书城外语追踪中国-这里我是老卫
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第33章 Minor entrepreneurs (3)

But will there be enough countries to which China’s surplus in guys may emigrate to, are there perhaps countries that have too many women? Then we could make up for that internationally, she muses, as we export so many Chinese products and import oil and iron ore, we could theoretically import women and export men, “of course only on a voluntary basis!”

When Deng XiaoPing was still alive, he who unfortunately died much too soon, he would surely find a solution. He has turned poor ShenZhen into this huge modern city, too.

Following Grandma LaoLao’s line of thought, we might actually come to believe that all women in China are finding a husband extremely rapidly, and it ought to go down with the devil if he should be Mr. Right, too, after all, there are plenty of them.

But unfortunately the world is not so, even in China.

Here we see ZhouYing 周颖, a good friend of SunLi. ZhouYing subscribes to the idea of “Self do, self have”, everything she does and knows herself. Her bachelor

There are combs offered, the two experts try them first before mummy may decide.

Mobile hairdressers in the street.

If the bicycle transport service providers have or they make themselves comfortable for reading.

nothing to do, they take deep naps on their

“comfortable” vehicles (this man has not moved

for more than two hours),

of engineering allowed her to become self-entrepreneur with a small shop that is trading electronic components. Then she took on the distribution of a Canada based manufacturer. Now her office is too small, she has to move, because nine employees do not want to squeeze into 25 m2 and listen to each other during loud phone-calls. Her major supplier, a very specialised high-tech company based in Toronto, also frequently sends along the founder and managing director, sometimes the marketing director or the chief financial officer. They need to have room as well.

ZhouYing is a powerful woman, she is successful, not outright beautiful but not ugly, either – and yet she has no boyfriend, no one whom she could or would marry. Now she wants to go to the Canada for at least a year – whether she will find someone there? She would like to win a foreigner as a friend and husband.

MaLi (马莉) is a friend of ZhouYing. MaLi does not live and work in ShenZhen, but in BeiJing. During her studies she has a platonic relationship with a student, she will let him off after he tells her one day: “No one on the road turns after you, no one would recognize you, you’re so average.” Apparently he wants to suggest she should be grateful that he is so merciful to her, but she interprets otherwise and enables him to move together with prettier girls. Her ex-boyfriend later marries one of her best friends, the two women remain in contact, but any attempt of her ex-boyfriend to reconnect is even less than ignored by her.

After the bachelor and master in engineering she quickly made another master in “theoretical physics”, to then apply for a PhD in a field of astronomy, currently she is working on it. Along the way she works part-time as a translator for special literature (the PhD scholarship is a little short, she says) and for herself and her family and some friends she handles the daily purchases and sales in the stock market.

MaLi has two computers in operation at the same time, at the one she’s working for her PhD (with right hand and left brain), on the other (with the vacancies) she is chatting (MSN, QQ), trades in stocks and makes translations. Any outsider might get the impression that she was 24 hours a day (and night) online, but this is probably exaggerated and hardly can be controlled, unless you want to go online yourself in the middle of the night and check out on her.

Without a doubt, MaLi is highly intelligent and academically successful. But apart from a years-long relationship with a man who did not decide between her and another woman, she was not able to establish in recent years any relationship with a man.

ZhouYing and MaLi are two non-comparable women with completely different appearance, demeanour and professional activity. Both have in common that they are intelligent (the second one most highly) and successful (the first one most financially). Chinese men do not like that, or: There are not many Chinese men who want to get involved with active, intelligent, confident and successful women.

Of which there are more and more in major cities – in BeiJing, there will be hundreds of thousands, in ShangHai as many, in ShenZhen probably half of that.

All friends and acquaintances of ZhouYing and MaLi make every effort to find them suitable partners, but successful procuration has failed so far because of two constraints: not only the men who are afraid of strong women, which in China is perhaps not different from any other country in the world, but also the two women who consider any proposed men too soft, too stupid, too dull, in every possible way not good enough. MaLi and ZhouYing have just high expectations....

Procuration efforts run hot at times. An old college friend from BeiJing calls and

A fortune-teller with a client. On the market: A large fish is cut into manageable pieces for a customer.

asks ZhouYing if she could recommend someone in BeiJing. “But she must be very very pretty, as a picture!” That is the lower limit below which should not even start to suggest. ZhouYing is not able to procure any “very very pretty” girlfriend, sorry. But whether her classmate might recommend someone for her friend, MaLi, in BeiJing? No, sorry, all the others are either off the market or will “under no circumstances” have a woman who is scientifically so far above them.

For ZhouYing in turn, MaLi may do anything as well, because she does not know any foreigners.

ZhangMiao (张淼) is again another “case”. She is very much with foreigners, because she is working all day as a freelance translator for conferences, travels, documents. First, she does not have time to look for a boyfriend, second, she is interested in foreigners only in view of their role as customers, not in any other possible roles.

Fishermen on the way home.

Grandma LaoLao and one of her two beautiful granddaughters.