袁莉2026年4月7日著名教育网红张雪峰去世后，悼念者在苏州排队向他告别，摄于3月24日。 FeatureChina, via Associated PressZhang Xuefeng became famous in China for telling students and their parents what few educators would: which majors were useless, which careers were dead ends and which dreams ordinary families could not afford.张雪峰之所以在中国走红，是因为他敢于将大多数教育工作者不愿提及的真相告诉学生和家长：哪些专业没用，哪些职业没有前途，以及哪些梦想是普通家庭负担不起的。“Knock out your children if they want to study journalism,” he famously said.他说过这样一句广为流传的话：“孩子非要报新闻学，我一定会把他打晕。”“The humanities all lead to service work, and service work, in one word, is sucking up” to clients.他还说过：“所有的文科专业都叫服务业，总结成一个字儿，就是‘舔’。”Critics accused him of reducing education to employability, peddling social Darwinism and teaching students from humble backgrounds to accept the limits of their place.批评者指责他把教育矮化为就业工具，兜售社会达尔文主义，并教导出身普通的学生接受自身阶层的局限。But when Mr. Zhang died last month, at 41, something uncommon in today’s China happened. In a country where large-scale, spontaneous public emotion is rarely tolerated, tens of thousands of people from all over the country showed up at his memorial service in the eastern city of Suzhou. They stood in line for hours to pay their respects, some carrying flowers, one clutching a college admission letter. On the Chinese internet, posts and videos about Mr. Zhang and his death drew more than six billion views in a single day, according to a media monitoring firm.但上个月年仅41岁的张雪峰去世后，当代中国罕见的一幕出现了。在这个通常不允许大规模自发表达公共情绪的国家，来自全国各地的数万人涌向东部城市苏州，参加他的追悼会。他们排队数小时表达哀思，有人手持鲜花，有人紧握大学录取通知书。据一家媒体监测机构的数据，在中国互联网上，关于张雪峰及其去世的帖子和视频在一天之内的浏览量超过了60亿次。Online, admirers called him a hero, a savior of underprivileged families and even Prometheus.在网络上，仰慕者称他为英雄、底层家庭的拯救者，甚至是普罗米修斯。The gratitude directed at Mr. Zhang, who had 27 million followers on the short-video platform Douyin, reflected the fears of ordinary Chinese families trying to navigate an increasingly opaque and unforgiving education system. The extraordinary mourning after his death revealed how much of contemporary China is living with that anxiety.人们对张雪峰的感激之情（他在短视频平台抖音上拥有2700万粉丝）反映了许多中国普通家庭在面对一个日益封闭、严苛的教育体系时的内心恐惧。他去世后引发的超乎寻常的哀悼恰恰说明了这种焦虑在当代中国有多普遍。Students and parents thanked him for helping them navigate the high-stakes process of choosing a college major in China. Through livestreams and consulting sessions, he explained which majors led to stable jobs, which industries were declining and which professional certificates were worth pursuing — information readily available to families with connections or advanced education but far harder for everyone else to find.学生和家长感谢他帮助他们在决定命运的高考志愿选择过程中找到方向。通过直播和咨询，他解释了哪些专业能带来稳定的工作，哪些行业在走下坡路，哪些职业资格证书值得去考——这些信息对于有关系或受教育程度较高的家庭来说唾手可得，但对于其他人来说却难以获取。The public mourning was by no means an organized protest, but it carried an unmistakable social charge. It was a quiet rebuke to a system that many ordinary families experience as punishing and indifferent to their struggles. The censorship that followed suggested that the authorities recognized this, too. Some posts, videos and hashtags related to Mr. Zhang’s death and funeral were censored across Chinese social media.这场公众哀悼绝非有组织的抗议，但它无疑承载着一种社会情绪。这是一种无声的谴责，在许多普通家庭看来，这个体系冷酷又傲慢，对他们的困境漠不关心。随之而来的审查举动表明，当局也意识到了这点。与张雪峰的去世和葬礼相关的一些帖子、视频和话题标签在中国的社交媒体上消失了。2017年，张雪峰给大学生做讲座。对于正在选择大学专业的学生，他的建议直截了当，毫不客气。