【双语阅读】中国城市老人的镀金生活

        网上有关于80后比较流行的几句话，“70后毕业了有分配，90后毕业了是富二代。我们呢，80后毕业了是什么，无分配，又不是富二代”。最近又有报道称，中国的城市老人开始过上了镀金生活。经历了大跃进和文革的一代人，也迎来了他们退休后的幸福生活，跟随小编一起来看一下到底怎么回事吧。

The mainland’s sixty some things have led a more harrowing life than the average Botoxed Baby Boomer. When they were little, Mao Zedong gave them the Great Leap Forward and a famine that killed millions; when they were teens, there was the Cultural Revolution. Famine, revolution and political pogroms do tend to age one so.
比起西方婴儿潮时期出生的通过打肉毒杆菌保持容颜的同龄人，中国内地上了60岁的人在年轻时所过的生活要悲惨得多。在他们小时候，毛泽东让他们经历了“大跃进”和一场造成数百万人死亡的大饥荒；等他们到了青少年时期，又迎来了文化大革命。饥荒、革命、政治迫害往往使人更易老。
But 30 years of prosperity later, China’s elders seem to be ready to relive the youth they never had — and to spend money on it. They aren’t all sitting around hoarding their renminbi and meddling in the lives of their children, as the conventional wisdom has it. Urban middle-class seniors are taking up sports such as hiking, biking and “square dancing”, in addition to more traditional pursuits such as taichi, mah-jong and minding other’s people’s business.
但是，在经历了30年的经济繁荣后，中国的老年人似乎已经准备好重温他们从未拥有过的青春——并且为此花钱。与传统观念迥异，他们并不全都是整日闲坐，捂着积蓄不花，热衷干涉子女生活。除了传统的太极拳、麻将以及家长里短之外，城市中产阶层的老人如今喜欢徒步、骑行、“广场舞”等各种运动。
Paradoxically, it is the same Communist party that took away their youth that is giving them the time, the money and the financial freedom to enjoy their dotage. City-dwelling mainlanders retire frightfully young (as early as 55 for men and 45 for women), enjoy an ample pension (unlike rural contemporaries) and own valuable homes that were practically given to them when Beijing privatised the urban housing stock at the end of the last century.
矛盾的是，当初夺走他们青春的中共如今又给了他们时间、金钱以及经济自由去享受暮年生活。内地城市居民比较早退休（男性最早可在55岁退休、女性最早可在45岁退休），有足够的养老金（与农村同龄人不同）和属于自己的如今价值不菲的房产——上世纪末中国推行城市住宅私有化，当时这些房子几乎是给他们的。
It’s been described as the biggest ever one-off transfer of wealth, and it fell right into the lap of today’s 60-plus hikers, bikers and square dancers — people such as the sprightly old geezers in Shanghai’s Ruijin Sub-district Cycling Club. They dress up in skin-tight neon and Lycra for weekend cycling excursions that are rarely shorter than 100km a day.
这被称为“史上最大的一次性财富转移”，而这种运气刚好落在了如今60多岁的这一代徒步、骑行以及广场舞爱好者的身上，比如上海瑞金街道骑行俱乐部那群精神矍铄的老家伙们。每到周末他们就穿上色彩鲜艳的紧身服外出骑行，一天的路程往往不下于100公里。
The elders are maddeningly cheerful to boot: it seems they have spent a lifetime “eating bitterness”, as the Chinese saying goes, and are now ready to spit it out.
这些老年人也快乐得让人恼怒：他们似乎花了一辈子时间“吃苦”，现在准备把苦吐出来。
Yang Jianhua, 71, is a pint-sized former factory worker bursting with a rather exhausting amount of joie de vivre: gesticulating wildly and leaping about, she lists all the things Chinese old people can do to keep busy, from singing to dancing to art to piano. Lin Xuejun, 66, is one of her cycling mates: he was previously a senior executive at a state-owned enterprise and, when he retired five years ago, he felt the weight of time on his hands. But now he cycles every weekend, swims for an hour every day and takes two long walks every day. With his neon cycling shirt, Lycra trousers and wraparound shades, he should consider a second career as a geriatric sports model. “We prefer to spend money on biking equipment than on medicine,” he says.
71岁的杨建华（音译）长得小巧玲珑，退休前是工厂工人，她现在不知疲倦地享受着生活乐趣。她手舞足蹈地列举出中国老年人忙着做的各种事情，唱歌、跳舞、画画、弹钢琴，等等。66岁的林学军（音译）是跟她一起骑行的伙伴之一：他此前曾在一家国企担任高管，5年前退休时他感觉时间多得用不完。但现在，他每个周末都骑自行车，每天游泳1小时，每天长时间散步两次。他穿着骑行服、莱卡裤子，戴着面罩型墨镜，他应该考虑从事第二职业，做一个老年运动模特。他说：“我们愿意把钱花在购置骑行装备上，不愿意花在吃药上。”
And these days, the senior buck is a powerful force in the Chinese economy, says Matthew Crabbe, retail analyst at Mintel, who points out that there are enough over-60s to populate the UK, Italy, France and Germany combined. They have disposable income, they like to try new things — and they don’t just want nappies and baby food, he says.
咨询公司英敏特(Mintel)的零售业分析师马修?克拉布(Matthew Crabbe)表示，老年人消费已成为中国经济中一个强有力的因素。克拉布指出，中国60岁以上人口已抵得上英国、意大利、法国和德国的人口总和了。他说，这些人拥有可支配收入，喜欢尝试新事物——他们并不只想着尿布和婴儿食品。
There’s a whole generation of Mao-toughened elders just getting into the swing of spending on themselves. And with the start they had in life — they could live for decades.
中国有整整一代经过毛泽东时代磨砺的老年人，他们刚刚开始积极地在自己身上花钱。随着他们获得人生中的新起点，他们或许能够再活几十年。
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