爱情业务【下篇】| 纽约客

Shao Tong, a former Jiayuan employee, said, “You have to look at the details. Everybody has a tell, and you can’t hide your true self for too long.” Shao left Gong’s company in 2010 to open a school—the Beijing Moral Education Center for Women—which advertises with the slogan “Marry Once, Marry Right.” She gives classes on making the best use of Jiayuan and other sites, and her advice includes: Beware of a man posing beside a fancy car. (The richer he really is, the less likely he is to show it in his profile.) On a first date, make him do the travelling. (A man who suggests that you cross town on the first date is a man who will suggest that you split the bill.) Examine what she calls the “Four Big Accessories” (wristwatch, cell phone, belt, and shoes). When the bill comes, be wary if he keeps the receipt. (You should be more than a business expense.) 

原佳缘员工邵通表示说：“必须要去查看细微之处。每个人都有辨别能力，你终究会被人看透你真实的一面。”2010年，邵通离开龚海燕的公司，创立了一个名为“北京女子道德教育中心”的学校，其宣传语是“只结一次婚，只与合适的人结婚。”邵通充分利用了佳缘和其他网站来授课，她的建议是：小心在豪车旁摆照的男人。（真正的富豪是很少会在个人信息栏里炫富的。）第一次约会时，让男生来赴约。（男生提议让女生穿越市区来和他约会，那么意味着他想让你平摊约会费用。）观察男人的“四大小件”（手表，手机，皮带和皮鞋）。在结账的时候，注意他是否会保留发票。(约会远比商务支付更有意义。)

Shao told me that she teaches the importance of managing expectations. “It’s enough to find someone with ten times your income,” she said.

“Ten times?”

邵告诉我她要讲授掌控另一半的期望值的重要性。她说：“如果你所找寻的另一半的收入是你的10倍，那就足够了。”

“10倍？”

“Ten times is enough. No more than that. If your annual salary is twenty thousand yuan, then a spouse making one or two hundred thousand is enough. If you’re holding out for a millionaire, stop daydreaming.”

“10倍足够了，不用比这多了。如果你每年的薪水是2万元，配偶的年收入是10-20万，那就足够了。如果你一直想要找个百万富翁，醒醒吧，别做白日梦了。“

Charlatans have proved to be one of the greatest threats to Gong’s business. Last summer, Chinese state television reported that a man was sentenced by a Beijing court to two and a half years in jail for swindling a woman he allegedly met on the site. (Jiayuan denies involvement in the case.) After the report, Jiayuan stock lost nearly forty per cent of its value. More criticism followed. Last August, Jinghua Weekly, a state-backed newspaper, took aim at Jiayuan’s “V.I.P. High-Level Marriage Hunting Advisers,” a team of special matchmakers who deal only with the richest members, mostly men, lining them up with the most sought-after female users. The Diamond Bachelors, as these clients are called, spend up to fifty thousand dollars for six matches—an “outrageous” sum, the paper declared, making the program sound like a high-tech escort service. Gong, in response, cited the law of supply and demand. “Diamond Bachelors are looking for pretty young women,” she told me. “And some of these pretty women are looking to marry this kind of man. So it’s a perfect match.”

有关证实表明，江湖骗子是龚海燕事业的一大威胁。去年夏天，中国中央电视台报道，一名男子因诈骗一名女子（据他所说，他俩相识于网络）而被北京人民法院判刑2年半。(佳缘否定涉嫌该案件。)该报道后，佳缘的股份值损失了将近40%。那之后，受到的指责也越来越多。去年8月，由政府支持的报刊《京华周刊》将矛头对准了“VIP高端会员婚恋顾问”，一个专业的婚恋介绍团队，这个团队只跟富裕的会员打交道，其中多数是男性会员，为他们寻找最受欢迎的女性用户。这种客户就是他们所谓的“钻石王老五”，他们相亲6次的花费多达5万美金，堪称天文数字。报刊称这类交友行为听上去好似一个高端的三陪交友服务。龚海燕引证供求法则对此做出了回应，她告诉我：“‘钻石王老五’想要追寻年轻貌美的女性。而这些漂亮女性也是想要找这种类型的男人，所以这样的交友方式堪称完美。”

Love stories didn’t become popular in China until the twentieth century, after European novels inspired a genre called “butterfly romance,” in which the lovers all “weep a great deal,” according to Haiyan Lee, at Stanford. In China, it seemed, love rarely ended well. While European protagonists occasionally found happiness, Chinese lovers succumbed to forces beyond their control: meddling parents, disease, a miscommunication. The love stories were categorized so that readers knew which doom to expect: Tragic Love, Bitter Love, Miserable Love, Wronged Love, and Chaste Love. A sixth genre, Joyous Love, was not as successful. (In the mid-nineties, the researchers Fred Rothbaum and Billy Yuk-Piu Tsang analyzed the lyrics of eighty Chinese and American pop songs, and found that Chinese songs conveyed more “negative expectations” and “suffering,” a sense that, if destiny did not help a relationship, “it cannot be salvaged.”)

