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| When Qu Tongzhou, a photography assistant in Shanghai, set out on a long-awaited trip to western China in June, she found the cities she visited to be unwelcoming. As an aftereffect of the country’s “zero-Covid” policies, locals were leery of travelers, and some hotels refused Ms. Qu, fearing she could introduce the virus. | 今年6月，上海的摄影助理屈童舟前往中国西部开始期待已久的旅行，她发现所到城市对她都不太欢迎。由于中国“清零”政策的影响，当地人对游客持怀疑态度，一些酒店拒绝屈童舟入住，担心她会将病毒带进来。 |
| So Ms. Qu turned to Tantan and Jimu, two popular Chinese dating apps with Tinder-like features. She was aware of the risks involved in meeting strangers, but the apps yielded a wellspring of new friends, including a biotech entrepreneur in the city of Lanzhou, a Tibetan doctor in the town of Xining, and a public official in Karamay, a northwest city of Xinjiang. At each stop, her matches provided lodging and took her to bars and other local spots. | 屈童舟只好向中国两款颇受欢迎的约会应用程序“探探”和“积目”求助，它们的功能与Tinder类似。她知道与陌生人见面有风险，但这些软件为她带来了大量新朋友，包括兰州市的一名生物技术企业家、西宁市的一名藏医，以及新疆西北部城市克拉玛依市的一名公务员。每到一站，她结交的朋友都为她提供住宿，带她去了当地酒吧和其他地方。 |
| “If I didn’t use these apps, I wouldn’t have met many people,” Ms. Qu, 28, said. “No one would have taken me out on the town.” | “如果不用软件，可能没有人陪我一起玩，”28岁的屈童舟说。“没有人带我玩。” |
| Over the past two years, China has cracked down on much of its domestic technology industry, banning for-profit online tutoring agencies, restricting video games and slapping multi-billion-dollar antitrust fines on the largest online shopping platforms. Some of China’s once-vaunted tech titans, like Jack Ma, the founder of the e-commerce firm Alibaba, have stepped back from public view. | 过去两年间，中国严厉打压大部分国内技术行业，禁止了以盈利为目的的在线辅导服务机构，对网络游戏进行限制，并对最大的在线购物平台开出了上百亿元的反垄断罚单。中国一些曾被大肆吹捧的技术巨头，比如电子商务集团阿里巴巴的创始人马云，已退出了公众视野。 |
| But one corner of China’s technology industry has flourished: dating apps. | 但中国技术行业的一个角落仍在蓬勃发展：约会应用程序。 |
| The number of dating apps in China with over 1,000 downloads soared to 275 this year from 81 in 2017, according to data.ai, an analytics firm. Downloads of the apps have increased, as have in-app purchases. | 据分析公司data.ai，中国下载量千次以上的约会应用程序数量，已从2017年的81个飙升至今年的275个。除下载量外，这些软件的应用内购买也有所增长。 |
| Investors have also poured more than $5.3 billion into dating and social networking companies in the country last year, up from $300 million in 2019, according to PitchBook. And China’s largest tech companies, such as ByteDance and Tencent, are testing, acquiring and investing in new apps that promise to bring strangers together. | 据PitchBook的数据，投资者去年向中国的约会应用和社交网络公司投入了超过相当于53亿美元的资金，高于2019年的3亿美元。字节跳动和腾讯等中国最大的技术企业正在测试、收购和投资许诺让陌生人相识的新应用。 |
| These apps are flourishing — and Beijing appears to be leaving them alone — for more than just romantic reasons. They promise to nudge people toward marriage at a time when China’s marriage and fertility rates are at record lows, but the apps also are helping users combat loneliness as Covid lockdowns have wreaked havoc on social connections. | 这些应用正在蓬勃发展，而中国政府似乎对它们不闻不问，其原因不仅是爱情。在中国的结婚率和生育率处于历史最低水平的时候，这些软件除了许诺将人们带入婚姻殿堂外，也在中国遏制新冠病毒的封控措施严重破坏社会交往的时候，帮助用户减轻孤独感。 |
| For many people, the apps have become virtual sanctuaries — a 21st-century twist on what urbanists called the “third place,” a community between work and the home — to explore hobbies, discuss popular topics and meet new friends. | 对许多用户来说，这些软件已成为虚拟的庇护所，可以说是城市学家所谓的“第三场所”（介于工作和家庭之间的社区）的21世纪变种，让人们可以探索兴趣爱好、讨论热门话题、结识新朋友。 |
