Category: Chinese Culture

After years of being badgered by her parents to get married, 26-year-old Zhang Yu finally had enough.在被父母逼婚了几年以后，26岁的张玉（音译）终于不想再忍受了。
"I have decided never to marry or have a child," said Zhang, a university graduate from Changsha, Hunan province, who moved to Shanghai earlier this year to escape her family and jumpstart her career.“我决定一辈子不结婚，不要孩子，” 张玉说。她毕业于湖南长沙的一所大学，今年年初为了躲避父母的逼婚搬到了上海，专注自己的职业生涯。
Zhang's vow to never marry is rare in a country where educated women are constantly told by their families, friends and the state media that they will be lonely and miserable if they do not find a husband quickly.在这个国家，受过教育的女性通常会从亲朋好友和社会舆论那里听到：如果她们不找一个丈夫，会很孤独，很悲惨，所以像张玉这样永不结婚的宣言并不常见。
Yet some women are fighting back by rejecting marriage altogether.但是一些女性以集体拒绝婚姻来发起反抗。
Zhang had been living with her parents in Hunan to save money after obtaining her college degree, and for a time, fell sway to her parents' worries that she would become a "leftover woman" (or "shengnv" in Chinese,) officially defined as an urban, educated woman over age 27 who is single. But upon reading feminist websites, she came to believe the term existed to make women return to the home.为了供张玉上大学，父母和她在湖南省吃俭用。现在父母一度担心她会成为“剩女”，即过了27岁还未结婚的受教育程度较高的都市女性。但是当她浏览了很多女权主张的网站后，她开始相信“剩女” 这个词是为了使女性回归家庭。
She then took a risk by moving to Shanghai without a job and leaving the comforts of home for a dorm room shared with nine other roommates. But she loves her new friends and sense of freedom.她决定冒次险：还没找到工作她就搬去了上海，离开了舒适温暖的家，却住在了一个十人的宿舍里。但她十分喜欢这些新朋友和自由的感觉。
"Men are still thinking in the old ways, but women's values have evolved. I feel very relaxed now," said Zhang, who just received a sales job offer.“男人们还在用旧的方式思考，但是女人的价值观已经改变了。我觉得现在很轻松，” 张玉说，她刚刚得到了一份销售工作。
Lan Fang, a 32-year-old client relations manager for a financial company in Shanghai, similarly embraces her single lifestyle. She enjoys a relatively high income of 20,000 RMB a month (around US$3,200) and often goes out with friends to dinners, movies and concerts.32岁的兰芳（音译）是上海某金融公司的一名客户关系经理，也享受着她的单身生活。她收入相对较高，每月月薪两万人民币，经常和朋友出去聚餐、看电影、听音乐会。
"Where I grew up in Nanjing, I saw so many couples getting into big fights, and most of them seemed unhappy. Plus, so many men have affairs," Lan said. "My life in Shanghai now is very rich, why would I want to change it?"“我在南京长大，看过太多夫妻吵吵闹闹，大多数看起来并不幸福。还有，很多男人都有外遇，”兰芳说，“我现在在上海的生活很富裕，为什么要改变呢？”

Five big Chinese cities rank among the priciest housing markets in the world, surpassing notoriously expensive cities like Tokyo, London and New York, based on calculations by the International Monetary Fund. In fact, seven out of 10 of the world's least affordable markets–Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Tianjin, Guangzhou and Chongqing–are now in China.根据货币基金组织（IMF）发布的数据显示，五大中国城市在世界最昂贵的房地产市场中名列前茅，甚至超过了众所周知的昂贵城市东京、伦敦和纽约，事实上，世界上十大贵的让人难以承受的房地产市场中，有七个都是中国的城市——北京、上海、深圳、香港、天津、广州和重庆。
Note that that the price-to-wage ratio, which measures median housing prices in a given city against median disposable incomes, reflects affordability rather than absolute property value. This means the mid-range price of an apartment in New York is 6.2 times more than what a typical family makes in a year. By comparison, it would take nearly a quarter-century of earnings to buy a pad in Beijing's capital outright.房价和工资比是某一城市的平均房价与平均可支配收入的比值，它反映了人们是否能承受这种房价而不仅仅是房产的绝对价值。这也意味着，纽约一间中等价格的公寓是一个普通家庭一年收入的6.2倍多，而要想在北京的中心城区买间房子要花去一个中国家庭近25年的收入。
Residential property is a big mess for the Chinese government–and it's not going away. Last month, prices on new homes leapt 7.4% in June 2012–the biggest uptick since last December.居民住宅问题是中国政府面临的一个大问题——而且这个问题还将一直存在。6月，新房价格比去年同期增长了7.4%，这是自去年12月以来出现的最快增长。
In short, policies to curb housing inflation aren't working. That's worrying news for the government; housing prices are a major source of public resentment. The danger isn't just the threat of popular unrest, though: It's that soaring property prices make people feel less wealthy and less inclined to consume. And that's exactly what the government needs them to do in order to wean the economy off its dependency on exports and credit-driven investment.简言之，抑制房价的政策没有奏效。这是一个令政府焦虑的消息；房价是引发民众不满的主要原因之一。但危险并不仅仅是民众骚乱的威胁：快速上涨的房价让人们感觉财富减少，也就更不愿意消费。而消费正是政府鼓励民众去做的，这样才能改变中国经济对出口和信贷投资的依赖。
Sure, the announcement over the weekend that the government will stop evaluating party officials solely on the basis of their contribution to growing GDP. If they're off the hook for hitting targets, it could make them less reliant on land parcel sales–the prices of which have been rising–to fund their budgets.当然，中国政府周末时已表示，不再将GDP作为衡量地方官员政绩的唯一指标。如果地方官员能够从“唯GDP是从” 中解脱出来，他们便会较少地依赖土地销售来资助预算，而中国的高房价正来源于这种依赖。

Now, a group of amateur filmmakers, based in the city where Snowden initially fled, Hong Kong, have taken a stab