“Money can’t buy you happiness, but it does bring a more pleasant form of misery,” comic Spike Milligan’s famous one-liner looks like a neat description for "communism with Chinese characteristics."

　　“金钱买不到幸福，但确实带来了一种更令人愉悦的痛苦形式”——喜剧演员斯派克·米利根(Spike Milligan)这句著名的俏皮话，看上去就像是对“具有中国特色的共产主义”的简洁描述。

　　Despite soaring growth, surging wages, and a general feeling that China is "on the up", the latest Gallup Wellbeing Survey suggests that most Chinese people are down in the dumps.

　　尽管中国经济飞速发展，薪资大幅增长，人们普遍感觉中国“正在崛起”，但最新的盖洛普健康调查(Gallup Wellbeing Survey)表明，大多数中国人情绪都很低落。

　　The poll – which covers 124 countries across the globe – puts people into three categories based on how they would describe their lives. The options are "thriving", "struggling", and "suffering".

　　基于受访者对个人生活的描述，这项涵盖全球124个国家的调查将他们分成了三类，分别是“蒸蒸日上”、“勉强糊口”和“非常痛苦”。

　　Despite being the world’s fastest growing major economy – and the envy of stumbling economies in Europe and the US – China’s figures aren’t happy reading: Thriving: 12 percent. Struggling: 71 percent. Suffering: 17 percent.

　　尽管中国是全球增长最快的主要经济体，让步履蹒跚的欧洲经济体和美国深感羡慕，但调查结果并不理想：感觉生活“蒸蒸日上”的只有12%，“勉强糊口”的占71%，“非常痛苦”的为17%。

　　To put that better into context, at 12 percent ‘thriving’, China is on a par with both Afghanistan and Yemen (though the survey was done in 2010, before recent unrest).

　　和其它国家进行一下对比，可以让我们对这些数字有更直观的认识：中国有12%的人感觉生活“蒸蒸日上”，这与阿富汗和也门相同（不过此次调查是在2010年完成的，当时也门还未发生动乱）。

　　At 71 percent "struggling", China sits in similar territory to Haiti, Azerbaijan and Nepal.

　　71%的“勉强糊口”比率，与海地、阿塞拜疆和尼泊尔差不多。

　　Meanwhile the "suffering" 17 percent is a higher figure than Sudan, the Palestinian Territories, and Iraq.

　　与此同时，感到“非常痛苦”的人的比率为17%，比苏丹、巴勒斯坦地区和伊拉克还高。

　　The findings also match other recent surveys, such as one from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in December, which showed that the majority of China’s growing middle class in unhappy with life. Back then, the China Daily pointed to the rigours of modern life, the "rat race", fears about job security, meeting mortgage repayments, and increasing materialism as some of the causes of melancholy.

　　上述结果与最近的其它一些调查结果相符。比如，中国社会科学院(Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)去年12月的一项调查显示，在中国不断壮大的中产阶级当中，绝大多数人对生活并不满意。当时，《中国日报》(China Daily)指出，人们情绪低落的部分原因在于：现代生活的严酷、竞争激烈、担心失业、偿贷压力和日益增长的物质主义。

　　The increasing divide between rich and poor may also be a factor. The gini-coefficient – a measure of inequality – has been rising in China in recent years, the China Daily reports, and is already worryingly high. "China’s Gini coefficient, an indicator of inequality, is approaching 0.5. Throughout the world, a commonly recognized 'red line', or point where society should start to be worried, is 0.4, while 0 represents an equal distribution of national wealth."

　　贫富差距日益扩大可能也是一个因素。《中国日报》报道称，中国的基尼系数(Gini coefficient)最近几年一直在上升，目前已经高得令人担忧。基尼系数是一种衡量收入公平程度的指标。 “中国的基尼系数正在逼近0.5——基尼系数是衡量国民财富分配公平程度的指标，全球范围内认可的这个指数的‘红线’是0.4，系数为0时，意味着国民财富能够公平分配。”

　　Just last week, new rules on outdoor advertising came into effect in Beijing. As AFP reported at the announcement of the effective ban on high-end bill boards: 'China’s capital has banned outdoor advertising that promotes hedonistic or high-end lifestyles as the government seeks to ease public concerns about the country’s widening wealth gap… Such promotions help create a politically “unhealthy” climate, it said…" Newly forbidden words include 'supreme', 'royal', 'luxury' or 'high class', which are widely used in Chinese promotions for houses, vehicles and wines, it said."

　　就在上周，北京的户外广告新规开始生效。在报道北京对高端产品广告牌采取事实上的禁令时，法新社(AFP)称：“北京禁止户外广告宣扬享乐主义或高端生活方式，因为政府寻求缓解公众对中国日益扩大的财富差距的担忧……政府称，此类促销可能会产生一种‘不健康的’政治氛围……。“新规规定，户外广告上不得出现‘至高无上’、‘天皇贵族’、‘奢华’或‘高档’等词，而这些词语目前广泛用于中国的楼盘、汽车和葡萄酒的促销当中。”

　　With sales booming at high-end retailers like Burberry, better forms of misery – and retail therapy solutions – are certainly on offer in China. But only for those that can afford it.

　　随着巴宝莉(Burberry)等高端零售商在华销售的大幅增长，在中国，人们肯定能享受到“更愉悦的痛苦”——以及“购物疗法”——但是只有那些能够负担得起的人才能享受。