网络冷笑话讥讽中国高房价 Viral e-mails highlight China’s unequal society

The anger harboured by Beijingers about sky-high housing prices has been captured in a sardonic e-mail spreading in Chinese cyberspace calculating how long it would take peasants, thieves and prostitutes to buy a home.

北京居民对高涨的房价心怀愤怒，这一点在中文网络上流传的一封计算农民、抢劫犯和妓女买房各需多长时间的讽刺电邮中可见一斑。

With consumer inflation in China topping 5.1 per cent in November, public dissatisfaction over price increases has reached the highest level since records began in 1999, according to a recent central bank survey.

中国居民消费价格11月份上涨了5.1%。而最近中国央行一份调查显示，公众对物价上涨的不满意度达到了1999年开始编制这项统计以来的最高水平。

But such surveys cannot convey the acerbic political wit that Chinese people, and especially Beijingers, are famous for when they have to “eat bitterness”, in this case to meet the cost of buying a home.

然而，这些调查并不能表现出中国人——尤其是北京人——那为人熟知的尖刻的政治幽默。这种幽默往往在他们必须“吃苦”时表露无遗，具体到这封邮件就是指为了买房所要付出的代价。

The e-mail, which has gone viral in various versions, provides unscientific but entertaining estimates of how long citizens need to work to afford a 100 sq m apartment in central Beijing, which currently sells for about Rmb3m ($450,000).

这封以多个版本广泛流传的电子邮件，估算了市民要在北京市中心购买一套100平米、现价300万元（合45万美元）的住房需要多长时间。这些估算并不科学，但十分有趣。

As long as there were no natural disasters, a peasant farmer working an average plot of land would just have been able to afford an apartment if he or she somehow had worked from the Tang Dynasty, which ended in 907AD, until now.

如果不发生自然灾害，一个耕种某大小中等地块的农民，需要从唐朝开始攒钱到现在才买得起房。唐朝结束于公元907年。

If a Chinese blue-collar worker had been on the average monthly salary of Rmb1,500 since the Opium Wars in the mid-19th century and had given up weekends, then he or she might just have been able to afford a place of their own.

一个月均工资1500元的中国蓝领工人，如果放弃周六日休息，要从19世纪中叶的鸦片战争开始攒钱，才能买得起自己的住房。

Prostitutes, the e-mail says, would have to entertain 10,000 customers, a marathon feat requiring them to service a single customer a night from the age of 18 until the age of 46 without an evening off.

这封电子邮件中说，妓女需要接客1万次，如果每天接一次客，她们需要一天不停地从18岁接客到46岁才能完成这一马拉松式的“壮举”。

The thief would need to conduct 2,500 robberies to find the funds to buy a home.

而抢劫犯如果要想攒够买房的钱，需要抢劫2500次。

Of course, the e-mail notes, such calculations do not count interior decoration, furniture or household electronics.

当然，这封电子邮件还说，这些估算还不包括装修、家具和家电费用。