《经济学人》| 中国“单身狗”该独居吗？
Young, single and what about it?
| BEIJING
IN HER tiny flat, which she shares with two cats and a flock of porcelain owls, Chi Yingying describes her parents as wanting to be the controlling shareholders in her life.
除了自己，池莹莹（音）的小屋里还有两只猫和一群陶瓷猫头鹰。说起自己的父母，她觉得他们想成为她人生的控股者。
Even when she was in her early 20s, her mother raged at her for being unmarried. At 28 Ms Chi took “the most courageous decision of my life” and moved into her own home.
25岁以前，妈妈就对她还没结婚大发雷霆，28岁时，她做出“人生中最勇敢的决定”，搬出来自己住。
Now 33, she relishes the privacy—at a price: her monthly rent of 4,000 yuan ($625) swallows nearly half her salary.
如今33岁了，她真实的私密空间不无代价：月租金4000元花掉了一半工资。
In many countries leaving the family home well before marriage is a rite of passage. But in China choosing to live alone and unmarried as Ms Chi has done is eccentric verging on taboo.
在许多国家，婚前搬出家住是一种仪式。但在中国，像池小姐这样没结婚就搬出去住如同离经叛道。
Chinese culture attaches a particularly high value to the idea that families should live together. Yet ever more people are living alone.
中国文化认为一家人住在一起特别重要，但现在越来越多的人选择独居。
In the decade to 2010 the number of single-person households doubled. Today over 58m Chinese live by themselves, according to census data, a bigger number of one-person homes than in America, Britain and France combined.
在21世纪第一个十年中，单人家庭翻倍。抽样数据显示，现在超过5800万中国人自己过，比美国、英国和法国单人家庭的总和还多。
Solo dwellers make up 14% of all households. That is still low compared with rates found in Japan or Taiwan (see chart), but the proportion will certainly increase.
独居者占家庭总数的14%。这一比率仍然低于日本或台湾，但比例肯定还会增加。
The pattern of Chinese living alone is somewhat different from that in the West, because tens of millions of (mainly poor) migrant workers have moved away from home to find work in more prosperous regions of China; many in this group live alone, often in shoeboxes.
中国人独居的方式和西方有所不同，因为上亿穷苦的民工背井离乡去发达地区找工作，这一群体中许多人独居，常常蚁居。
Yet for the most part younger Chinese living alone are from among the better-off. “Freedom and new wealth” have broken China’s traditional family structures, says Jing Jun of Tsinghua University in Beijing.
但大多数更加年轻的独居中国人却家境不错。清华大学景军说，“自由和新财富”打破了中国传统的家庭结构。
The better-educated under-30-year-olds are, and the more money they have, the more likely they are to live alone. Rich parts of China have more non-widowed single dwellers: in Beijing a fifth of homes house only one person.
对于高学历、二十来岁的人，赚钱越多，自己住的可能性越大。中国的富裕地区未婚的单身更多，在北京有五分之一的房子只有一个人住。
The marriage age is rising, particularly in big cities such as Shanghai and Guangzhou, where the average man marries after 30 and the average woman at 28, older than their American counterparts.
结婚年龄正在变晚，特别在上海和广州这样的大城市，一般男人30岁后结婚，女人28岁后结婚，比美国年轻人还晚。
Divorce rates are also increasing, though they are still much lower than in America. More than 3.5m Chinese couples split up each year, which adds to the number of single households.
离婚率也在增长，尽管仍低于美国。每年超过350万中国夫妇离婚，这也增加了单人家庭的数量。
For some, living alone is a transitional stage on the way to marriage, remarriage or family reunification. But for a growing number of people it may be a permanent state.
有些人把独居看做结婚、再婚和与家人团聚前的一种过渡阶段，但越来越多的人一直如此。
In cities, many educated, urban women stay single, often as a positive choice—a sign of rising status and better employment opportunities.
在城市中，许多学历高的城里女人一直单身，常常并非被迫如此，这显示其地位提升，事业前景更好。
Rural areas, by contrast, have a skewed sex ratio in which men outnumber women, a consequence of families preferring sons and aborting female fetuses or abandoning baby girls. The consequence is millions of reluctant bachelors.
与此形成对比，农村地区的性别比例失衡，男性大于女性，这是因为农村家庭喜欢儿子，如果怀了女胎，或是流产或是遗弃。结果造成数百万上千万无奈的单身汉。
In the past, adulthood in China used, almost without exception, to mean marriage and having children within supervised rural or urban structures. Now a growing number of Chinese live beyond prying eyes, able to pursue the social and sexual lives they choose.
过去，成年人无一例外要结婚、生孩子，在农村或城市家庭结构中，这些受到监督。现在，越来越多的中国人不再活在别人的目光中，能够追求自己选择的社会和两性生活。
In the long run that poses a political challenge: the love of individual freedom is something that the Chinese state has long tried to quash.
长远看来，这还会导致一种政治挑战：珍视个人自由是中国历来压制的。
Living alone does not have to mean breaching social norms—phones and the internet make it easier than ever to keep in touch with relations, after all.
独居不一定算离经背道，不管怎么说看，电话和网络让亲戚朋友间交流更方便。
Yet loosening family ties may open up space for new social networks, interest groups, even political aspirations of which the state may come to disapprove.
家庭关系日益松散为新的社交网络、利益集团甚至政治抱负打开了空间。
For now those who live alone are often subject to mockery. Unmarried females are labelled “leftover women”; unmarried men, “bare branches”—for the family tree they will never grow.
现在自己住的人常常遭到嘲笑，未婚妇女被称为“剩女”，没结婚的男人被称为“光棍”，因为他们的家族树不会繁茂。
An online group called “women living alone” is stacked with complaints about being told to “get a boyfriend”.
一个叫“独居女人”的网络小组充斥着对被逼找男朋友的抱怨。
Even eating out can be a trial, since Chinese food culture is associated with groups of people sharing a whole range of dishes. After repeated criticism for dining alone, in 2014 Yanni Cai, a Shanghai journalist, wrote “Eating Alone”, a book on how singletons can adapt Chinese cuisine to make a single plate a meal in itself.
外出吃饭也是出惨剧，中国的饮食文化是一群人共同进餐。上海记者Cai Yanni因肚子吃饭而饱受批评，她写了一本《Eating Alone》的书，传授单身狗如何让中国饮食适合一个人独享。
According to tradition, even a frugal Chinese meal comprises “four dishes and one soup”. A single diner is likely to find that rather too much to stomach.
传统上，最简朴的中国餐也包括四菜一汤，一个人吃的话会把肚子都撑破。