Mr. Zhang spoke to a huge constituency in China: people who are neither powerful nor protected and for whom securing a stable future justifies almost any sacrifice. They are acutely aware that idealism is a privilege they cannot afford.张雪峰的受众是一个庞大的群体：他们无权无势，为了一个安稳的未来，几乎任何牺牲都是值得的。他们清醒地意识到，理想主义是一种他们承担不起的奢侈。Xu, a 34-year-old civil servant in Beijing, wished he had someone like Mr. Zhang when he was choosing a college major. (Like most of the people I interviewed, Xu asked to be identified by one name for fear of government retribution.) Born in a small town in northern China, he grew up in a family where having a “good job” meant being a civil servant, teacher or doctor.34岁的北京公务员徐先生表示，当初自己选择大学专业时，能有张雪峰这样的人指点迷津。（像我采访的多数人一样，出于担心政府报复，他只愿公开姓氏。）他出生在中国北方的一个小城，在一个认为“好工作”就是公务员、教师或医生的家庭中长大。“They have no idea what algorithms or semiconductors are,” he said of his parents, “or what kind of major could lead into those industries.”“他们根本不知道什么是算法、什么是半导体，”他在谈到父母时说，“也不知道什么样的专业能通向这些行业。”Mr. Zhang, Xu said, made visible a set of possibilities that had been hidden.徐先生说，张雪峰让一套原本秘而不宣的可能性变得清晰可见。“He may not have been a guiding light,” Xu said, “but he worked hard to make the maze navigable.”“他或许算不上一盏指路明灯，”徐先生说，“但他努力让这座迷宫变得可以穿行。”For decades, the general college entrance exam, known in Chinese as the gaokao, was widely seen as a pathway to changing one’s fate; it was brutally competitive but capable of delivering upward mobility. As universities expanded and the job market deteriorated, that promise weakened. Getting into college became easier. Turning a degree into security did not.几十年来，被称为“高考”的普通高校招生全国统一考试一直被视为改变命运的一条途径——尽管竞争残酷，但它确实能提供上升通道。随着高校扩招和就业市场恶化，这一承诺正在动摇。考上大学变得容易了，但把一张文凭转化为稳定的生活并非易事。In this environment, choosing the right major has become increasingly important, said Wang, a college admissions consultant in northern Hebei Province. In many provinces, families have less than two weeks between getting the results of the exam and the deadline to apply to college. In that time, they need to make sense of hundreds of majors, universities and career paths. Even educated parents often feel overwhelmed by the decisions. Mr. Zhang’s appeal, Wang said, lay in making an opaque system feel interpretable.在这种环境下，选对专业变得越来越重要，河北北部的一位高考志愿咨询师王先生说。在许多省份，从出分到填报志愿截止，留给家庭的时间不到两周。在这段时间里，他们需要在数百个专业、院校和职业路径之间做出判断。即使是受过良好教育的父母也常常被这些选择压得喘不过气。王先生说，张雪峰的吸引力在于，他让一个不透明的体系变得可以被理解。前来参加张雪峰追悼会的悼念者。The families who turn to consultants like Mr. Zhang are not, for the most part, China’s elite. But neither are they the poorest. Wang described his clients as families in the broad middle: small-business owners, office workers, skilled laborers and lower-level state employees. They often have money to pay for guidance but lack the social capital or institutional knowledge needed to navigate the system confidently on their own. They’re buying not just advice but also insurance against making a misstep.求助于像张雪峰这类咨询师的家庭大多不是中国的精英阶层，但也不是最贫困的那一类。王先生形容他的客户是广泛的中间阶层：小企业主、白领、技术工人和基层体制内人士。他们通常有能力为咨询付费，但缺乏独立应对这套体系所需的社会资本或门道。他们购买的不仅是建议，更是一份防止走错路的保险。Their anxiety has created a thriving market for people willing to decode the system. The service typically costs about $1,000 at firms like Wang’s. But Mr. Zhang was the industry’s biggest star, and his company charged a steep premium. In the summer of 2024, Mr. Zhang offered two tiers of major-selection counseling services through livestreams, priced at $1,743 and $2,615. All 20,000 slots were snapped up almost immediately.