PRIVATE REVOLUTIONS: Four Women Face China’s New Social Order, by Yuan Yang

《私人革命：面對社會新秩序的四位中國女性》，作者：楊緣

There’s an unforgettable moment in Yuan Yang’s new book, when an idealistic university student is tasked with conducting a survey by going door-to-door to random addresses in Shenzhen, China’s manufacturing megalopolis.

在楊緣的新書中，有一個令人難忘的片段：在中國的製造業之都深圳，一個充滿理想主義的大學生受命到隨機選定的地址做登門調查。

In one poor neighborhood, the female student asks a young man, living in a tiny apartment with four other adults and a baby, to rate his current job satisfaction. His immediate reaction is to ask whether she has been sent by the Communist Party.

在一個貧困社區，這名女學生請一個年輕男子就自己目前的工作滿意度打分；他和另外四個成年人以及一個嬰兒擠在一間小公寓裡。他的下意識反應是問她是不是共產黨派來的。

Though she denies it, he responds, “I’m guessing they did send you, so let’s just say we are completely, utterly satisfied with everything in our lives.”

雖然她否認了，對方還是回答說，「我猜你就是他們派來的，所以我只能說我們對生活中的一切都完全、非常滿意。」

That story, which takes place in the early 2010s, highlights Yang’s concern with the fate of China’s laborers, as well as the class distinctions that structure the encounter.

這件事發生在2010年代初，它凸顯了楊緣對中國勞動者命運的關切，以及這次相遇背後的階級差異。

In 2016, Yang returned to China, where she had spent her early childhood, to work as a journalist for The Financial Times. Over the next six years, Yang followed four young women as they navigated what she calls China’s “new social order.” All of them, like Yang, were born in the late 1980s and 1990s, coming-of-age after the “optimistic giddiness” of their parents’ generation, one characterized by increasing prosperity in the wake of Deng Xiaoping’s market reforms in the 1980s.

2016年，楊緣回到她度過幼年時光的中國，任《金融時報》記者。在接下來的六年裡，她跟隨四位年輕女性，記錄下她們在她謂之中國「新社會秩序」下的闖蕩經歷。她們都和楊緣一樣，出生於20世紀80年代末和90年代，在父母那一代人的「如痴如醉的樂觀」之後長大，經過80年代鄧小平的市場改革，從那代人身上可以看到中國的日漸繁榮。

Leiya, June, Siyue and Sam (the neighborhood surveyor) must contend with a very different economic landscape — one underscored not by giddy optimism, but by anxious precarity.

蕾雅（音）、瓊（音）、思悅（音）和薩姆（音，就是上文提到的那名小區勘查員）這四個人必須面對的，是一個截然不同的經濟環境——凸顯它的不是令人忘乎所以的樂觀，而是對缺乏穩定的焦慮。

As Yang notes, she happens to have been on the ground just as “deepening political repression and censorship” in China — coinciding with Xi Jinping’s rise to power in 2013 — made it ever more dangerous for journalists and their informants to shine a light on social problems that the Communist Party would rather not discuss. The riveting book that results from Yang’s persistence is a powerful snapshot of four young Chinese women attempting to assert control over the direction of their lives, escape the narrow confines of their patriarchal rural roots and make it in the big city.

正如楊緣所指出的，當中國的「政治鎮壓和審查變得越來越嚴重」——這伴隨著2013年習近平的上台——使得記者與他們的信源在揭露共產黨不願意討論的社會問題方面變得更加危險之際，她就在現場。這本引人入勝的書源於楊緣的堅持，它以極具感染力的筆觸描繪了四位年輕的中國女性試圖掌控自己的生活方向，她們擺脫了農村根深蒂固的父權制的桎梏，在大城市取得了成功。

In so doing, these women are traversing what is arguably the biggest socioeconomic hurdle in Chinese society — the rural-urban divide. The Maoist-era household registration system was relaxed under market reforms in the 1980s and early 1990s, such that rural migrants could move to China’s coastal cities for work, powering the factories of the country’s economic boom.

在此過程中，這些女性跨越了中國社會最大的社會經濟障礙——城鄉差別。在20世紀80年代和90年代初的市場改革中，毛澤東時代的戶籍制度放寬了，農民工可以到沿海城市打工，為中國經濟繁榮時期的工廠提供勞動力。

And move they did, with now more than one-third of the country’s labor force considered to be rural migrants. Yet, huge hurdles remain: Such migrants are still by and large denied key social services in cities, such as pensions, medical care and education for their children.

他們搬到了城市，現在中國超過三分之一的勞動力被視為農民工。然而，巨大的障礙依然存在：這些流動人口總體上仍無法享受城市的關鍵社會服務，如養老金、醫保和子女教育。

Yang’s reportage offers up the raw human stories behind these colossal numbers. Because she documents each woman’s journey from childhood, including encounters with casual sexism, intermittent personal violence and the impossible weight of parental expectations, we can appreciate just how far they have come as adults — and just how far they have to fall.

