【经济学人精读】河北东北缘何总遭遇地域黑？|163

雅思哥经济学人精读

原文译文

Regional discrimination

地域歧视

Province and prejudice

省份与偏见

Life is often hard for internal migrants in China, especially those from Henan and the north-east

在中国，外来人口生活通常很艰难，尤其是来自河南和东北的外来人口

The schoolchildren started to vomit. Some fell unconscious and were whisked into hospital. Angry parents demanded an explanation. The food-poisoning scandal quickly lit up Chinese social media. A kindergarten teacher in the central province of Henan was detained—accused of adding sodium nitrite, which can be toxic in large doses, to the meal boxes of at least 23 pupils late last month.

学生们开始呕吐。有的已失去知觉，被迅速送往医院。愤怒的家长要求一个解释。这起食物中毒丑闻迅速在中国社交媒体上引起热议。中部省份河南省一名幼教被拘留，他被指控上月底在至少23名学生的饭盒中添加亚硝酸钠，大剂量硝酸盐对人体有毒。

Most comments online have focused on the evil of the act and have expressed sympathy for the parents. But a surprising number have noted the alleged perpetrator’s home province. “I’m not surprised. Henan people would stoop to anything,” says one commentator on Baidu Tieba, a social-networking site. “Apart from wicked, I can’t think of another word to describe Henan people,” chimes in someone with more than 50,000 followers on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, who identifies himself as a financial journalist.

网上的大多数评论都聚焦在这一恶行上，并表达了对家长的同情。但令人惊讶的是，有相当多的人注意到了犯罪嫌疑人的家乡。“我并不惊奇，河南人卑鄙，什么事都能做出来，” 社交网站百度贴吧的一个人评论道。“除了恶劣，我想不出其他的词来形容河南人，”此言来自一位自称是金融记者的微博博主（相当于中国版的推特），这位博主拥有5万多粉丝。

Urban Chinese are often contemptuous of these internal migrants, wherever they are from. But people from certain regions suffer higher than usual levels of negative stereotyping. Regional discrimination “is hard to see and touch” yet its impact is as painful as getting “a bloodied face”, said an academic quoted by a north-eastern newspaper. Yang Yong, a migrant worker from Henan who lives in Beijing, has felt this. He says he was once refused a construction job in the capital because of his home province. “When I answered I’m from Henan the boss said goodbye,” he recalls. Online job advertisements for domestic maids in Beijing often specify that “applicants from Henan and the north-east need not apply.” A recent trawl through a popular website for household work, 2x9d.com, found that a fifth of such jobs explicitly excluded applicants from these two regions.

无论来自哪里，外来人口都会被城市居民鄙视。但某些地区的人遭受的负面刻板印象比通常水平要高。东北一家报纸援引一位学者的话：地区歧视“很难看到和触摸到”，但其影响就像“在脸上划血口子”一样令人痛苦。现居北京的河南农民工杨勇(音译)也有同感。他说，他曾经因为老家的原因被一份北京的建筑工作拒之门外。“当我回答说我来自河南时，老板让我回家”，他回忆道。在北京，家政服务的在线招聘广告中经常明确指出，“河南、东北求职者勿扰”。最近，在一家颇受欢迎的家政网站2x9d.com上进行的一项调查发现，有五分之一的此类工作明确将求职者排除在河南、东北之外。

People from Henan and the north-eastern provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning are among those most commonly targeted, partly because those areas are such big sources of migrants. Henan is a farming province of about 100m people. The latest census, in 2010, showed that 7.5% of Henanese were living outside their home province, the second-highest proportion of any province. The highest was Anhui, on Henan’s eastern border.

来自河南、黑龙江、吉林和辽宁等东北省份的人是最常见的招黑人群，部分原因是这些地区是很大的外来人口输送地。河南是一个拥有约1亿人口的农业省份。2010年的最新人口普查显示，7.5%的河南人生活在家乡以外，这一比例在所有省份中位居第二。比例最高的是安徽，位于河南东部边境。

Even among better-educated urban residents, north-easterners are often stereotyped as quarrelsome and pugnacious, and Henanese are commonly regarded as thieves and cheats. In Chinese television comedy, actors playing criminals often speak with a Henan accent. The “Spring Festival Gala” of 2017, the most-watched show of the year, included such a sketch. Some regional stereotypes are harbored only by people from a particular area. In a book published in 2015, Agnieszka Joniak- Luthi of the University of Zurich says that Shanghai residents sometimes describe people from northern Jiangsu, a province that borders on the city, as “boorish” and “unkind”. However, people from that region are not so despised in Beijing. Those from Anhui are also often scorned in Shanghai, but not so much elsewhere.

