何为男子汉？培训机构欲“重塑”中国男孩
唐海岩经营学校的宗旨很明确：要把男孩培养成男子汉。
There are many ways to be a man, of course, but the broad-shouldered Mr. Tang has a particular kind of man in mind. This man plays sports. This man conquers challenges.
当然，成为男子汉的方法有很多种，但有着宽阔肩膀的唐海岩心里对于男子汉有着特别的定义。他爱好运动。他能战胜挑战。
“We will teach the children to play golf, go sailing and be equestrians,” said Mr. Tang, 39, “but we will never cultivate sissies.”
“我们会教孩子去打高尔夫、去玩帆船、玩马术，”39岁的唐海岩说，“但是我们绝不培养娘娘腔。”
Mr. Tang founded the Real Boys Club, which stands at the forefront of a deep conversation in China about what it means to be a man. It’s a debate that has been stirred by worries about military effectiveness, an embrace of traditional culture and roles, disappointing academic performance among boys and echoes of the defunct one-child policy.To the club’s thinking, the alternative for the boys, ages 7 to 12, is life in a society where androgynous pop idols, overprotective mothers and mostly female teachers would turn them into effeminate crybabies.
唐海岩创立了本色男儿俱乐部，该俱乐部站在中国关于何为男子汉的深入对话的前沿。对军队战斗力的担忧、对传统文化和角色的信奉、对男孩学习成绩的失望，以及对已不复存在的独生子女政策的回应，激发了这场辩论。在这家俱乐部看来，对于7岁至12岁的男孩们来说，另一种选择是生活在这样一个社会里：流行偶像中性化、母亲过分溺爱、以女性居多的教师，会把他们变成娇气的爱哭鬼。
On one recent Sunday afternoon, 17 boys from the Real Boys Club blocked, sprinted and tackled one another as they learned about American football. Wearing a red hooded sweatshirt, Mr. Tang led the boys in a call-and-response chant.
最近一个周日的下午，本色男儿俱乐部的17个男孩在学橄榄球，他们相互阻截、冲刺和断球。唐海岩穿着一件红色连帽运动衫，领着孩子们喊口号。
“Who’s the best?” he shouted.
“谁最棒?”他喊道。
“I’m the best!” they shouted back.
“我最棒!”他们大声回应。
“Who’s the strongest?”
“谁最强?”
“I’m the strongest!”
“我最强!”
“Who are you?”
“你是谁?”
“Real men!”
“男子汉!”
Arguably, the club is intended to address a problem that China does not have. Chinese men still dominate the top echelons of politics and business. Institutional sexism is widespread. Wealth is concentrated in the hands of men. Women complain of sexual harassment within public transport, universities and companies.
可以说，这个俱乐部旨在解决一个中国没有的问题。中国男性仍然控制着政界和商界的高层。制度上的性别歧视很普遍。财富集中在男性手中。女性抱怨在公共交通、大学和企业里遭到性骚扰。
But China’s preoccupation with strong men has taken on a political dimension, feeding concerns about whether young Chinese males are in trouble. State media has said video games, masturbation, and a lack of exercise have made many young men ill-suited for the military. “Erasing the gender characteristics of a man who is not afraid of death and hardship,” Peng Xiaohui, a sexology professor at Central China Normal University, said, is tantamount to “a country’s suicide.”
但中国对强壮男性的关注已到了政治层面，引发了对中国年轻男性是否陷入困境的担忧。官方媒体说，电子游戏、手淫和缺乏锻炼使得许多年轻人不适合参军。华中师范大学的性学教授彭晓辉表示，“把不怕苦不怕死的这种男性的性别特征把它抹杀掉”，“这个国家”相当于“自杀”。
“It is still necessary for a boy to be raised as a boy and a girl to be raised as a girl,” Mr. Peng said in a telephone interview. “They should not be raised based on the opposite gender.”
