周黎明：砧板上的事业_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

周黎明：砧板上的事业

Granted, both Lu and Chen are outliers with career trajectories utterly unrepresentative of youngsters out of top schools. They are supposed to climb up the bureaucratic, business,academic or professional ladders. Sure, selling pork and other meat products counts as abusiness, but it ranks very low in the minds of most Chinese.

其实，陆步轩和陈生非同寻常的事业都不是顶尖高校学生中具有代表性的案例。他们本应该成为政治，商业，学术或专业领域的精英。的确，卖猪肉和其他肉类产品也是一门生意，但这个在大多数中国人看来，是很卑微的工作。

In the old days, one would need a little knowledge of arithmetic to operate a butcher shop, and nowadays that little skill has been taken over by the calculator, if not the automaticvending machine. So, you can be virtually illiterate and still be a competent butcher - not theproprietor though. In fact, the occupation of butcher is often used as an illustration in classicnovels of brute force or absence of brainpower.

以前，开肉铺的人仅需要一点点算术知识就可以，今天，若不是自动贩卖机的话，这一点点的算术技能也已经被计算器给取代了。因此，即便你是文盲，当不了老板，也能成为一个优秀的屠夫。事实上，屠夫这个职业在经典小说中通常代表的是那些充满蛮力，缺乏思考能力的人。

Generally, young Chinese come under the pressure of two forces while making careerchoices: One is pragmatism, meaning whatever job fetches the highest salary and perks istouted by parents and the media alike; and the other is conventional mindset, which oftenoverlaps with the first consideration. Officialdom has always occupied the apex of the pedigree, and business much lower. To be of similar attraction, a position with a private business, for example, has to offer much more in compensation than a public servant's position.