| “It’s really difficult to meet people offline,” said Raphael Zhao, 25, a recent college graduate in Beijing. Mr. Zhao downloaded Tantan in April after being locked down on his campus over zero-Covid measures. “Because the pool is so large on these platforms, it gives you this hope that you’ll meet someone that you live with.” | “线下认识人真的太困难了，”25岁的拉斐尔·赵（音）说，他最近刚从北京一所大学毕业。今年4月，拉斐尔·赵的学校在“清零”政策下封锁校园后，他下载了探探。“约会软件因为pool实在太大，所以会给人一种希望感，觉得总是有一定概率去认识人到一个和自己相符匹配的人。” |
| Chinese authorities have taken action against dating apps in the past. In 2019, Tantan and another dating app called Momo suspended some in-app features after regulators dinged them for neglecting the spread of pornographic content on their platforms. | 中国当局过去曾对约会应用采取过行动。2019年，监管机构指责探探和另一个平台“陌陌”听任用户在其平台上传播色情内容之后，这两个平台暂停了一些应用内功能。 |
| But unlike online tutoring and cryptocurrency trading, areas that China’s regulators have unambiguously quashed, dating and other services centered on social encounters have remained relatively unscathed as the apps have explicitly framed their goals as helping Chinese society to thrive. | 但与中国监管机构已明文取缔的在线辅导和加密货币交易不同，约会及其他以社交为中心的服务受到的监管相对来说少得多，因为这些平台将自己的目标清楚地定位为帮助中国社会繁荣发展。 |
| Zhang Lu, the founder of Soul, a dating app backed by Tencent, has said that “loneliness is the core problem we want to solve.” Blued, the most popular gay dating app, bills itself as a public health and H.I.V.-awareness app. Its site highlights its work on H.I.V. prevention, collaborations with local governments, and its founder’s encounters with high-ranking officials such as Premier Li Keqiang. (Blued’s founder stepped down last month, alluding to the challenges of running a L.G.B.T.Q. app in China, but the app’s downloads have remained constant.) | 腾讯投资的交友软件Soul的创始人张璐表示，“孤独感就是我们核心要解决的问题。”中国最受欢迎的同性恋社交软件Blued，把自己宣传为一款公共卫生和增强艾滋病毒意识的应用。其网站强调艾滋病毒预防工作，与地方政府的合作，以及软件创始人受国务院总理李克强等高官接见的情景。（Blued的创始人已在上月辞职，间接地显示了在中国运营一款LGBTQ应用所面临的挑战，但该软件的下载量一直很稳定。） |
| “Rather than simply cracking down, dating apps are seen as technologies that can be effectively co-opted by the state,” said Yun Zhou, an assistant professor of sociology and Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan. | “政府把交友软件视为一种可被国家有效利用的技术，而不是简单地打击它们，”密歇根大学社会学系和中国研究助理教授周云（音）说。 |
| When internet dating arrived in China in the early 2000s, the power to form relationships — once disproportionately in the hands of village matchmakers, parents and factory bosses — increasingly fell onto the individual. Many were eager for the shift, gravitating to features on WeChat, the popular messaging app, which enabled chatting with strangers. | 在中国，乡下的媒人、父母，以及工厂老板曾经掌握大量建立亲密关系的权力，自网上交友平台在21世纪初进入中国后，这种控制权更多地落到了个人手中。许多人渴望这种变化，他们聚集在流行的即时通讯应用微信平台上，使用平台让他们与陌生人聊天的功能。 |
| The trend accelerated in the 2010s with the arrival of dating apps like Momo and Tantan, which emulated Tinder. Alongside Soul, they became China’s three most popular dating apps, amassing over 150 million monthly active users in total. | 2010年代，随着陌陌、探探等模仿Tinder的约会应用出现，这个趋势加快了。陌陌、探探和Soul一起成了中国最受欢迎的三款约会应用，三者加起来的月活跃用户数已超过了1.5亿。 |
| Soul and Momo declined to comment. Tantan, which is owned by Momo, did not respond to a request for comment. | Soul和陌陌拒绝对本文置评。陌陌旗下的探探也没有回复记者的置评请求。 |
| The apps themselves have changed. Tantan and Momo had long matched users based on their physical appearance, leading to accusations that the platforms cultivated a hookup culture. More recently, these apps have started using people’s interests, hobbies and personalities as the basis for new social encounters. | 约会应用本身也发生了变化。探探和陌陌曾在以前很长一段时间里根据用户的外表来匹配他们，导致了人们批评这两个平台培植一种勾搭文化。最近，这些软件开始以人们的兴趣、爱好和性格作为建立新社交的基础。 |