据来自斯坦福的Haiyan Lee的说法，直到20世纪，也就是在欧洲小说推行“梁祝式爱情”（苦命鸳鸯）的体裁之后，爱情故事才在中国流行开来。在中国，爱情似乎很少有一个好的结果。与欧洲戏剧中的男女主人公偶尔能得到幸福相比，中国的情侣们不得不屈从于他们无法抵抗的势力，例如，横加干涉的父母，疾病，或是误解。这些爱情故事已经被标签化了，所以读者都清楚结局注定是：悲剧的爱，苦涩的爱，悲惨的爱，错误的爱，无性的爱。然而第六种类型，即幸福的爱并不受到市场的欢迎。（在90年代中期，学者Fred Rothbaum和Billy Yuk-Piu Tsang分析了80首中国和美国的流行歌曲的歌词，他们发现中国的歌曲传递了更多的“消极的预期”和“苦难”，从某种意义上说，一段关系如果没有命运相助，“它将注定无法被挽救”）。

Money and weddings have always been entwined more explicitly in China than in the West, but the finances were simpler when most people were broke. A bride’s parents paid a dowry, and the groom’s parents paid a larger sum, known as “bride wealth.” Under Mao, the exchange was made in grain, but in the eighties couples came to expect “three rounds and a sound”: a bicycle, a wristwatch, a sewing machine, and a radio. Or, in some cases, “thirty legs”: a bed, a table, and a set of chairs. (The custom persists in much of China, but in cash, most of which goes to the couple.)

相较于西方，在中国，金钱与婚姻的关系更为错综复杂，但是当大多数人离婚的时候财产分割都显得更加简单。新娘的父母支付嫁妆，与此同时新郎的父母准备更大的一笔钱，这笔钱称之为“彩礼”。在毛泽东时代，主要是用谷物进行交换，但是在八十年代，夫妻们开始期待“三转一响”：一辆自行车，一块手表，一台缝纫机和一个录音机。或者是，在某些情况下，“三十条腿”：一张床，一张桌子，还有一套椅子。这个习俗在中国的大部分地区仍然被保留下来，但是是以现金的形式，并且大部分都进了两口子的口袋。

The greatest shock to the marriage tradition came from an unlikely source: in 1997, the government gave people the right to buy and sell homes on the open market. China had never had an official term for “mortgage,” but real estate was suddenly an asset. Young Chinese couples used to move in with the groom’s parents, but today less than half of them stay very long, and the economists Shang-Jin Wei and Xiaobo Zhang discovered that parents with sons were building ever larger and more expensive houses for their offspring, in the hope of attracting better matches. Between 2003 and 2011, home prices in Beijing, Shanghai, and other big cities rose by as much as eight hundred per cent. According to a poll reported last year by Xinhua, the state news service, although only ten per cent of men on Jiayuan own a home, nearly seventy per cent of women said they wouldn’t marry a man without one. James Farrer, a sociologist at Sophia University, in Tokyo, who studies Chinese dating habits, calls this phenomenon “a bubble in the marriage market.” New Chinese terms have cropped up: a man without a house, a car, and a nest egg is a “triple without.” If he gets married, it’s a “naked wedding.” As these weddings become more common, they have acquired bohemian cachet, though the term conveys a certain recklessness. Last summer, “Naked Wedding” was the title of a TV miniseries about a privileged young bride who married her working-class husband over the objections of her parents, and moved in with his family. It became the most popular show in China. By the series’ end, the couple had divorced.

