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| When Sean Liang turned 30, he started thinking of the Curse of 35 — the widespread belief in China that white-collar workers like him confront unavoidable job insecurity after they hit that age. In the eyes of employers, the Curse goes, they’re more expensive than new graduates and not as willing to work overtime. | 肖恩·梁（音）年满30岁的时候就开始思考“35岁魔咒”的问题。在中国，人们普遍认为像他这样的白领到35岁后将不可避免地面临职业不稳定的现实。这个魔咒认为，在雇主眼里，他们比应届毕业生更贵，而且不像应届生那样愿意加班。 |
| Mr. Liang, now 38, is a technology support professional turned personal trainer. He has been unemployed for much of the past three years, partly because of the pandemic and China’s sagging economy. But he believes the main reason is his age. He’s too old for many employers, including the Chinese government, which caps the hiring age for most civil servant positions at 35. If the Curse of 35 is a legend, it’s one supported by some facts. | 现年38岁的梁先生已经从一名技术支持人员转行为私人教练。过去三年的大部分时间里，他一直处于失业状态，部分原因是新冠疫情以及低迷的中国经济。但他认为，失业的主因是自己的年龄。对包括中国政府在内的许多雇主来说，他的年龄太大了，中国政府将大多数公务员职位的招聘年龄限制在35岁以下。如果说“35岁魔咒”是一个传说，它也是一个有一些事实支持的说法。 |
| “I work out, so I look pretty young for my age,” he said in an interview. “But in the eyes of society, people like me are obsolete.” | “虽然说我健身看起来还蛮年轻，”他在接受采访时说，“但是人家看我们这种的话，就是属于被社会淘汰的了。” |
| China’s postpandemic economic rebound has hit a wall, and the Curse of 35 has become the talk of the Chinese internet. It’s not clear how the phenomenon started, and it’s hard to know how much truth there is to it. But there’s no doubt that the job market is weak and that age discrimination, which is not against the law in China, is prevalent. That is a double whammy for workers in their mid-30s who are making big decisions about career, marriage and children. | 新冠疫情后的中国经济复苏已停滞不前，“35岁魔咒”成为了中国互联网上的热门话题。尚不清楚这个现象是如何开始的，也很难知道其真实程度。但毫无疑问的是，中国的就业市场疲软，年龄歧视普遍存在，而年龄歧视在中国并不违法。对30多岁、正在对事业、婚姻和生育等大问题做决定劳动者来说，这是一种双重打击。 |
| “Too old to work at 35 and too young to retire at 60,” said a viral online post — meaning that people of prime working age lack prospects and older people may need to keep working as the government is considering raising the retirement age. The post goes on: “Stay away from homeownership, marriage, children, car ownership, traffic and drugs, and you’ll own happiness, freedom and time.” | “35岁辞退嫌老，60岁退休嫌小，”网上一篇广泛流传的帖子写道，意思是处于最佳工作年龄的人没有前途，而随着政府考虑提高退休年龄，上了年纪的人可能需要继续工作。帖子接下来写道：“人生远离房、婚、孩、车、堵、毒。幸福、自由、时间，全是你的。” |
| Mr. Liang has since moved from Guangzhou in southern China back to his home village because he couldn’t afford his rent of less than $100 a month. He’s not married; neither are three of his cousins, all around his age. He said only people with stable jobs, such as government workers and teachers, could afford to start a family. | 由于付不起每月600元的房租，梁先生从中国南方的广州搬回了老家。他还没有结婚；三个年龄与他相仿的堂表兄弟也没结婚。他说，只有那些有稳定工作的人，比如在政府机关上班和当老师的人，才有能力组建家庭。 |
| Growing competition in the job market is one reason young Chinese are delaying marriages, an official with the national health commission, which oversees demographic policies, was quoted as saying by the Chinese news media last year. | 中国新闻媒体去年引用一名负责人口政策的国家卫健委官员的话说，就业竞争压力更大是中国年轻人推迟婚姻的原因之一。 |