“还是要男孩当男孩养，女孩当女孩养。”彭晓辉在电话采访中说。“不能反性别去抚养。”
Mr. Tang, a former football coach and teacher, said the idea for starting his club came from his discussions with parents who were worried about their sons falling behind in school. According to a 2014 survey of 20,000 Chinese primary school students and their parents in four provinces, almost two-thirds of the boys surveyed performed poorly academically, compared with less than one-third of girls. The study was conducted by the China Academy of Educational Sciences, a research institution affiliated with China’s education ministry.Mr. Tang was also inspired by a 2006 trip to Oakland, Calif., where he saw American parents teach their boys “to overcome challenges and dangers” through physical training. In China, by contrast, many parents try to protect their sons, a cultural bias that has been magnified by the one-child policy. The survey by the China Academy of Educational Sciences found that “whether it was in life or in school, parents had a tendency to spoil boys.”
唐海岩曾是一名足球教练和教师。他说，创办这个俱乐部的想法，来自于他与那些担心儿子学业落后的父母的讨论。2014年，一项针对中国4个省份2万名小学生及其家长的调查显示，近三分之二的受访男孩在学业上表现不佳，而女孩的这一比例则不到三分之一。这项研究是由中国教育部下属的中国教育科学研究院进行的。唐海岩还受到2006年一次加利福尼亚州奥克兰之旅的启发，在那里，他看到美国父母通过体育锻炼教育他们的男孩“抵御危险和困难”。相比之下，在中国，许多父母试图保护他们的儿子，独生子女政策放大了这种文化偏见。中国教育科学研究院的这项调查还发现，“无论在生活还是学习中，父母均有对男孩更加溺爱的倾向”。
More than 2,000 boys have enrolled in the Real Boys Club, according to Mr. Tang.
唐海岩表示，有超过2000名男孩加入了本色男儿俱乐部。
One mother, Sun Yi, decided to enroll her 8-year-old son — her only child — because she believed it would teach him teamwork. She paid about $2,000 for a semester’s worth of classes.
一位名叫孙旖的母亲决定给8岁的儿子——她唯一的孩子——报名，因为她相信这将教会他团队合作。她为一个学期的课程支付了大约2000美元(约合1.4万元人民币)。
“He used to like to cry, but now I think he has a much sunnier disposition,” she said. “I feel his tolerance ability has improved, and he now knows how to deal with failure and frustration.”In the Real Boys Club, the lessons of manhood are taught in slogans. Before the boys do their homework, they pledge to study hard for the “rise of China,” starting with the words: “I am a real man! The main bearer of the family and social responsibility in the future! The backbone of the Chinese people!”
“他相对会爱哭一些，现在就阳光了，”她说。“我觉得承受能力强了，包括失败和挫折这种探索。”在本色男儿俱乐部，关于男子汉的训诫是通过口号传达的。在男孩们做作业之前，他们承诺为“中华崛起”而努力学习，口号的开头是“我是男子汉!是未来家庭和社会责任的主要承担者，是中华民族的脊梁!”
Mr. Tang said “real men” are gallant. (“I can never ask this of a girl,” said Mr. Tang, who has a 3-year-old daughter. “This is a trait that is unique to boys.”) Other traits that boys should have, he said, include courage, etiquette, the ability to distinguish right from wrong, and an understanding of “honor and disgrace.”
唐海岩说，“男子汉”是勇敢的。(“有血性我不能要求女孩，”有一个三岁女儿的唐海岩说。“这是男孩特有的一种东西。”)他说，男孩应该拥有的其他品格还包括敢担当、明是非、辨善恶、懂礼仪、以及知“荣辱”。
At the start of the program, several of the boys spoke only in a whisper or cried for half an hour, said Guo Suiyun, one of the teachers.
一位名叫郭遂运的教师说，在课程开始时，几个男孩只会小声说话，还有人哭了半个小时。
“When one of them cries, we will definitely not comfort him,” said Mr. Guo, 30. “We will only encourage him to be strong.”Every Sunday, the boys hop on a bus at 7:40 a.m. and ride to a sports school nestled in the hills of western Beijing, where they play soccer, games that involve teamwork and strength, and football — a sport that is still new to many in China. One day in December, they will run shirtless.