婚姻传统受到的最大的冲击来自一个原本不可能的原因：1997年，政府赋予了人们在公开市场上买卖房屋的权利。在此之前，中国对于“债权”从来没有一个官方的概念，但是一夜之间不动产变成了一项资产。在过去，中国的年轻夫妇会跟男方的父母同住，但是在今天，少于一半的新婚夫妻会在父母家呆很长时间。另外，经济学家魏尚进和张晓波发现有儿子的父母会为他们的后代建更大更豪华的房子，以此来吸引更好的媳妇。2003年至2011年间，北京、上海以及其他大城市的房价提高了足足有八倍之多。根据新华社去年公布的一项民调显示，在佳缘网站，即使只有10%的男人有房，将近70%的女人称她们不会嫁给一个没房的男人。研究中式约会习惯的上智大学（位于东京）社会学家James Farrer，将这种现象称作“婚恋市场的泡沫”。中文里面一个新的俗语也应运而生：一个没车没房没存款的男人就是一个“三无”的男人。如果他结婚了，那就是一场“裸婚”。随着这种越来越普遍的形势，裸婚已经成为一种摒弃世俗的标志，尽管这个词儿给人一种有些鲁莽的感觉。去年夏天，有一部名为“裸婚时代”的电视连续剧在中国大热。这部剧主要讲述的是一个家庭条件优越的年轻女孩在她父母的反对之下嫁给了一个工薪阶层的男人，并且搬去与男方的父母同住。但是在电视剧的结尾，这对夫妻离婚了。

In 2003, shortly after Gong Haiyan launched her site, a posting caught her eye: “Seeking a wife, 1.62 metres tall, above-average looks, graduate degree.” The seeker was a postdoc studying fruit flies. He liked to work out, and he posted a jokey photograph that showed him flexing his triceps in front of a lab bench. “He had the whole package,” Gong said. Then she looked at his requirements, and discovered that “I didn’t meet a single one.” She decided to answer his posting anyway. “Your announcement is not well written,” she replied. “Even if someone meets all those requirements, she’ll think you’re picky.” The man’s name was Guo Jianzeng, and he was embarrassed. “I’ve never written anything like this, and I don’t quite know what I’m doing,” he told her. Gong volunteered to polish his announcement. “After polishing, I could think of exactly four girls in the world who met those criteria, including me,” she said.

2003年，龚海燕发布其网站不久之后，一条动态吸引了她的目光：“寻妻，要求身高1.62米，相貌出众，研究生学历。”该征婚人是一位研究果蝇的博士后。他喜欢锻炼，还发布了一张在实验室的长凳前秀出三头肌的诙谐照片。“他条件很不错，”龚海燕说道。随后她查看了他的要求，发现“我一个条件也不满足。”不过她还是决定回复他的征婚帖。“你的帖子写得不太好，”她回复道。“即便是符合你的所有要求，别人也会觉得你很挑剔。”这位男士，名叫郭建增，感到很尴尬。“我从来没写过这些东西，我也不太清楚自己在干嘛，”郭建增对龚海燕说。于是龚海燕主动要帮郭建增润色帖子。“打磨过后，我只能想到有4个人符合这些标准，包括我在内。”她说道。

He was thirty-three and shy. When they met, his phone had only eight numbers stored in it. Gong had taken an online I.Q. test, and she asked Guo to take it, too. He beat her score by five points. She was also moved by the way he cared for his widowed father. Guo’s first gift to her was a replacement for a pair of broken glasses. On their second date, he proposed. She rode sidesaddle on the back of his bicycle to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, where they paid nine yuan for a marriage certificate. The ceremony took ten minutes. Instead of a wedding ring, he bought her a laptop.

郭建增当时33岁，性格内向。和龚海燕见面的时候，他的手机里只存了8个手机号。龚海燕之前做过一个在线智商测试，她让郭建增也做了这个测试。后者的得分竟然比自己高出5分。郭建增对鳏居的父亲的照顾也让龚海燕深受感动。郭建增送给龚海燕的第一份礼物是一副新的眼镜，用来替换坏掉的那副。第二次约会时，郭建增便求了婚。龚海燕偏坐在郭建增自行车的后座上，他们去了民政局，花了九块钱，领了结婚证。整个仪式花了10分钟。郭建增送给龚海燕的不是婚戒，而是一台笔记本。

“He’d rather buy me a watermelon than a flower,” she told me as we sat in a taxi idling in traffic. It was Valentine’s Day, one of China’s busiest shopping days. But not in the Gong household. “He thinks it’s not for married people, just for young lovers.”

当我们坐在缓慢行驶的出租车里时，龚海燕对我说：“比起送花，他宁愿送我一个西瓜。” 那天是情人节，也是中国最繁忙的购物节之一。但是在龚海燕家并非如此。她说：“他觉得情人节不是已婚人士的节日，而仅仅是给年轻情侣准备的。” 

For someone in the love business, Gong has a fitful relationship with romance. She speaks proudly about her bare-bones courtship but yearns, now and then, for some fuss of her own. (“Ten years, and I’ve yet to see a single petal.”) She finds China’s fusion of marriage and materialism disillusioning, but she prefers to focus on the fact that she’s equipping people to make a choice.