即使在受过良好教育的城市居民中，东北人也常常被认为是好争吵、好斗的，而河南人通常被视为小偷和骗子。在中国的电视喜剧中，扮演罪犯的演员常常带有河南口音。有些地区的刻板印象只存在于某一特定地区的人身上。在2015年出版的一本书中，苏黎世大学的阿格涅斯卡·琼尼可·卢斯说，上海居民有时形容来自江苏北部的人“粗野”和“不友善”。然而，在北京，来自江苏北部的人并不是那么遭人鄙视。安徽人在上海也经常遭到嘲笑，但在其他地方就没那么多了。

Egregious examples of regional stereotyping occasionally cause outcry. Last year a hiring manager at iQiyi, an online-video firm, instructed a subordinate (in a leaked email) to “filter out” applicants from Henan. In 2017 Meituan, an internet conglomerate best known for its food-delivery app, admitted to excluding applicants from Henan and the north-east for an open position. Both companies later apologized. After each incident, many Henanese and some sympathizers elsewhere vowed to show their displeasure by deleting the mobile app of the firm in question.

区域刻板印象的极端例子有时会引起强烈抗议。去年，网络视频公司爱奇艺内部邮件曝光，邮件显示，一名招聘经理指示下属尽量把河南人先“过滤”掉。2017年，以外卖应用而闻名的互联网企业集团——美团承认在公开招聘时将来自河南和东北的求职者排除在外。爱奇艺和美团后来都道歉了。每次事件后，许多河南人和其他地方的一些同情者发誓要删除该公司的手机app，以示不满。

In China’s state-controlled media, diyu hei, or “regional blackening”, is occasionally condemned. In an article about the iQiyi episode a newspaper controlled by the prosecutor-general’s office quoted a lawyer as saying that such discrimination had probably occurred in tens of thousands of companies but had never come to public attention. Beijing News last year quoted Bai Yansong, a Chinese television anchor, as saying that regional discrimination was getting worse. If allowed to continue, he said, the problem could turn into “a huge cause of social instability and division”.

中国官方媒体有时也会谴责地域黑。在一篇关于爱奇艺事件的文章中，一家官方报纸援引一名律师的话说，这种歧视可能发生在数万家公司，但从未引起公众注意。《新京报》去年援引央视节目主持人白岩松的话说，地区歧视正在加剧。他表示，如果任其发展下去，这个问题可能会变成“社会不稳定和分裂的一个巨大因素”。

Some lawyers say a legal loophole is partly to blame. China’s employment law prohibits discrimination on grounds of ethnicity, sex, religion, disability, social background and health. Regional origin, however, is not mentioned. Some legal scholars and legislators have called for a wider law that would prohibit all kinds of unfair discrimination, including the region- based sort. The government, however, does not appear enthusiastic. Some conservative officials may fear such a law would also have to specify gay rights (homosexuality was only removed from an official list of mental illnesses in 2001). They may also worry about a clash with the country’s hukou system, which allows officials to discriminate openly against migrants from other parts of China in government employment and the provision of public services.

有些律师表示，部分原因在于法律漏洞。中国的《劳动法》禁止基于种族、性别、宗教、残疾、社会背景和健康等原因的歧视。但却没有提到地域。有些法律学者和立法者呼吁制定更广泛的法律，禁止包括地域歧视在内的各种不公平的歧视。而政府似乎并不热衷此事。保守派可能担心这样的法律也必须明确同性恋者的权利（2001年同性恋才从官方心理疾病名单中删除）。他们还可能担心与中国户口制度的冲突。户口制度允许在就业和公共服务方面公开筛选就职者生源。

It may be that the problem of job discrimination will be alleviated by a growing shortage of migrant workers. Employers will find it harder to act on their prejudices. “In order to discriminate by region, you must first be presented with an abundance of choice,” says Huang Leping, the head of a legal-aid centre in Beijing. But region based prejudices will long remain. In an open-air dating market in Beijing, where parents gather to try to arrange matches for their adult children, some participants admit they would not welcome a Henanese in the family.