“哭的时候我们不会去哄，”郭遂运说，“我们不会去哄，我们只会鼓励他要坚强。”每个星期天，男孩们都会在早上7点40分乘坐公共汽车前往一所坐落在北京西部山区的体育学校，在那里踢足球、进行涉及团队合作和力量的比赛，还有橄榄球 ——一项对很多中国人来说很新鲜的运动。12月的一天，他们要赤裸上身跑步。
“I never get to play soccer during the week,” said Sun Shujie, 10. Earlier, Mr. Tang had asked him to share his story about giving up his smartphone during the week and how he restricted himself to only 20 minutes of use.
“一周下来完全没踢过足球，”孙树杰说。早些时候，唐海岩曾要求他分享自己在这个星期戒掉智能手机、限制自己只使用20分钟的故事。
The boys do their homework in a school surrounded by framed posters of famous scientists and engineers. Only one woman is pictured: the Polish physicist Marie Curie.Some in China blame boys’ lacking behavior on a lack of male role models. Fathers are rarely involved in their sons’ upbringing, according to government research. Even pop culture figures have sparked complaints: A number of parents were outraged when China’s state broadcaster, China Central Television, in September featured a boy band whose members wore makeup. The parents complained that these pop idols could cause their sons to “behave in a feminine way.”
男孩们做作业的学校里，到处都是装裱起来的著名科学家和工程师的海报，其中只有一位女性：波兰物理学家玛丽·居里(Marie Curie)。有些中国人认为男孩表现不好是缺乏男性榜样导致的。根据政府的研究，父亲很少参与儿子的教育。甚至流行文化人物也引发了一些抱怨：中国国家电视台中央电视台在9月份的节目中有一个男孩团体，其成员脸上化妆，令不少家长感到愤怒。父母抱怨说，这些流行偶像可能会让他们的儿子“娘娘腔”。
The Real Boys Club is meant to foster self-sufficiency, with the study period encouraging the boys to meet their goals without their parents hovering over them. Jin Hong, 9, said his parents would constantly breathe down his neck about schoolwork at home. “The thing I like most about the program is that I can study independently,” he said.
本色男儿俱乐部旨在促进自立，学习期间鼓励男孩们在没有父母督促的情况下实现目标。9岁的锦鸿说，在家里，父母不断为学校作业唠叨他。“这个课程最让我喜欢的是，我可以独立学习，”他说。
But the program does not encourage the boys to run amok. Boys who commit infractions — pushing other boys, hurling vulgarities — get points deducted and can get demoted from the “phoenix” level to the “smelly egg” level.
但它并不鼓励男孩们横冲直撞。有违规行为的男孩——推搡其他男孩、说粗话——会被扣分，可能从“凤凰”级降到“臭鸡蛋”级。
For Ms. Sun’s son, Fang Dingyue, it got to be too much. After Mr. Tang singled him out for not keeping up while marching, Dingyue burst into tears.Other men say they have doubts about the effectiveness of male-oriented schools. Wang Chenpeng, 23, a marketing employee for a storage company who loves wearing makeup, said his mother burned all his dolls because she thought it was too girlie. He later came out as gay.
对孙女士的儿子方鼎越来说，这一点有些难以承受了。在因为没有跟上行军队列被唐海岩点名后，他哭了出来。还有人说他们对男校的效果感到怀疑。23岁的王琛鹏是一家仓储公司的营销人员，喜欢化妆，他说母亲烧掉了他所有的娃娃，因为她觉得太女孩气了。他后来透露了自己是同性恋。
“On the surface, these children may try to keep in line with the requirements of their parents and these educational institutions, and then present a superficial image,” he said. “But their essence will remain the same.”
“那些小孩表面上可能会随着家长或者那些教育机构的人的要求，然后只会呈现出一个表面现象，”他说。“但是他的本质内在还是那样。”
