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Rich kids: Lifestyles of the rich and infamous
It’s not easy having it all
坐拥一切的生活也非易事
NOW decades old, China’s economic boom has brought a better life to
hundreds of millions. But it has also created new problems, such as pollution
and inequality. And, for the super-rich, a moral conundrum: how, wealthy parents
wonder, can they raise children who do not behave like arrogant brats?
几十年过去了，中国经济的蓬勃为几亿人民带来了更好的生活。但是同时也导致了新问题，比如人口和不平等。而且，对于亿万富翁的一个道德难题是：富有的父母在考虑如何不把孩子培养成“垮二代”?
China now has an estimated 1.09m people with personal wealth of at least
10m yuan ($1.6m), and 67,000 “super-rich” ones with assets above 100m yuan,
including 213 dollar billionaires. Their children, the “second-generation rich”,
or fuerdai, are the object of rapt attention in national media and a mixture of
envy and revulsion among ordinary folk.
中国现在有约109万人个人财富超过至少一千万人民币(160万美元)，以及一亿以上的超级富豪有6.7万人，包括213个十亿富翁。他们的孩子，所谓富二代，是全国媒体坚持不懈的焦点，以及普通民众羡慕嫉妒恨的对象。
词语解析：rapt attention 往往指的是关注的焦点，因为rapt是专心致志的。
例句：The new “Jurassic World” trailer has our rapt attention.
词组巧记：a mixture of envy and revulsion 这不正说得是我们常用的“羡慕嫉妒恨”吗。
They can be seen driving outrageously posh cars which, thanks to stiff
import duties, can cost $1m or more. Some of them post ostentatious pictures and
vulgar rants about their exploits on social media. Wang Sicong, the son of one
of China’s richest tycoons, recently aroused a storm of criticism for saying
that his main criterion when selecting a girlfriend was that she must be
“buxom”. He also posted snaps of his Alaskan husky wearing two gold Apple
Watches, worth tens of thousands of dollars—useful, no doubt, if the dog ever
needs to surf the internet.
人们看见富二代开着极其豪华的轿车，因为严格的进口关税，这些车价超百万不止。有些富二代在社交媒体上公开炫富照片，粗野不堪地夸耀着自己的壮举。中国首富的儿子，王思聪，最近因为声称女友必须胸大而引起热议。他还上传了几张他家阿拉斯加哈士奇带着价值几万的两块苹果手表的照片。如果狗狗想上网，毋庸置疑，这将会派上用场。
词语解析：post ostentatious
pictures发炫富照片。炫富的名词是ostentation。vulgar是粗野庸俗的，rant是大声的吆喝，exploits做名词时意为英雄伟绩。
词组巧记：a storm of criticism
In June Xi Jinping, China’s president, told a government meeting that
China’s young rich must curb their hedonistic ways. They should be guided, he
said, “to think about where their wealth comes from” and be patriotic,
law-abiding and hard-working. A week after his remarks were made public, state
media reported on a training session in the prosperous coastal province of
Fujian for 70 offspring of billionaires, where they were taught “traditional
Chinese culture, social responsibility and business knowledge”—and fined 1,000
yuan if they turned up late.
中国国家主席习近平六月份在一次政府会议中指出，中国富二代必须去除享乐主义。他说，需要指引他们“思考财富是怎么来的”，并且爱国、守法、肯干。习近平的公开发言一周后，国家媒体报道了在富有的沿海省份福建为70名十亿富翁的子女提供的培训，教育内容为“中国传统文化，社会责任和经商知识”——迟到者罚款1000元。
词语解析：hedonistic享乐主义，hedonism是一个希腊哲学学派，传说是由亚里士多德创建。
According to some fuerdai, all this will be an uphill battle. Wang Daqi, a
30-year-old from a monied family, profiled several of his peers in “Burden of
Wealth”, a book published in May. It sought to paint a more nuanced portrait of
the lives the fuerdai lead, but he acknowledges that ostentation is the only
value many of them know. “It’s pretty pathetic, actually,” he says. Among those
who do work, he adds, most choose to invest their family wealth in other
businesses. “To build a new business of your own takes a lot of work, but if you
just seed startups you don’t have to do the hard work or carry too much
responsibility.”
一些富二代称这将会是一场拉锯战。王大骐，家庭富有，三十岁，他在五月份发布的一本书里将他们这类人描述为“肩负着财富的重担”。书中以另外的视角描述了富二代的生活，但他也认识到很多富二代知道的唯一的价值观就是炫富。“其实这很可怜。”他说。他附加说，去工作的富二代往往将家庭财富投资到别的行业中。“创办自己的生意需要很多努力，但是只是创业的话他们不需要怎么努力，也没什么责任。”
词组巧记：uphill battle/fight/struggle指的是由于其他人的阻碍而难以执行的事情。
Another member of the fuerdai, a 26-year-old Beijing native whose father is
a self-made investment banker, says some of his friends are from politically
well-connected families and probably owe some of their wealth to corrupt
dealings. Others have honest family fortunes built from scratch, and many, he
reckons, fall somewhere in between. “We don’t talk too much among ourselves
about where the money comes from,” he says. “We all understand it can be very
sensitive.”
另外一个富二代，26岁的北京人，父亲是自力更生的投资家。他说他的一些朋友家中很有政治人脉，家中的一些财富来自于贪污受贿，另外一些家庭靠勤勤恳恳的努力而白手起家，还有很多是在两者之间。“我们自己之间从不讨论钱是从哪来的，”他说“我们都知道这事很敏感。”
词组巧记：self-made自力更生，build from scratch白手起家。
China’s ongoing anti-corruption campaign, he thinks, is doing more than any
training programme to get rich kids to tone things down—at least in public. They
still party hard and buy new cars every six months. “But now when they go out,
they just take the BMW 7 Series instead of the Aston Martin.”
他认为，中国正在进行的反贪污是让富二代低调下来的最有效的手段——起码在公众场合是这样。他们仍然游戏人间，每半年购买新车。“但是他们出去的时候，他们只开宝马7系，而不是阿斯顿·马丁。”
词组巧记：tone down 使......缓和下来，如：Tone down that aggressive letter.
把咄咄逼人的语气缓和下来。
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发表于 2016-7-12 22:07:06