夜雨聆风
疫情后约会App再度火爆,网友:“如果不用软件,可能没有人陪我一起玩~”
Dating Apps Thrive in China,
but Not Just for Romance
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.
今年6月，上海的摄影助理区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。
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.
由于中国「清零」政策的影响，当地人对游客持怀疑态度，一些酒店拒绝区彤舟入住，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.
区童舟只好向中国两款颇受欢迎的约会应用程序「探探」和「积木」求助，它们的功能与Tinder类似。
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,
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、
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.
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岁的区童舟说。没有人带我玩。
The trend accelerated in the 2010s with the arrival of dating apps like Momo and Tantan, which emulated Tinder.
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。
Alongside Soul, they became China’s three most popular dating apps, amassing over 150 million monthly active users in total.
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。
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.
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。
More recently, these apps have started using people’s interests, hobbies and personalities as the basis for new social encounters.
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.
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 has become especially popular in the past few years for its avatar profiles and its practice of linking users based on personality tests.
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。
“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,
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。
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.”
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。
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,
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 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.
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。
“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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