| It’s hard to trust employment data from the Chinese government, which counts anyone who has worked one hour a week. That low bar has kept the urban unemployment rate at a little over 5 percent for much of this year, better than in 2019. | 很难相信中国政府的就业数据。中国政府的就业统计包括每周仅工作一小时的人。按照这个低标准，今年大部分时间的城镇失业率只略高于5%，比2019年好。 |
| Numbers from the corporate world tell a different story. In the first three months of this year, Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu, among the country’s biggest internet companies and best-paying employers, hired about 9 percent fewer workers than they did during their hiring peak in the pandemic, according to their financial reports. Some of China’s biggest real estate developers cut their head counts by 30, 50 or even 70 percent in 2022. | 来自企业界的数据则不同。据阿里巴巴、腾讯和百度发布的财务报告，这三家中国最大的互联网公司和薪酬最高的雇主在今年前三个月雇用的员工比它们在疫情期间招聘人数最高时少了约9%。中国一些最大的房地产开发商在2022年裁员 30%、50%，甚至70%。 |
| “The next few years will be the most challenging time for employment since the reform and opening up” in the late 1970s, Wang Mingyuan, an economist in Beijing, wrote in a widely circulated article. He noted that around 50 million people ages 16 to 40 could be unemployed by 2028, adding, “It could trigger a series of deeper crises.” | “未来几年将是改革开放以来就业形势最严峻的时刻，”清华大学经济学家王明远在一篇广为流传的文章中写道，他指出，如果不解决就业问题，到2028年时，社会可能积压5000万左右18岁到40岁的失业人员，并指出，这将“进而引发一系列深层危机”。 |
| In 2022, the number of marriage registrations fell 10.5 percent from a year earlier, to the lowest number since China began disclosing the data in 1986. The country’s birthrate fell to a low point last year, and its population shrank for the first time since 1961, the end of the Great Famine. | 2022年，结婚登记人数与去年相比下降了10.5%，是中国自1986年开始公布这个数据以来的最低数字。去年，中国出生率降到了最低点，人口自1961年大饥荒结束以来首次出现萎缩。 |
| Age discrimination affects all older workers, but people in their mid-30s may feel it most acutely because they are experiencing it for the first time. | 年龄歧视影响所有上了年纪的劳动者，但30多岁的人可能感受最深，因为这是他们第一次遭受这种歧视。 |
| Flynn Fan started dreading 35 when he was 30. He knew he might be passed over for work in a few years, but until then his problem was overwork. | 弗林·樊（音）在30岁的时候就开始害怕35岁。他知道自己几年后可能会被淘汰，但在被淘汰前，他面临的问题是过度劳累。 |
| At his last company, he said, most of his colleagues were either single, like him, or married without children. Their overtime shifts were out of control. For three months in 2021, Mr. Fan said, the earliest he left work was 11 p.m. He started taking anti-anxiety drugs. | 他说，在上一家公司，他的大多数同事要么像他一样是单身，要么结了婚但没孩子。加班加点处于失控状态。樊先生说，他在2021年的三个月里没有在晚上11点前下过班。他开始服用抗焦虑药物。 |
| Then late last year he was let go, along with most of his colleagues, at an artificial intelligence company in Shanghai. | 去年年底，他和大多数同事一起被上海一家人工智能公司解雇。 |
| In the past six months, he has sent his résumé to more than 300 companies and landed 10 interviews with no offer. Now he is looking for jobs that pay 20 to 30 percent less. He also started looking in other cities near Shanghai. | 在过去的六个月里，他向300多家公司投了简历，只得到10次面试机会，但都不成功。现在他正在寻找工资比以前低20%到30%的工作。他还开始在上海附近的城市找工作。 |
| At 35, he feels young. But for society, he said, 35 is like a “plague.” | 35岁的他觉得自己仍年轻。但他说，对社会来说，35岁像“瘟疫”。 |