楊緣講述了這些巨大數字背後一個個真實面孔的故事。因為她記錄的是這四名女性從童年開始的人生旅程，包括遭遇不經意間的性別歧視，偶爾的人身暴力，以及父母的期望帶來的無法承受的壓力，我們可以見證她們作為成年人經歷了怎樣的成長——以及她們可能的跌落有多深。

Two of the women escape the confines of their villages through education: June beats the odds and becomes a university student and then a tech worker, while Siyue manages to parlay a lousy private university education into an unexpected career as an English interpreter, tutor and entrepreneur. Another, Leiya, takes the most direct track out of her village by going to work in a Shenzhen factory as a teen, eventually becoming an organizer for workers’ rights.

其中兩名女性通過教育逃離了村莊的束縛：瓊突破重重困難成為了一名大學生，然後投身科技行業；而思悅則設法將糟糕的民辦大學教育經歷轉變為出人意料的職業生涯，走上了英語翻譯、家教和創業者之路。那個叫蕾雅的女孩走的是最直接的一條離開村莊之路，她十幾歲去深圳打工，最後成為了工人權益的組織者。

Middle-class “success,” however, offers no respite: Exhaustion is palpable as these young women continue to hustle and grind just to stay afloat. As Yang explains, this is the omnipresent Chinese fear of “falling off the ladder.” And over the last 30 years, as massive socioeconomic inequality has taken root, “the ladder has grown very tall.”

然而，中產階級的「成功」並沒有帶來喘息的機會：為了維持生計，這些年輕女性繼續奔波勞碌，疲憊顯而易見。楊緣解釋道，這就是中國人無處不在的對於「從梯子上掉下來」的恐懼。而在過去的30年裡，隨著巨大的社會經濟不平等變得根深蒂固，「梯子越來越高了。」

The social milieu that Yang’s subjects inhabit, hovering between rural pasts and urban futures, is riddled with uncertainty. Lives and destinies can change overnight, with one pen stroke — and an ensuing new government policy.

楊緣筆下的主人公所處的社會環境徘徊在農村的過去與城市的未來之間，充滿著不確定性。生活和命運可以在一夜之間發生改變，只需大筆一揮——還有隨之而來的新的國家政策。

The wildly successful educational company that Siyue creates, for example, loses much of its staff once the government decides to crack down on the relatively unregulated private tutoring industry. Leiya’s careful navigation of a byzantine points system to ensure that her daughter has a chance at entering a desirable school in Shenzhen is derailed when the school district map is redrawn. These setbacks offer no time for self-pity or reflection: Pivot they must, and they do, in order to survive.

例如，思悅創辦的這家非常成功的教育公司，一旦政府決定打擊相對不受監管的私人補習行業，它就會失去大部分員工。為了確保女兒有機會在深圳進入一所理想的學校，蕾雅在繁瑣複雜的積分系統中小心摸索，卻因學區重新劃分而功虧一簣。對於這些挫折，她們沒有時間自憐或反思：為了生存，她們必須做出調整，而且也確實做到了。

We celebrate when Siyue, who never marries but gives birth to a child on her own, decides to raise her daughter in the company of other strong, single women. At that point, even her own highly critical mother admits: “Why bother getting married? If you’re a girl making money, in the modern world …” She doesn’t complete the thought, but it’s a notable victory.

我們為思悅感到高興，她一直沒有結婚，但自己生了一個孩子，她決定在其他堅強的單身女性的陪伴下撫養女兒。在這一點上，就連她非常挑剔的母親也承認：「為什麼要結婚呢？如果你是一個有本事賺錢的女孩，在現代社會......」她沒有把話說完，但這是一個值得注意的勝利。

These bursts of light, unfortunately, come all too seldom for the book’s protagonists, and feel less likely still going forward, as government policies under Xi squeeze all the breath out of Chinese civil society. The book’s ending remains unresolved, as the lives of Yang’s subjects continue to unfold.

令人遺憾的是，對於這本書的主人公來說，這些光芒閃現的時刻太少了，而隨著習近平領導下的政府政策將中國公民社會的所有活力擠壓殆盡，這種可能性看起來在今後也會越來越小。這本書的結尾是開放性的，因為楊緣的採訪對象的生活仍在繼續。

The question remains: If only private — not political — revolutions are open to China’s citizens today, are these self-transformations truly enough? How many times must you have your source of livelihood smashed, see your savings squandered in a bum real estate deal or fail to find work as a college graduate before you give up and “lie flat” — or, for those with means, move abroad?

問題仍然存在：如果今天的中國只有私人革命而非政治革命，那麼這些自我轉變真的夠嗎？多少次你的生計來源被摧毀，多少次你的積蓄被浪費在一筆糟糕的房地產交易上，大學畢業後你要多少次找不到工作，才會放棄並「躺平」——或者，對那些有條件的人來說，移民國外？

The vast majority of China’s workers today have no other choice: They must keep on climbing the ladder.

今天，中國的絕大多數打工人別無選擇：他們必須繼續攀登這個階梯。

PRIVATE REVOLUTIONS: Four Women Face China’s New Social Order | By Yuan Yang | Viking | 294 pp. | $30

《私人革命：面對社會新秩序的四位中國女性》，楊緣/著 | Viking出版社，294頁，30美元