或许，就业歧视的问题可能因外来打工者的短缺而逐渐解决。雇主们会发现，带有色眼镜会使招聘更加困难。“地域歧视的前提是有可选择的余地。”北京某法律援助中心的负责人黄乐平说。但地域歧视将会长期存在。北京的一个露天相亲市场上，家长聚在一起，试图为成年子女安排相亲。相亲市场的某些人承认，他们不希望和河南人组建家庭。

精读解析

P1—P2: 学生食物中毒引起热议，网友开始攻击老师的家乡。

P3—P5: 区域歧视无处不在。

P6: 区域刻板印象的极端例子有时会引起强烈抗议。

P7：区域刻板印象的极端例子有时会引起强烈抗议。

P8：区域歧视存在的原因

P9：区域歧视将长期存在。

whisk /wsk/ v. 飞奔，疾过；挥动；搅拌n. 扫帚；搅拌器；毛掸子

【例句】

The waiter whisked my plate away.

服务员迅速收走我的盘子。

He whisked the cups away.

冷不防他把酒杯拿走了。

sodium nitrite亚硝酸钠

perpetrator /p:pi'treit/ n. 做坏事者;犯罪者；加害者;行凶者

【例句】

The government were urged to take strong measures against the perpetrators of violence.

政府被敦促对暴力犯罪者采取强硬措施。

Thank God the perpetrator did not achieve his ultimate goals.

感谢上帝，凶犯没有达到他的最终目标。

stoop to v. 堕落；屈尊

【例句】

I would never stoop to violent crime.

我决不会向暴力犯罪屈服。

I don't think he would stoop to such behavior!

我认为他不会堕落到如此恶劣的行为。

chime /tam/ v. 打钟报时；敲出和谐的声音n. 一套发谐音的钟；和谐；钟声

【短语】

chime in with v. 与…协调

wind chime风铃

【例句】

His thoughts were interrupted by the chimes of the town clock.

他的思绪被镇子里的钟声打断了。

All too soon, the chimes of midnight began to ring out.

一切都太快了，午夜的钟声敲响了。

contemptuous /kn'tem(p)tjs/ adj. 蔑视的;鄙视的;表示轻蔑的

【例句】

She's contemptuous of my humble background.

她瞧不起我出身卑贱。

The rich man is contemptuous of my humble home and poor surroundings.

那富人看不起我寒酸的家和穷苦的环境。

quarrelsome /'kwr()ls()m/ adj. <贬>(人)好争吵的,动辄争吵的

【例句】

They came from a hundred quarrelsome kingdoms, and they knew times may change, but men do not.

他们来自纷争不断的大小王国，也深知时局虽改，人性终究不变。

pugnacious /pg'nes/ adj. 好战的;好斗的;好挑衅的

【例句】

A retired litigator misses the challenge to her pugnacious intellect.

一位退休的诉讼人怀念对其好斗才智的挑战。

egregious /'grids/ adj. 极坏的;异乎寻常的

【例句】

egregious abuses of copyright.

令人震惊的侵犯版权行为。

outcry /'atkra/ n. 高声叫喊, 尖叫;公开反对

【短语】

open outcry公开喊价

【例句】

An increase in taxes produced an outcry from the voters.

增加税收引起了选民们强烈抗议。

filter out 滤除, 过滤；(消息等)泄漏

conglomerate /kn'glm()rt/ n. (多种经营的)联合大企业,企业集团；聚集物;砾岩

注：综合企业指经营多种不同性质业务的企业集团，旗下通常有多个从事不同业务、各自独立运作的子公司。

【例句】

The Earth is a specialized conglomerate of organisms.

地球是一个有机体的专化混合体。

sympathizer /smp θaz/ n. 同情者；同意者；支持者

【例句】

When the fighting is over , we will reckon with the enemy’s sympathizers.

战争结束之后，我们就要处理通敌的人。

loophole /'luphl/ n. 枪眼；换气孔；漏洞；射弹孔

【例句】

They tightened the loopholes in those acts.

他们堵住了那些法案中的漏洞。

clash /kl/ v. 交锋; 冲突；不合; 不一致n. (金属等的)刺耳的撞击声；不协调；冲突

【短语】

clash with与…冲突，不调和

【例句】

Their interests clashed with ours.

他们的利益与我们的相冲突。

A kindergarten teacher in the central province of Henan was detained—accused of adding sodium nitrite, which can be toxic in large doses, to the meal boxes of at least 23 pupils late last month.

这个句子的主干部分是：A kindergarten teacher in the central province of Henan was detained.破折号后面的内容是对A kindergarten teacher in the central province of Henan was detained部分的原因的解释。在破折号后面的部分中，句子的主干是accused of adding sodium nitrite to the meal boxes of at least 23 pupils late last month.中间的which can be toxic in large doses是一个which引导的非限定性定语从句，说明sodium nitrite的性质。

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