| Douyin, which is owned by ByteDance and is China’s version of TikTok, and Little Red Book, an app with similarities to Instagram, have built “social discovery” features that use their knowledge of people’s preferences to match them. Soul has become especially popular in the past few years for its avatar profiles and its practice of linking users based on personality tests. Last year, the app surpassed Tantan and Momo as the most downloaded dating app on the Chinese iOS store. | 字节跳动旗下的抖音以及与Instagram类似的应用小红书都带有“社交发现”功能，这个功能通过平台对用户嗜好的了解来匹配他们。Soul已在过去几年里变得特别受欢迎，因为它有带头像的用户简介、以及基于性格测试结果匹配用户的功能。去年，Soul已成为中国的苹果手机应用商店下载量最高超的约会应用，超过了探探和陌陌。 |
| “What I like most about Soul is that it doesn’t force you to look at a photo and swipe left and right,” said Yang Zhongluo, 23, a masters student in Beijing who met some of her close friends on the platform. “It lets you post, share ideas and then everyone can like and comment.” | “我最喜欢Soul的是，它不会一来就让你看照片然后左滑右滑，”在北京读研究生的23岁的杨卓珞（音）说。她在这个平台上认识了一些好友。“你可以在上面发一些post，分享一些想法，然后大家可以点赞评论。” |
| In July, Soul filed for an initial public offering in Hong Kong after tripling its monthly active users to 31 million between 2019 and 2021. Three-quarters of its users were born between 1990 and 2009, according to its prospectus. (It filed to go public in the United States in 2021, but stepped back from such an offering.) | Soul的月活跃用户数从2019年到2021年增加了两倍，达到了3100万。今年7月，Soul在香港提交了首次公开募股申请。据其招股书，平台四分之三的用户出生在1990年至2009年之间。（公司曾在2021年申请在美国上市，但后来放弃了这个计划。） |
| Many users of these dating apps appear less interested in romance than in meeting friends. In an October survey conducted by a Chinese research institute, 89 percent of respondents said they had used a dating app before, with a majority saying they wanted primarily to expand their social circles, not find a partner. | 这些约会应用的许多用户似乎对结识朋友更感兴趣，而不是爱情。在中国一家研究机构去年10月做的调查中，89%的受访者说他们使用过约会应用，其中大多数人表示，他们主要是想扩大社交圈子，而不是寻找伴侣。 |
| Vladimir Peters, a Shanghai-based developer who is working on his own dating app, said many younger Chinese now want the apps to provide a more holistic experience that blends entertainment and hobby exploration — not just a love match. | 家住上海的软件开发者弗拉基米尔·彼得斯正在开发自己的约会应用。他说，许多中国年轻人现在希望这些应用能提供一种更全面的体验，将娱乐和探索爱好结合在一起，而不只是找对象。 |
| “Young Chinese like gimmicks such as icebreakers and other playful things that are the starting points for communication,” he said. | “中国年轻人喜欢活跃气氛的游戏，以及其他可作为交流起点的好玩的东西，”彼得斯说。 |
| Many of the biggest Chinese tech companies that make social networking and dating apps appear to have reached the same conclusion. Tencent, the owner of WeChat, has released 10 apps in the social networking and dating category in the past few years. It is developing a virtual party game in which users can simulate the experience of social gatherings without going to one. | 许多制作社交平台和约会应用的中国大型技术公司看来也得出了同样的结论。微信的所有者腾讯已在过去几年里发布了10款社交网络和约会类的应用。腾讯正在开发一款多人游戏的社交产品，用户可以在游戏中模拟聚会的体验，无需参加实际聚会。 |
| NetEase, a gaming company, has also built a dating app that recommends matches based on people’s shared interests. In March, ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, acquired PoliQ, a start-up that uses virtual reality to enhance social networking. | 游戏公司网易也开发了一款约会应用，根据人们的共同兴趣推荐对象。今年3月，抖音的所有者字节跳动收购了波粒子，这是一家使用虚拟现实增强网络社交的初创公司。 |
| During the Shanghai lockdowns in April, Ms. Qu, who had long prized offline encounters and physical facial features on dating apps, said she began to cherish her matches more as digital companions. | 屈童舟曾经非常看重线下见面，在约会应用里也很看重对方的长相，但她说，在今年4月上海封控期间，她开始更珍惜约会应用为她找到的匹配者，把他们视为数码社会里的陪伴。 |
| “We began to connect with each other purely on a psychological level,” she said. “We were just grateful for each other’s company.” | “（在封城的时候），你真的只能静下心来（进行）精神的交流，”她说。“有个人能陪你讲讲话，你会觉得很可贵。” |
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