作为一个经营婚恋网站的人，龚海燕自然和浪漫有着千丝万缕的关系”。她谈起自己朴素的爱情时十分自豪，但有时也渴求一些“奢华”。（“十年了，我一朵花都没收到过。”）尽管她注意到，在中国，婚姻和物质主义的融合正在破灭，但龚海燕更倾向于强调她是在给人们提供选择的机会。

The sun was setting as we pulled off the highway into the suburb where she lives. The love business has made her rich; when the company went public, her shares were worth more than seventy-seven million dollars. We passed a Pet Spa and a compound called Château de la Vie, and turned into a lush gated community that evoked New Jersey more than Hunan. Her house was beige stucco, and her daughter, who is two, met her at the front door in pajamas; Gong’s husband ushered us to the dining-room table, where her parents and her grandmother, who live with them, were seated. I was struck by the presence of four generations of women in the house. Gong’s grandmother, who is ninety-four, was born not long after China put an end to foot binding.

太阳落山时，我们下了高速公路，驶进了龚海燕居住的郊区。婚恋网站的经营让她坐拥巨富；公司上市时，她的股份价值超过7700万美元。我们途经一家宠物美容店和一座名为Château de la Vie的庄园，然后拐进了一个门前郁郁葱葱的院落，这给人一种来到了新泽西的感觉，而不像是湖南。她家的房子粉刷着褐色灰泥，龚海燕的两岁女儿穿着睡衣在前门迎接了妈妈；龚海燕的丈夫把我们迎到餐桌，和她一起生活的父母和祖母已经落座。我对这女性四世同堂的景象感到震惊。龚海燕的祖母现年94岁，就出生于中国废除缠足后不久。

For years, the family bounced between rented apartments, six people in two bedrooms, until Gong bought the house. They had yet to adapt to wealth. Nine months after they moved in, the walls were still bare and an electric moped filled the front hall. It felt as if the family had packed up its belongings from a farmhouse in Hunan and unloaded them at a C.E.O.’s villa in Beijing.

多年来，龚海燕一家常常搬家，辗转于租住的公寓，6个人挤两间卧室，这样的状态一直持续到龚海燕买下这套房子。他们还不太适应富裕的生活。在他们搬进新家9个月后，墙壁还依然空空荡荡，前厅就放着一辆电动车。似乎这家人已经将所有行李从湖南农村打包到了龚海燕在北京的别墅。

After the company went public, Gong’s husband left his job to take care of the household. Gong’s business is animated by an image of love and fulfillment that privileges beauty and income above all, and promotes the fear of becoming a leftover woman. But Gong believes that her mission is simply to give women like her the options that never existed before. “Women used to say, ‘If you want clothes on your back and food to eat, get married,’ ” she said, as we ate dinner. “As long as you had the most basic requirements, I’d marry you. But not anymore. Now I can live a good life, an independent life. I can be picky. If there’s anything I don’t like about you, well, you’re out of luck.”

公司上市后，龚女士的丈夫辞去了工作并回到家料理家务事。她的公司宣扬爱情和满足高于外貌和金钱，并且刺激女性对于成为剩女的恐惧，生意因此变得生机勃勃。不过龚女士认为她的使命仅仅是给那些像她一样的女性创造从未有过的机会。在我们共进晚餐的时候，龚女士谈到：“过去女人们都说：‘如果你想要丰衣足食，那就结婚吧’。只要你符合基本的要求，我就和你结婚。但今时不同往日，现在我可以靠自己经济独立过着惬意的生活。我有挑剔的资本，只要你有一丁点儿让我不满意，那么咱们就拜拜咯”。

Once or twice a week, Gong’s company holds singles mixers, and on a weekday in early January I filed into a ballroom in Beijing with three hundred immaculately groomed men and women. They had been issued battery-powered blinking lights, in the shape of puckered lips, to be pinned to their clothing. An m.c. bounded onstage and summoned the crowd’s attention. “Please put your hand over your heart and repeat after me: ‘I swear that I am here today to find my other half with a true and honest heart,’ ” he said, and paused for emphasis. “ ‘I swear that I do not come here with any deceptive or ill intent.’ ”

龚女士的公司每周都会举行一两次的相亲会。一月初的一个工作日，我来到了北京一个舞厅，那里聚满了三百多个衣着整洁的男男女女。他们每个人都得到了一个做成噘嘴形状、电池供电的闪光别针，别在他们的衣服上。一位主持人跳到台上台上召集大家：“把你们的手放在胸前跟我一起说：‘我发誓今天来到这里会以一颗真诚的心寻找我的另一半。’”他说着，停顿了一下强调道，“‘我保证今天来这里绝对没有任何欺骗或邪恶的的意图’”。