婚姻在中国就是房子、车子、票子?

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作者:Jocelyn Eikenburg  译者:远

(翻译自《Marriage in China is Home, Car, Money?》)

房子、车子、票子。我头回听到这三个词串联在一起大约是07年7月某天的凌晨1点,当时我和老公正跟他的朋友在杭州一家KTV外闲聊。那个说出这三大件的朋友,一个叫江(音)的小伙子,几乎立刻就叹出声来,苦笑着掩饰心中的颓丧。“这就是中国的婚后生活”,他耸耸肩说道。

那时的我刚刚嫁给John——再一次,如果你认为我们在上海民政局的仪式算得上一场婚礼的话——突然间江的话如同接待大厅的荧光灯一般,让一件本来美好的事显得廉价而又丑陋。

到07年7月,我和John并非没有和这些问题斗争过。事实上,我们无时无刻不面对“钱”的困境——难道我们不也是熬过06年那个夏天吗?当时有几个月的时间我都不知道新生意何时能开张,生活在精打细算中。难道我们不也是东拼西凑才搞到那几张机票钱吗?说到“车子”,尽管已是“步履蹒跚”,七零八落,但谢天谢地那辆91年的二手丰田休旅车在行驶了27万公里后依然坚守在工作岗位。至于“房子”,凑够租金已然幸运,拥有一套还是可望而不可及的。江的脸上刻满了忧虑,这或许来自他不得不用一生中大部分时间偿还的房贷,又或许来自那个即将到来,却让他心生矛盾的小生命。我知道江曾深爱他的妻子,我见过他们十指相扣,笑意盈盈的时刻。但现在,爱情似乎已让位给房子-车子-票子了。

我从不相信自己的婚姻最终会蒸馏成这三样东西——这些在中国几乎成了新式订婚戒指。我知道许多中国女性在说出“我愿意”前期待着房子、车子和不错的薪水。但我坚信爱情比这些更重要,我是不是疯了?

我满眼笑意地望着John,他则将我揽入怀中。我体内暖潮涌动,一切仿佛又回到了那年的西湖,彼时,John正准备给我一个吻。

疯了吗?一点都不!

您是怎么想的呢?婚姻在中国难道真的就只是房子、车子和票子吗?

11 Replies to “婚姻在中国就是房子、车子、票子?”

  1. It is well known fact (not opinion) that both white and East Asian women are more materialistic than black women who care more for male musculinity over material wealth.

    Do you think poverty can be eliminated by female sexual section if all women refuse to marry poor guys? As we know, evolution is achieved through both natural and sexual selection.

    Just thinking.

  2. Jocelyn,

    你的中文非常好。我觉得你的文章很有意思。

    I like to chime in my thoughts on your interesting piece of the essay. People have been defining, re-defining what is love. I’m not gonna dig into that. What I believe is, no educated women would ever fall for a guy without a talent. Not the talent that requires him to be next Steve Jobs or next Jack Ma. The talent that at least looks promising to start a family life together.

    John might not be a millionaire, but he has the talent, future that you would have probably thought of struggling together with him. That means you WANT to struggle with him; life ups and downs. But the struggle must be meaningful at least. The struggle must be worth a try to bring you fruits. The struggle that you think will lead two of you to better status and places.

    You’re not gonna want to struggle with some drunken bastards, always asking his wife to bring him food, and curse. No sane woman will want that even if that means “struggle”.

    In that scenario, most women falls for that bitter sweet struggle with their partners. Because of “downs”, “ups” bring you so many sweet memories of how you two struggled together. Because of “ups”, you two enjoy what you sowed.

    For all the struggles between those partners, what I still don’t understand is those White women here in States, marry a Black guy, have 2 or 3 kids taking a public bus, and both are obese, not (China obese standard), but US standard – obese.

    Like George Carlin said, “I can’t even imagine who want to f— that big bloated piece of sh– on earth.” And they still do. So I’m left speechless when I see those scenes.

    Well seems like “Love is everywhere” I guess.

  3. @AG

    If the poor were somehow eliminated, the rich would just compete amongst themselves and create a new class of poor (or poorer) people. There will always be some people on the bottom of the pile given that people are not created equal.

    And I don’t know whether your comment about East Asian and white women being more materialistic is true, but I will say this… Compared to East Asian women, white women tend to have a broader set of criteria for determining their ideal mate. So in addition to the man’s ability to provide financial security, white women will also put emphasis on qualities such as the intellectual and emotional compatibility.

    East Asian women tend to be more practical, and thus materialistic, in their approach to mate selection. Personally, I often find them difficult to impress emotionally and so when I do succeed I feel a great sense of satisfaction.

  4. @D-Maybe

    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/science/07indu.html?ref=science&pagewanted=all&_r=0

    “Dr. Clark started to wonder whether natural selection had indeed changed the nature of the population in some way and, if so, whether this might be the missing explanation for the Industrial Revolution. …

    A way to test the idea, he realized, was through analysis of ancient wills, which might reveal a connection between wealth and the number of progeny. The wills did that, , but in quite the opposite direction to what he had expected.

    Generation after generation, the rich had more surviving children than the poor, his research showed. That meant there must have been constant downward social mobility as the poor failed to reproduce themselves and the progeny of the rich took over their occupations. “The modern population of the English is largely descended from the economic upper classes of the Middle Ages,” he concluded.”

    Yes, there are poor in developed nations. But even the poor in developed nation is way wealthier than the poor in 3ird world. So the best way to eliminate poverty is for women to be choosy on materialistic ground. In long run, nations will become wealthier nations comparing to other nations. At end, it is women who shape the human world by choosing what they prefer. The result of sexual selection.

    If you ask white men why want to be most wealthy guys, all come down to get girls.

  5. @AG

    Your NYT article supports my point. You see, poverty is a relative state and as long as a diversity of characteristics exists between people there will always be poor people. The same applies to competition between groups of people, or nations. It’s also worth noting that for most of human history the ability to choose a mate has been held by men, who have pretty much bonked any woman they could get their hands on.

    BTW, here’s an interesting article about the social Darwinism in China to complement the NYT article about England:

    http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/how-social-darwinism-made-modern-china-248/

  6. @D-Maybe

    Here we go. Chinese women should be even more materialistic if China want to be more developed than Western countries.

  7. @AG

    That’s a terrible idea. The materialism of Chinese women has already led to the creation of an army of leftover women in China, despite there being an excess of marriageable men for the women. The leftover women have effectively taken their high-quality genes out of the gene pool.

  8. 读完这篇文章很适合看这个:http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNzI2MDU2NzA0.html
    按中国女孩子来说,有钱人不会是坏人!

  9. @AG

    You’re the one who needs to understand what is happening and stop being so simplistic in your thinking. The leftover women in China are typically highly educated women belonging to the professional class, and their high expectations for the ideal man has ensured that they remain single and thus reproductively unproductive.

    In your recommendation for improving the genetic quality of the Chinese population you have focused only on the contribution by men. If anything, you should be more concerned about the contribution by women because research has shown that intelligence, to the extent that it is a heritable trait, is largely transmitted by women to the next generation. In other words, you’re more likely to be smart if your mother, as opposed to your father, is smart.

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