| Cici Zhang is 32 and has already been told by employers that she’s too old. She showed a screenshot of a job posting at a company that sells maternity products, with the age limit set below 32. One of her former supervisors told her that he could replace her with a young graduate after three months of training. | 虽然茜茜·张（音）今年32岁，但已经有雇主说她年龄太大了。她出示了某销售母婴用品公司的招聘信息截屏，该公司把招聘年龄限制在32岁以下。以前曾有主管对张女士说，他会用经过三个月培训的年轻应届毕业生代替张女士。 |
| Chinese companies like to chase the hottest trend instead of perfecting what they already have, she said. So experience and expertise aren’t the qualities they value most. | 张女士表示，中国公司喜欢追逐最热门的趋势，而不是完善已有的东西。所以，经验和专业知识并不是他们最看重的特质。 |
| As a woman, Ms. Zhang faces added layers of discrimination. Since she was 25, she has fielded questions from employers about when she planned to have children. When she answered that she and her husband had no such plans, she would be asked what their parents thought of their decision. | 作为一名女性，张女士还面临着其他歧视。她从25岁起就不得不回答雇主关于她打算什么时候生孩子的问题。她回答说，她和丈夫没有生孩子的打算后，雇主会问她，他们的父母对他们的决定有何看法。 |
| After being laid off in September, Ms. Zhang, a marketing professional, messaged more than 3,000 companies, sent her résumé to more than 300 and landed fewer than 10 interviews. Last month, she finally got a job offer from a small company. | 张女士是一名营销专业人士，去年9月被解雇后，她向3000多家公司发了消息，向300多家公司投了简历，但只得到了不到10次面试机会。上个月，终于有一家小公司向她提供了工作机会。 |
| She accepted the job, feeling no excitement or happiness about it. | 她接受了这份工作，但并不感到兴奋或愉快。 |
| “I used to have expectations. I wanted promotions, pay raises and a better life,” she said. “Now I have none. I just want to survive.” | “以前我是会有预期的，就是我觉得我需要升职，需要加薪，需要更好的生活，”她说。“我现在已经没有了，只要能生存能生活。” |
| She and her husband feel they can’t afford to have children. They have a mortgage and barely scraped by when she was out of work, while worrying that he, too, could lose his job. | 她和丈夫觉得他们无力养育孩子。他们有房贷要还，她失业的那段时间，他们勉强度日，同时担心丈夫也可能失去工作。 |
| Their anxieties make them wonder whether it’s even fair to have children. Ms. Zhang quoted a popular saying on the internet: “If a child’s birth is meant to inherit one’s toil, panic and poverty, then not giving birth is also a form of kindness.” | 他们的焦虑让他们怀疑生孩子是否对孩子公平。张女士引用了网上流行的一句话：“如果孩子的出生，是为了继承自己劳碌恐慌贫困，那么，不生也是一种善良。” |
| Mr. Liang, the 38-year-old tech professional, said something similar. He loves children but doesn’t believe he could give them a good life. Like many Chinese who grew up in the countryside, he was raised by his grandparents while his parents worked in cities. He would not want his children to have that life. | 现年38岁的技术专业人士梁先生也说了类似的话。他喜欢孩子，但不相信自己有能力让孩子过上美好生活。和许多在农村长大的中国人一样，由于父母前往城市打工，他是由祖父母抚养成人的。他不想让自己的孩子也过这种生活。 |
| Besides, he first has to find a job. Even before the pandemic, he was asked at an interview why he was applying for a tech support position at his age. He showed me the job listings of his local provincial government: The age requirement for all positions was 18 to 35. | 再说，他首先需要找一份工作。甚至在疫情前，他已在一次面试时被问道，为什么到了他这个年龄还在申请技术支持工作。他给我看了当地省政府的招聘空缺：所有职位的年龄要求都在18岁到35岁之间。 |
| When I commented that 35 must weigh like a mountain, Mr. Liang responded, “It’s the precipice.” | 我随口说道，35岁一定像是座沉重的大山，梁先生回答说：“是悬崖。” |
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