以下译文是机器翻译，仅供参考。

Hard work is a point of pride in China. But a culture of slacking off is now in vogue

努力工作是中国人的骄傲。但如今，一种懒散的文化正在流行

This story is adapted from the latest episode of Rough Translation. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or NPR One.

这个故事改编自《粗略翻译》的最新一集。收听苹果播客、Spotify或NPR One。

About four years ago in Beijing, a colleague dragged me out from behind my computer, where I had been laboring as a cub reporter.

大约四年前，在北京，一位同事把我从我的电脑后面拖了出来，我在电脑后面一直是一名见习记者。

She wanted to show me a trendy new bubble tea shop called Sung Tea, which celebrates the nihilistic attitude of China's post-'80s generation with fatalistically named drinks — names such as "Work Overtime with No Hope of a Pay Raise Green Tea" (perhaps too on the nose that day) and "My Ex Is Doing Better Than Me Black Tea."

她想给我看一家新潮的泡泡茶店，名为Sung tea，这家店用宿命论命名的饮料来庆祝中国80后的虚无主义态度，比如“加班加点，没有加薪的希望”绿茶（那天可能也在鼻子上）和“我的前任比我做得更好”红茶

The brand is a pun on the Chinese character Sang, which literally means "mourning." Sang has taken on a multitude of new meanings in China, which has been ground down by successive lockdowns meant to contain the coronavirus as well as growing regulatory controls that have clamped down on businesses, especially in the internet sector.

该品牌是对汉字“丧”的双关语，字面意思是“哀悼”丧在中国有着许多新的含义，这一点已被旨在遏制冠状病毒的连续封锁以及对企业，尤其是互联网行业的日益严格的监管所打压。

Sang's rise is exceptional, because China is a country that loves to work. Grinding out a "996" schedule — 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., 6 days a week — can be a point of pride. And it has paid off: During China's economic boom years through the 1990s and early 2000s, many Chinese reaped the financial gains of entrepreneurial hard work.

丧的崛起是不同寻常的，因为中国是一个热爱工作的国家。制定一个“996”时间表——从上午9点到晚上9点，每周6天——是一个值得骄傲的地方。这也得到了回报：在20世纪90年代至21世纪初的中国经济繁荣时期，许多中国人通过创业努力获得了经济收益。

But attitudes toward work are changing.

但人们对工作的态度正在改变。

Just as in the United States, people born after the 1980s in China are facing the prospect of worse outcomes than their parents. Property prices rise beyond their reach; college graduates have to compete over limited jobs; and a gender imbalance favoring males — made worse by decades of the one-child policy — puts marriage out of reach for poorer men. Hard work no longer seems to be worth it.

就像在美国一样，中国80后出生的人面临着比他们父母更糟糕的结果。房价上涨超出他们的承受能力；大学毕业生必须在有限的工作岗位上竞争；几十年来的独生子女政策使性别失衡更加严重，这使得贫穷男性无法结婚。努力工作似乎不再值得了。

The soul-crushing weariness these conditions produce can be embodied in the single Chinese character, Sang. And once I learned about Sang, it became impossible not to see it popping up everywhere in mainstream Chinese culture, and not just in my daily cup of boba.

这些条件产生的令人心碎的疲倦感可以体现在一个汉字“丧”中。一旦我学会了唱歌，就不可能不看到它在中国主流文化中随处可见，而不仅仅是在我每天的波巴杯中。

"Sang culture" is a popular shorthand for both a melancholic listlessness at the futility of one's current state of affairs and a bleak acceptance that life will be no better.

“丧文化”是一种流行的速记，它既表达了一个人对当前状况的无益的忧郁无精打采，也表达了一种对生活不会更好的悲观接受。

Here are several ways Sang culture is expressed in China:

以下是丧文化在中国的几种表达方式：

Sang culture-like threads of frustration have abounded in Chinese pop culture. Online, people share popular memes such as "Ge You Slouch" — a screenshot of a famous actor from a well-loved '90s sitcom slouched hopelessly on a couch — in chat groups and social media forums to express apathy.

