandhi”, says Mr Zhu, only partly in jest. “It is a quiet form of protest.”

然而朱认为自己是个失败者。他的税后工资只是每月4,000元，并说自己工作时就像个没人注意的机器。通常，他在公司食堂吃饭，晚上就回到自己在合租公寓里租的20平米大的小房间玩网络游戏。他没有女友，也并不想找一个。“没信心啊”，当被问到为什么不找时，他这样回答。和千百万人一样，他戏称自己是“屌丝”，一个表示失败者的街头俚语，本义是“男性的yin毛”。它形象地表达出了这个经济体中那些越来越难获得成功的普通人的无力感。以这个称谓自嘲是一种发出呼声的方式，“就像甘地”，朱并只是在开玩笑，“这是一种无声的反抗。”

Calling yourself a diaosi has also become a proud statement of solidarity 5 with the masses against the perceived corruption 6 of the wealthy. The word itself entered the language only recently, appealing to office grunts 7 across the country, especially in the IT industry. A mostly male species, diaosi are often daydreamers with poor social skills and an obsession 8 with online gaming. They are slightly different from Japan's marriage-shunning “herbivore” young men in that fewer of them have chosen their station in life. Society has chosen it for them, especially with property prices climbing well beyond their reach. Several recent studies show that, while incomes across Chinese society continue to rise, social mobility 9 has worsened. Yi Chen of Nanjing Audit 10 University and Frank A. Cowell of the London School of Economics found that, since 2000, people at the bottom of society were more likely than in the 1990s to stay where they were. “China has become more rigid,” they conclude.

自称屌丝已经成了宣称自己是和社会中的大多数一样厌恶富裕群体腐败行为的方式。这个词语最近才出现，最初来自于办公室的闲聊，尤其是IT这个多数工作者都是男性的行业。屌丝通常指那些缺乏社交能力、沉迷网络游戏还老做白日梦的人。他们和日本那些不愿结婚的“食草族”略有不同，极少数食草男已经选择了生活方式。但社会已经为屌丝们作出了选择，尤其是高速上涨的房价让他们根本无法触及。近期的几次调查显示，尽管中国社会的平均工资持续上涨，但社会流动性却进一步恶化了。南京审计学院的易辰（音）和伦敦政治经济学院的弗兰克·A·康维尔（Frank A. Cowell）发现，同上世纪90年代相比，2000年以后的社会底层群体停留在这个地位上的可能性更大。“中国社会已经变得更加僵化了。”他们总结到。

An online video sketch 11 show, “Diaosi Man”, shown on Sohu.com, an internet portal, mercilessly mocks the tribe. Since its debut 12 in 2012, the show's episodes have been streamed more than 1.5 billion times. In one recent episode a man tries to impress his beautiful dinner date with how busy he is at his job. He then receives a phone call from work, apologetically takes his leave to go to the office and finally pops up again as a waiter when his date asks for the bill. In the same episode a frustrated 13 new driver curses repeatedly at a Lamborghini in the next lane and screams, “Are you bullying 14 me because I don't know any traffic cops?” In the next scene he is in a neck brace 15 and his nose is broken.

门户网站搜狐的网络剧集《屌丝男士》无情地嘲讽着这一群体。自2012首播以来，这部剧集已经被浏览了15亿次。最近一集中，某男想向跟他约会吃饭的美女炫耀他的工作有多忙。然后，他接到了一个工作电话并抱歉地返回了办公室，结果在美女结账时却又现身了——原来他是个服务员。同一集中，一个沮丧的新手驾驶员在向隔壁车道的兰博基尼不停地叫骂，并大叫道：“你欺负我就因为我不认识交警吗？”到了下一个场景里，他已经带上了脖套，鼻子也受伤了。

Mr Zhu says what makes him a diaosi is that he is the son of factory workers. He is not fu er dai—second-generation rich—or guan er dai—the son of powerful government officials. He and his diaosi colleagues feel that, with connections or cash, they might have attended a better university and found a better job.

