【中文标题】在中国，金钱通常可以买到爱情
【原文标题】In China, Money Can Often Buy Love
【登载媒体】纽约时报
【原文链接】http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/12/world/asia/12iht-letter.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=In%20China,%20Money%20Can%20Often%20Buy%20Love&st=cse
金钱在中国真的可以买到爱情——至少这个越来越物质化的国家中的大部分人是这么认为的。
很多现实中的故事似乎证明，理想的配偶是能负担得起住房和汽车的人，感情是次要的。
尽管社会上蔓延着这种重商主义情绪，但人们并不认为这是件好事。一系列中国的电影、戏剧和电视剧都提出了一个问题：急速经济增长背景下的爱情应该是什么样子的？
在今年十分流行的电视婚恋节目《非诚勿扰》中，一位女性参赛者当众宣布：“我宁可坐在宝马里哭，也不愿意在自行车后座上笑。”很多中国人被这番话惊得目瞪口呆。但是也有一些人认为现在被称作“宝马女”的参赛者马诺，仅仅是表达了社会的现实。
近些年高涨的房价激发了更多的类似念头，北京和其它很多城市的人都接受了这种观点：一个女人会与有房子的男人发展恋爱关系。
26岁的冯媛在一家政府教育公司工作，她试图把自己的一个朋友撮合给一位男士，她觉得他们挺般配的。
冯女士回忆道：“当她听说他没有房子的时候，干脆拒绝见面。这是为什么？没有房子就没有爱情吗？”
这种心态背后隐藏的是一种恐惧感。在经过三十年快速、不平均的经济增长之后，那些被落在发展后面的人产生出一种焦虑的情绪。他们缺少挣大钱的机会和熟人，而周围的人纷纷发家致富，物价也在不断攀升。
就像这位26岁的文化编辑所了解到的，新的信仰是残酷的。
出于保护隐私的考虑，一位不愿意透露姓名的男士介绍了他的情况。他每月挣4000元人民币，大约600美元，这让他无力承担哪怕北京偏远地区的一所公寓的价格。现在这些房子的售价是每平米3000美元，合280美元一平方英尺。房子价格飙升迅速，10年前类似房子的价格只有每平米345美元。
于是，为了讨好交往三年的女友，他存了一年的钱购买了一部iPhone 3。iPhone 4其实才是热门身份的象征，但由于刚刚上市，900美元的价格超过了他的能力范围。
实事证明，手机是远远不够的。她在上星期离开了他，说父母方面的压力让她必须找一个有钱的伴侣。
他被这个消息击垮了，尽管发生了这样的事情，他依然相信他们之间存在真爱。“她为什么还和我一起生活了三年呢？”——尽管是在租来的公寓中。但他也很冷静：“我能理解她的难处，和她家庭的压力。她的父母当然希望自己的女儿找到一个能给她更好生活的男人。”
他认为，找到真爱的唯一方法就是发财。“对我来说，现在最重要的事情就是努力工作、挣钱。我要变得更强大，养活我自己、赡养我的父母，然后给我未来的女朋友一个更好的生活。”
这种逻辑遭到了一些批判。著名导演张艺谋对宝马女马女士冷酷的态度给予了一些相对温和的批评。在接受香港一家报社《南华早报》的采访时，他敦促年轻人重申审视自己的价值观：“我认为经济进步和对爱情的追求并不是矛盾的。”
59岁的张先生代表老一代人回忆起那个相对平均、贫穷、政治敏感的毛泽东时代，那是在释放大众物质欲的经济政策变化之前的年代。
他最新一部影片《山楂树之恋》描述了一位教师——静秋和一位地质学者——老三之间纯真的爱情。故事从1975年一直讲到文化大革命结束。影片里没有宝马，但是那位教师一直微笑地坐在她心上人的自行车后座上。影片认为这就是爱情。
其它一些影视作品也加入到讨论中来。
由孙悦执导的话剧《斗地主》上个月在上海首演，这是另外一部在物欲横流的年代旗帜鲜明捍卫爱情的作品。
其中有一个角色叫B，在被未来的丈母娘质问其普通的收入水平之后喊到：“别以为我没有什么东西，你就可以侮辱我、伤害我！我也有自己的尊严，我不想把那么崇高的爱情变成粗俗和苍白的东西。”
新片《爱出色》则颂扬了物质崇拜的观念，但依然无法让爱情跟随物质需求发展。影片克隆自《穿普拉达的女王》，其中充满爱马仕、范思哲和迪赛的品牌。讲述贫穷、漂亮的小菲来到北京，在一家时尚杂志做实习生的事情。
风姿绰约的编辑Zoe警告她：“小菲，有一天你会明白，没有什么要比与你相伴一生的人更重要。”
反叛的艺术家亦泓对她进行狂风暴雨般地追求，最后，两人在纽约团聚。一个近镜头中，她趟在他的怀中，手指上戴着一枚钻戒。钱加爱情，这可真是一种幻想。
无法为女伴找到对象的冯女士说，很多中国女性对于有经济实力的伴侣的渴望，反映出女性群体的弱势地位。由于地位低下，她们担心无法过上心仪的生活，因此期望男性可以帮助她们实现这些愿望。
她说：“女性非常不独立，我很看不起她们，你为什么不去努力工作，买一个房子，写上自己的名字呢？但是几乎没有女人是这样想的。”
中国男人也同样不这样认为，这让游戏根本无法进行下去。对于冯女士来说，在爱情与金钱的较量中落败并不丢脸。
“为什么要在将来注定要失败的婚姻上浪费时间呢？”
原文：
BEIJING — Money really can buy you love in China — or at least that seems to be a common belief in this increasingly materialistic country.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.”’
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.
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.
Instead, he tried to impress his girlfriend of three years by saving for a year to buy an iPhone 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.
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.”
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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!”
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.
“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.
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.”
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. |
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