中国流行文化中充斥着像唱歌一样的挫折感。在网上，人们在聊天组和社交媒体论坛上分享流行的模因，如“Ge You Slooch”，这是一部90年代备受喜爱的情景喜剧中一位著名演员的屏幕截图，他在沙发上毫无希望地懒散着，以表达冷漠。

Some of Sang's manifestations are cross-cultural, in unexpected ways: Pepe the Frog, a cartoon that has become a symbol of American far-right groups, has taken on a new life in China, where the green amphibian is toted around by Sang advocates. For whatever reason Sang people in China think Pepe looks Sang – haggard and worn down.

丧的一些表现形式是跨文化的，以出乎意料的方式：已成为美国极右翼团体象征的卡通《青蛙佩佩》（PepetheFrog）在中国开始了新的生活，丧的倡导者将绿色两栖动物带到了中国。无论出于什么原因，中国人都认为佩佩看起来很憔悴，精疲力竭。

Li Xueqin, an irreverent, tough-talking comedian who graduated from one of China's most prestigious universities, has gained a cult following for subverting cultural expectations of women and academic high achievers. She has earned a place in the Sang community with her brand of self-deprecating jokes about the stress of work life, dating, and parental pressures.

毕业于中国最负盛名的大学之一的李雪芹是一位不敬、说话强硬的喜剧演员，他颠覆了女性和学业优异者的文化期望，赢得了众多粉丝。她在丧格社区赢得了一席之地，她开了一系列关于工作生活压力、约会压力和父母压力的自嘲玩笑。

And the American television show BoJack Horseman has accrued a surprise cult following in China, where viewers say they relate to the self-destructive, animated equine that is the show's main character.

美国电视剧《鲍杰克·霍斯曼》在中国引起了一股令人惊讶的狂热，观众们说，他们与该剧的主人公、具有自我毁灭性的动画马有关。

A host of independent record labels specialize in low-energy, lyrical music that can be the perfect soundtrack to your best Sang life.

许多独立唱片公司专注于低能、抒情的音乐，这些音乐可以成为你最佳演唱生活的完美配乐。

"Our generation has such anxieties: to change our social classes and to struggle to live a better life, but at the same time, we still have this utopian idealism that is difficult to balance," says Xiaozhou, the band's bassist.

乐队贝司手小周表示：“我们这一代人有这样的焦虑：改变我们的社会阶层，努力过上更好的生活，但与此同时，我们仍然有这种难以平衡的乌托邦理想主义。”。

At one recent Trip Fuel performance in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen — where many millennials work demanding tech startup jobs — many of their fans were so exhausted that they napped through parts of the concert.

最近，在中国南方城市深圳举行的一次旅行燃料表演上，许多千禧一代都在那里工作，要求获得科技初创公司的工作。他们的许多歌迷精疲力竭，在音乐会的部分时间里都在打盹。

The lead singer goes by Manager Chen, which is both his stage name and his day job. He works at a bank. At the end of the show, he thanked the crowd of fans — and his boss, who gave him the weekend off so Chen would make it to his own concert. It was back to work for the rocker by night, bank employee by day on the following Sunday morning.

主唱是陈经理，这既是他的艺名，也是他的日常工作。他在一家银行工作。在节目结束时，他感谢了观众和他的老板，他们给了他一个周末的假期，这样陈就可以参加自己的演唱会了。第二个星期天早上，它晚上回到摇滚乐公司上班，白天回到银行工作。

Adherents of Sang culture can draw on a cohort of other terms that have entered the parlance of modern Mandarin Chinese. Jumping through the hoops of modern Chinese society is often dubbed neijuan. And there is "involution," meaning a race-to-the-bottom culture of overwork brought on by shrinking resources in a populous country.

丧文化的追随者可以借鉴现代汉语中的其他术语。在现代中国社会的圈子里跳跃通常被称为内卷。还有“内卷化”，这意味着在一个人口众多的国家，由于资源的不断减少，导致了一种向底层过度工作文化的竞争。

Burned-out video game players can find an outlet in Exhausted Man, a strangely soothing game in which players must manipulate a limp, snoozing office worker into completing deceptively simple tasks such as turning off the lights or slithering his exhausted body across his room to get a cup of coffee.