朱说自己变成屌丝是因为自己只是工人的儿子。他不是富二代或者官二代，爹妈不是富人也不是大官。他和屌丝同事们都觉得，如果有关系或者有钱的话，他们就能上更好的大学，并找到更好的工作。

With after-tax income of nearly $8,000 a year, Mr Zhu would look to many people in China comfortably on his way to the middle class. He is among the lower wage-earners at Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park in Shanghai, but even many higher earners call themselves diaosi, or refer to themselves as “IT labourers”. Though their salaries are above average even in Shanghai—which had China's third-highest annual urban disposable income per person in 2012 at 40,000 yuan—the cost of appearing successful is stratospheric. A fancy flat and a cool car are well beyond their reach. They are wage slaves who cannot hope to be gao fu shuai—tall, rich and handsome—and marry a woman who is bai fu mei—fair-skinned, rich and beautiful.

有着8,000美金税后年薪的朱和许多人一样想成为中产阶级。他的工资在上海张江高科技园区并不算高，但很多收入更高的人也自称“屌丝”或者“码农”。虽然他们的工资甚至超过了上海平均工资，2012年上海的城市人均可支配年收入达到了40,000元。想要看起来成功的代价非常高。他们永远买不起那些豪车洋房。他们只是工资的奴隶，成不了高富帅也娶不上白富美。

This might seem quite normal for a rapidly developing economy. But Zhang Yi, a sociologist 16 at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think-tank in Beijing, says this diaosi feeling of relative deprivation 17 is a troubling consequence of China's growing wealth gap. In an interview devoted 18 to the subject for the website of Phoenix 19 Television, a Hong Kong satellite network, Mr Zhang concluded that people at the bottom feel utterly 20 alienated 21. They feel less hopeful than they did before of ever moving up in life, he said.

对快速发展的经济体来说，这个现象似乎相当正常。然而中国社会科学院的张翼却认为，屌丝之所以会感到相对贫困化是中国日益增长的贫富差距的结果，令人感到担忧。在香港卫星电视台凤凰卫视网站一次关于这个话题的采访中，张翼总结说，底层人群怀着极强的疏离感。他说，相比以前，现如今的这些人认为改善个人境遇更加无望。

In spite of this, however, they do still represent a marketing 22 opportunity. There are, after all, many more of them than there are millionaires, even though it can be difficult to define the target market. At Dianping, a website offering restaurant reviews and consumer deals, Schubert You targets very low-wage workers in smaller cities (earning about $150 to $450 a month) with coupons 23 and group discounts. Mr You does not consider the IT workers of Shanghai and Beijing to be true diaosi.

尽管如此，屌丝群体依然是一个巨大的市场。虽然这个群体很难定位，但他们的数量比起百万富翁要多得多。来自大众点评网的Schubert You用优惠券和团购折扣来打动小城市的低收入工作者。You并不认为北京和上海的IT工作者真的就是屌丝。

But surveys show they believe they are. Last year Analysys International, a research company in Beijing, asked a broad cross-section of office workers if they saw themselves as diaosi. More than 90% of programmers and journalists and about 80% of food and service industry and marketing workers said they did. Those surveyed who least identified with being losers were civil servants, working for the government or the Communist Party.

不过调查显示这部分人自己倒是很确信。去年，位于北京的研究公司易观国际调查了不同层次的上班族，询问他们是否认为自己是屌丝。90%以上的程序员和记者，大约80%的食品、服务行业以及销售人员都给出了肯定的答案。受访者中自认为是失败者的比率最低的人群是公务员，那些为政府或是其党派工作的人。

1.work for 为…而工作；效劳

I went to work for the designer richard wurman.

后来我为设计师理查德沃曼工作。

We work for the government.

我们是为政府工作。

2.lack of 缺乏

Indeed, it has a noticeable lack of entrepreneurs altogether.

事实上，总体而言日本明显缺乏企业家。

He faulted a lack of self-control.

他将此归咎于缺乏自制。

3.cry out 呼喊，尖叫

Why did some children fearful cry out?

后来为什么有的孩子胆小爱哭了呢？

I want you to cry out.

我要你大声哭出来。

4.appeal to 诉诸武力；向…投诉

But when they communicate internally, they have to appeal to their employees 'emotions.

但在公司内部进行交流中又需要调动员工的情绪。

How are we supposed to design products that appeal to women without women? "

“没有女性的参与，我们怎么能设计出女性青睐的产品？”