OVER RECENT decades, individual Chinese dreams reshaped the world. The largest manufacturing power on Earth emerged, in part, because hundreds of millions of rural men and women left behind families and villages to toil in coastal boomtowns. Behind dry graphs showing steep growth rates lurked stories of the human heart. Generations raised before the 1980s conformity reinvented themselves as entrepreneurs and risk-takers.
几十年来，中国人的梦想重塑了世界。全球最大制造业强国之所以能出现，是因为数亿农村男女离开家庭和村庄，到沿海新兴城市辛勤工作。快速增长的枯燥图表背后，隐藏着激动人心的故事。在80年代前成长起来的几代人将自己重塑为企业家和冒险家。
If Chinese optimism is now fading, the world needs to know. Certainly the economy is slowing. Consumers and businesses are in a funk. The Communist Party devotes large resources to tracking the public mood, but keeps its findings to itself.
当前，国人的乐观情绪正在消退。经济放缓，消费者和企业都陷入了恐慌。
About 5m people live in the urban core and rural counties of Yichun, which is known for its lithium mines. It is a third-tier city in the mountains of Jiangxi, a south-eastern province of middling wealth and size. At 34,600 yuan ($4,850) Yichun’s per-person disposable income matches the national median level almost perfectly. Yichun has the same proportion of old people as China does overall, and the same birth rate. Like many inland cities Yichun has modernised rapidly, gaining new parks, an airport, a high-speed train station and some shiny skyscrapers in just a few years.
宜春以锂矿闻名，总人口约500万，是江西山区的一座三线城市，而江西是中国东南一个中等富裕和规模的省份。宜春人均可支配收入为34,600元，几乎与全国中位数完全吻合。老年人口比例以及出生率也基本相同。与许多内陆城市一样，宜春也迅速实现了现代化，在短短几年内就拥有了新公园、机场、高铁站和一些耀眼的摩天大楼。
In any political system, governments should want citizens to answer “yes” to two questions: is the country on the right track, and will your children’s lives be better than yours? Your columnist recently put those queries to dozens of Yichun residents.
在任何体制下，政府都希望公民对两个问题回答“是”：国家是否走在正确的轨道上？孩子的生活会比你更好吗？作者最近向数十名宜春居民提出了这些问题。
A couple in their 60s—but both looking much older than that—invited Chaguan to slices of watermelon in their three-room home, hidden in a maze of tumbledown brick shacks. The wife recalled the demolition of her rural village in 1979, a stroke of fate that saw her freed from communal farm work and assigned to an urban work unit. Her husband remembered 1991, when both were laid off by the same collective electronics factory, at the start of a China-wide wave of industrial restructuring. Fearful about how to feed their young twin sons, they opened a meat stall. The 1990s were good years to open a business, he mused, and life was soon “comfortable”. The couple sold meat for 22 years.
一对60多岁的夫妇（但两人看起来都比实际年龄大很多）邀请作者到他们的三居室吃瓜，房子隐藏在一片摇摇欲坠的砖瓦棚屋中。妻子回忆起1979年农村拆迁，命运的安排让她从集体农场工作中解放出来，分配到城市单位。丈夫则记得1991年，当时中国正掀起工业重组浪潮，两人被同一家集体电子厂解雇。由于担心如何养活年幼的双胞胎儿子，他们开了一家肉摊。他若有所思地说，90年代是开办企业的好年头，生活很快就变得“舒适”。这对夫妇卖了22年的肉。
Their twins are 38 now and work in the southern megacity of Guangzhou. “Their lives are not as good as mine,” lamented their father, who frets about his sons’ low-paid jobs, though they went to university. “Society deceives people,” said their mother, noting how graduates across China struggle to find good jobs. Only one boy has married. They handed 400,000 yuan, much of their life’s savings, to his wife’s family as a bride price.