筋疲力尽的电子游戏玩家可以在《筋疲力尽的人》中找到出路，这是一款奇怪的舒缓游戏，玩家必须操纵一个跛足、打盹的上班族完成看似简单的任务，比如关灯，或者让他筋疲力尽的身体滑过房间去喝杯咖啡。

"So many players say my game is exactly what their daily lives are like," says Gao Ming, the Beijing-based designer behind the video game, which plays on themes of tangping and Sang. "If that is the case, then why do they keep playing the game? Because by highlighting the absurdist nature of your exhausting lifestyle, the game lets you separate yourself from the day-in, day-out routine."

“很多玩家都说我的游戏和他们的日常生活一模一样，”这款视频游戏的设计者高明（音译）表示。这款游戏以唐平和丧格为主题。“如果是这样的话，那他们为什么还要继续玩这个游戏呢？因为通过突出你疲惫的生活方式的荒谬本质，这个游戏可以让你从日常生活中分离出来。”

Actually, playing video games can be kind of productive, says Gao. He hopes players of Exhausted Man might reflect on the connections between the game and their own lifestyles — and find the motivation to change their lives if the two are too similar.

事实上，玩电子游戏可以提高效率，高说。他希望《筋疲力尽的人》的球员们能够反思这场比赛与他们自己的生活方式之间的联系，如果两者太相似，那么他们就会找到改变生活的动机。

You can also tangping, or lie flat in China: a lifestyle of extreme lethargy trumpeted as a form of social protest against overwork and unrealistic expectations.

你也可以在中国躺平或平躺：一种极度嗜睡的生活方式，被宣传为一种社会抗议过度工作和不切实际期望的形式。

It is the natural reflex for people exhausted by the extreme competitiveness of China's education system, facing mounting economic pressures, or fed up with the political posturing of an increasingly ideological political system.

这是人们对中国教育体系的极端竞争力感到疲惫不堪、面临日益增长的经济压力、或对日益意识形态化的政治体系的政治姿态感到厌倦的自然反应。

Serial thief Zhou Liqi, featured in our Rough Translation episode, becomes an unlikely poster child for this form of hardcore chilling. In 2012, he was arrested for the second time for nabbing e-bikes, and he gave a jailhouse interview that somehow captures the hearts and minds of white and blue collar workers across China: "I can never work in this life," he says with a rueful smile. That's why he has to survive by stealing.

连环小偷周立奇，出现在我们的粗略翻译集中，成为这种冷酷形式的一个不太可能的海报孩子。2012年，他因劫持电动自行车第二次被捕，在监狱接受采访时，他以某种方式俘获了中国白领和蓝领工人的心：“我这辈子永远不能工作，”他带着遗憾的微笑说道。这就是为什么他必须靠偷窃来生存。

By the time he got out of prison for the last time, in 2020, Zhou had become an internet sensation.

2020年，当周小川最后一次出狱时，他已经在互联网上引起了轰动。

Others are unwilling mascots of Sang culture. Last year, a Russian contestant who was cast on a Chinese reality TV show found himself trapped on the show: Viewers were so enchanted with his lack of motivation, they kept voting to keep him on week after week.

另一些则是丧文化的吉祥物。去年，一位参加中国真人秀节目的俄罗斯选手发现自己被困在了节目中：观众们被他缺乏动力的表现迷住了，他们一周又一周地投票支持他。

The contestant, who goes by the name Lelush, appears to have warmed up to the idea of stardom and of Sang. On his Instagram, Lelush regularly models loungewear and luxury pajamas: the perfect outfits for a discerning person who just wants to lie flat.

这位名叫Lelush的选手似乎已经对明星和歌手的想法产生了兴趣。Lelush经常在Instagram上为休闲装和豪华睡衣做模特：这是一个只想平躺的有眼光的人的完美装备。