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Popular pastimes
流行的消遣活动
Dancing queens
广场舞皇后
Grooving grannies encounter opposition
随音乐起舞的大妈们遭到了反对
Oct 26th 2013 | BEIJING |From the print edition
ON OCTOBER 11th a story buried on page 15 of a Beijing newspaper drew national attention. A man in Changping, on the edge of the capital, had allegedly fired a shotgun into the air and set loose three Tibetan mastiffs to scare away a group of women whose public dancing annoyed him. The man was arrested, but received much sympathy online.
10月11日，北京一家报纸第十五页的一个故事引起了全国关注。据报道，北京昌平的一男子被大妈们激怒了，向空中开枪，并且放了三只藏獒，吓跑了这群在公共场所跳舞的大妈。该男子随后被抓，但是却得到了网民的同情。
Groups of people, often older women, dancing in public, are an increasingly common sight in Chinese cities. In the early morning and evening they set up loudspeakers in parks or squares to exercise, gossip and show off a little.
大量的人，尤其是大龄女性，在城市公共场所跳舞越来越常见。早上跟傍晚，她们开着扬声器，在公园里或者广场上练习跳舞，谈天说地，也带点炫耀的成分。
They call it guangchangwu, or “square dancing”, after the venues where they meet. Syrupy songs, and Western styles, are much in favour. The tunes of Phoenix Legend, a duo from the song-and-dance troupe of China’s strategic missile force, are hugely popular among guangchangwu aficionados.
这被称作广场舞，是以她们见面的地点命名的。情歌跟西洋风格的歌曲最受欢迎。中国战略导弹部队歌舞团的双人组合凤凰传奇的歌曲是广场舞爱好者的最爱。
Many people grumble about the grannies and their throbbing music. Altercations often break out. The mayor’s hotline in Hefei, in the central province of Anhui, has received more than 200 complaints about guangchangwu so far this year. But officials are usually reluctant to intervene. As one local-government website put it: dancing grannies are preferable to those “wallowing in mah-jong and other bad activities”.
许多人抱怨大妈们以及她们扰民的歌曲。经常发生争吵。中部省份安徽合肥的市长热线今年已经收到了超过200次的广场舞投诉。但是官方通常不愿意介入。一个地方政府的网站上写着：跳舞的大妈比那些沉溺在麻将等不良活动中的人好多了。