他们的儿子如今38岁，在广州工作。“他们的生活不如我好，”父亲感叹道，为儿子的低薪而烦恼，尽管他们上了大学。“社会欺骗了人们，”母亲说，并指出全国各地的毕业生都很难找到好工作。只有一个男孩结婚了。他们把40万（他们一生的大部分积蓄）交给了妻子的家人作为彩礼。
Just across town, but a world away, the owner of a deserted hair salon sighed that “business is a mess”. Two years after the covid-19 pandemic, customers are still tightening belts. He is calmer about the long-term prospects of his children—two boys of 11 and seven, who loped past in football shirts. He bought an apartment in 2011 and another in 2016. Today the flats are worth twice what he paid for them, though their value has slipped from a peak in 2022. He fears his sons will enjoy fewer opportunities than he did. Still, he said, those apartments will help them find wives.
在城市的另一边，一家废弃发廊的老板叹息道，“生意一团糟”。疫情两年后，顾客们仍在勒紧裤腰带。他对孩子们的长期前景更加平静——两个儿子分别11岁和7岁，穿着足球衫大步走过。他在2011年买了一套房，2016年又买了一套。如今，这些房子的价值是购买时的两倍，尽管已从2022年的峰值回落。他担心儿子们享受的机会比自己少。不过，这些房会帮助他们娶妻生子。
A 23-year-old shop assistant described a gulf between youngsters whose parents bought urban apartments years ago, and those who did not. Others have money because their family homes were demolished as Yichun modernised, earning their parents compensation payments. Her own rural family is “not as well-off”.
一位23岁的店员说，父母多年前买房的年轻人与父母没有买房的年轻人之间差距很大。一些人有钱是因为他们赶上了拆迁，可以得到补偿金。她自己的农村家庭“没有那么富裕”。
After decades of growth, the Communist Party enjoys reserves of political capital. In a Buddhist temple, Chaguan met a middle-aged man in the hard-hit construction sector. He had come to pray for his “peace of mind”, he said. He blames himself, if life is difficult. “I need to work harder,” he said.
在一座佛寺里，作者遇到了一位在低迷的建筑行业工作的中年男子。他说，来这里是为了祈求“心灵平静”。如果生活艰难，他会责怪自己，“我需要更加努力。”
A local pawnbroker served tea while her colleague inspected a diamond ring being sold by an embarrassed young man. A divorced mother in her late 30s, she believes people are becoming more risk-averse. Many of her contemporaries used to work in big cities. Increasingly, she sees them returning to Yichun, where with even a mediocre job “you won’t starve.” More and more youngsters dream of safe jobs in the civil service, she noted.
当地一家当铺的老板端着茶水，她的同事正在检查一个尴尬的年轻男子的钻戒。她是一位30多岁的离异母亲，认为人们越来越不愿意冒险。她的许多同龄人都曾在大城市工作。她看到越来越多的人回到宜春，在那里，即使是一份平庸的工作“也不会饿死”。她指出，越来越多的年轻人梦想着在公务员队伍中获得一份稳定的工作。
The collapse of several big property developers has shaken buyers across China. Tellingly, a salesman at a half-built luxury-apartment complex in Yichun’s newest district emphasised that the developer is backed by a central-government ministry, and has ample funds to complete the project. The salesman considered starting his own business to make more money, but doubts he will take the risk. “Probably, I will go for stability right now,” he admitted.
几家大型房企的破产震惊了各地的购房者。宜春新区一栋建了一半的豪华住宅售楼人员强调，开发商得到了支持，有足够资金完工，这一点很有说服力。这位销售员考虑过创业赚更多钱，但他怀疑是否会冒这个险。“可能，我现在会选择稳定，”他承认。
Yichun is not in despair. Several wonder if their country’s old growth model is ending. Shang che was the dream. Today’s China has fewer trains to board.
宜春并没有陷入绝望。一些人怀疑旧增长模式是否已经终结。“上车”曾是人们的梦想，如今的中国，可上的车更少了。
