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1、How Chinas house price bubble is creating a generation of men without wives不断扩大的单身人群BEIJING When Xiaobo Zhang got married in the early 1990s, he and his bride, like millions of other couples across China, were given a small room to live in by his danwei, or work unit. At the time a lecturer at Nanka
2、i University in Tianjin, Zhangs room was utilitarian and unremarkable, virtually indistinguishable from the ones inhabited by his colleagues. In a word: average.20世纪90年代早期张晓波（音）结婚的时候，和其他数百万夫妇一样，他和妻子一起搬进了单位分给他的一间小房子里。当时他是天津南开大学的一名老师，分到的房子实用而普通 几乎和同事们住的房子没什么区别。就一个词:普通。In the China of the 1990s, which
3、was characterized by a pubescent limbo between the economic reforms of the 1980s and the last decades explosive growth, Zhang recalls that mostly everyone was average. People were neatly packed into work units, generally laboring under the same conditions, eating in the same canteens, and sleeping i
4、n the same blocks of industrial-looking housing provided by their employers. There was little disparity in salaries, and few cars and luxury handbags to spend those salaries on.由于80年代的经济改革及过去10年里经济的迅猛发展，20世纪90年代的中国正处于茫然的青春期。张回忆说，几乎每个人都很普通，大家都穿着整齐的工作服，在同样的环境下工作，在同样的食堂吃饭，在同样的单位发放的工装房里睡觉。每个人的工资也没太大差别，就
5、算有钱也没地方去买车或者奢侈的手提包。During these times, Zhang explained, occupants paid minimal rent for their work-unit housing - which was issued based on seniority, family size, and rank - and could essentially stay in it forever. There was no legal market for buying and selling property in China, even in rural a
6、reas without employer-provided housing, where families built their own homes. Then, in 1998, the Chinese real estate market was born. It began with a decision by the Chinese State Council to monetize housing in an attempt to develop a commercial private market for real estate. In other words, instea
7、d of just providing apartments for lifetime occupancy, companies, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies began to give their employees the option to purchase the housing they lived in. Fourteen years and a serious housing construction boom later, Chinas property market has allowed for one
8、of the worlds largest accumulations of real estate wealth in history, valued at $17 trillion in mid-2010 by HSBC Global Research and worth some 3.27 times Chinas GDP. (To better understand the scope of the construction boom that precipitated this massive accumulation of wealth, its worth noting that
9、 between 1998 and 2008 alone, 14.4 billion square meters of residential housing space were constructed in China, according to China Statistical Yearbook figures. Thats equivalent to 160 times all the residential space on the entire island of Manhattan.)张解释说，那时候单位分房或论资排辈，或看家里人口多少或看职位高低。住户只需付很少的房租，而且几
10、乎是可以一直住下去的。那时候中国没有买卖房产的合法市场。在农村虽然没有单位住房，但是人们都自己盖房。1998年，中国国务院决定将房屋货币化，希望以此形成民营房地产商业市场，中国房地产市场随之产生。换句话说，公司，非营利性组织和国际机构开始给员工们买下租房的权利，取代了之前只提供长久居住单位房的做法。14年过去了，在经历了一番住房建筑热潮后，中国房地产市场已经成为有史以来世界上最大的房地产财富聚集地之一，据汇丰银行全球研究报告显示，2010年房地产财富总值为17兆亿美元，是中国国内生产总值的3.27倍。要更好地了解这轮住房建筑热何以带来如此巨大的财富积累，可以看中国统计年鉴，仅在1998年到20
11、08年间，中国共增加住房用地1440亿平方米。而这相当于整个曼哈顿所有居住用地的160倍。This is where the definition of average in China starts to go a little wonky.至此“普通”这一概念在中国开始改变。As a result of the real estate boom, reports in Chinese media indicate that the average property in a top-tier Chinese city now costs between 15 and 20 times th
12、e average annual salary, though J.P. Morgan reports indicate something closer to 13. (For purposes of comparison, in most of the worlds cities, the housing-cost-to-income ratio hovers between 3-to-1 and 6-to-1, rounding out at about 3-to-1 in the United States.) This is especially problematic in Chi
13、na, where thanks to still-prevalent Confucian ideals of the male as the provider, home ownership has become an unspoken prerequisite to marriage.据中国媒体报道，由于房地产热，中国一线城市的普通房产要价约为人们平均年收入的15到20倍，而摩根大通报告显示约为13倍。世界上大多数城市的房价和收入比在3:1到6:1之间浮动，美国房价与收入比大约是3:1。这在中国是很大的问题，因为大多数中国人仍然坚持男人是一家之主的传统儒家思想，自有住房就成了不言而喻的结婚
14、前提条件。Its a tough, competitive life for men in China these days, in part due to the aftershocks of the one-child policy, which has left the country with a gaping gender imbalance of 120 boys for every 100 girls. Author Mara Hvistendahl reports in her book, Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girl
15、s, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men, that by late 2020, 15 percent (or roughly one in six) Chinese men of marriageable age will be unable to find a bride. She predicts that China will see an increase in whats already happening in Taiwan and South Korea, where men doomed to bachelorhood as
16、 a result of gender imbalance are boarding planes to Vietnam. Roughly $10, 000 covers their flight, room and board, and the price of a Vietnamese wife, according to Hvistendahl, and this practice has become so common that the imported wives get a booklet translated into Vietnamese explaining their rights when they get married at the Taiwanese Consulate.如今中国男人的生活很不容易而且竞争激烈。部分原因是独生子女政策造成国内性别严重失衡。中国男女新生儿的比例达到了121比100。资深作家哈维坦多在她的非自然选择：重男轻女，后果是一个世界全是男人