这种焦虑为愿意解读这套体系的人创造了一个蓬勃发展的市场。在像王先生这样的公司，服务费用通常在7000元左右。但张雪峰是这个行业最大的明星，他的公司收费远高于此。2024年夏天，张雪峰通过直播推出了两个档次的专业选择咨询服务，价格分别为1.2万元和1.8万元。全部2万个名额几乎瞬间售罄。But Mr. Zhang’s influence cannot be explained by market demand alone. His authority also rested on the perception that, after rising above his own class, he had not pulled the ladder up behind him. He came from the same world they did — a working-class family in China’s industrial northeast — and understood, from experience, how unforgiving the climb could be.但张雪峰的影响力不能仅仅用市场需求来解释。他的权威还建立在这样一种看法之上：在跨越自身阶层之后，他并没有把梯子抽走。他和他的粉丝来自同一个世界——中国东北工业区的一个工薪家庭，他亲身体会过向上攀爬的艰难。He often spoke about his early struggles. In one livestream, he said he had been reluctant to bring a college girlfriend home because his family slept on a kang, a heated brick bed common in northern China, where she, too, would have to sleep. He was rejected by the parents of three former girlfriends who saw his background as a liability.他经常谈到自己早年的挣扎。在一次直播中，他说自己曾经不愿意把大学时期的女友带回家，因为家里人都睡在北方常见的炕上——一种加热的砖床——而她也不得不睡在一起。他曾被三任前女友的父母拒绝，因为他们觉得他的家境是个负担。That biography helps explain why so many followers saw him not just as an education influencer but also as someone who understood the humiliations and calculations of trying to move up in China.这段经历有助于解释为什么这么多追随者不仅把他看作一个教育网红，更把他看作一个懂得在中国向上攀爬过程中所经历的屈辱与权衡的人。One caller from a small town sought Mr. Zhang’s life advice during a livestream. An alumnus of a prestigious military engineering university, he had been admitted to a top graduate program in the same field. Yet he told Mr. Zhang that he felt lost. How much would he make after graduation? Which city should he move to? And how could he tell if it would be welcoming to someone like him?一次直播中，一位来自小城市的求助者向张雪峰寻求人生建议。他是一所知名军事工程大学的毕业生，已被同专业一个顶尖研究生院录取。但他告诉张雪峰，自己感到迷茫。毕业后能赚多少钱？该去哪个城市？又该如何判断，一个城市是否会接纳像他这样的人？“People like us, the so-called small-town strivers, often carry a sense of inferiority,” Mr. Zhang replied. Then he reassured the caller that he had already accomplished a lot and had given his family a shot at upward mobility. Just keep trying, he said.“像我们这样的人，所谓的小镇做题家，常常带着一种自卑感，”张雪峰回答说。然后他安慰这位求助者说，他已经取得了很大的成就，为家庭争取到了向上流动的机会。他说，继续努力就好。Hala, a college junior in China, wrote to me that nearly every parent he knew had watched Mr. Zhang’s livestreams.中国一名大三学生哈拉给告诉我，他认识的几乎每一位家长都看过张雪峰的直播。“People say you don’t necessarily have to study what he recommends,” Hala wrote, “but if he tells you not to study something, you definitely shouldn’t.” Critics accused Mr. Zhang of “selling anxiety,” he added. But for families like his, “the anxiety did not need to be sold.” It came from knowing that one wrong educational choice could close off the future they were struggling toward.“人们说，你未必一定要学他推荐的专业，”哈拉写道，“但如果他告诉你某个专业不能学，那你绝对不能学。”他补充说，批评者指责张雪峰“贩卖焦虑”。但对他这样的家庭来说，“焦虑不需要贩卖”。焦虑来自一种清醒的认知：在通往未来的道路上，一个错误的教育选择就可能让一切努力前功尽弃。Hala is majoring in computer science, one of the safest bets in today’s China and exactly the kind of choice Mr. Zhang would have endorsed. “And yet,” he wrote, “I am still anxious about the future. I still can’t see a way forward.”哈拉主修计算机专业，在当下中国，这被视为最稳妥的选择之一，也正是张雪峰会赞同的那种选择。“然而，”他写道，“我仍然对未来感到焦虑。我仍然看不到前路。”袁莉为《纽约时报》撰写“新新世界”专栏，专注中国及亚洲科技、商业和政治交叉议题。翻译：纽约时报中文网点击查看本文英文版。获取更多RSS：https://feedx.net https://feedx.site