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A ‘growing’ trend

头顶上的时尚

导读：突然之间男女老少的头顶都开始长草了，这是神马情况?中国人自己都没搞清楚状况，外国人就更摸不着头脑了。时尚这东西太难琢磨，不过萌萌哒豆芽发夹不仅让商家小赚一笔，还在不经意间拉近了人与人的距离呢。西南交通大学考研论坛

当我走在北京后海街头，一抹绿色吸引了我的眼球。它看起来就像疯狂的真菌感染。豆芽、蘑菇和花开了在人们头顶上，就像额前立起了一绺不听话的乱毛。

It was early August, and I had freshly arrived in China. The craziness of city life, I expected. The weeds flourishing in the hair of passersby? Not so much.

八月上旬，我初到中国。来之前，我向往着这儿疯狂的都市生活。行人头上狂长草?这可不在我的想象之中。

Surely this was some kind of environmental protest or an inside joke, I thought. Whatever it was, the trend was fueling a thriving business.

当时我想这一定是某种环保抗议或者某些圈子里流行的玩笑。管它是什么，这股风潮可是繁荣了一项产业呢。

Merchants stood on street corners hawking all kinds of plastic fungi and shrubs. Three yuan for one sprout, five for a pair. Customers clipped their purchases onto their heads and walked off, the sprouts bobbing.

街角的小贩兜售着各种塑料蘑菇和树枝。豆芽三元一个，五元一对。顾客们把买来的发夹别在头上然后就走了，留下豆芽摇曳的背影。

It would have been easy to brush this off as another bizarre Asian trend, a stereotype common in the West. But this being a hard-hitting, investigative article, I had to find out what was behind the mysterious hairpins. I went to the 798 Art District to research.

它本该像其他奇葩的亚洲潮流一样昙花一现，西方人对很多诡异的亚洲流行趋势早就见怪不怪了。不过鉴于这是一篇有深度的调查性文章，我得下功夫好好研究研究这个神奇的发夹，于是我去了798艺术区。

Sure enough, there was a bumper crop of sprout-headed tourists, and a shopkeeper indicated to me that the film Monster Hunt (《捉妖记》) was to blame. The 2015 Chinese movie featured a doughy little monster with a patch of moss atop his head.

不出所料，798有大批“头上长草”的游客，一个店家告诉我《捉妖记》是始作俑者。这部2015年的新片里有一只像面团一样的小妖精，它的头上有一片苔藓。

CNN reported a different theory: that the hairpins were inspired by a Japanese emoticon. One smiley face has a pair of green leaves growing on its noggin.

美国有线电视新闻网则给出了不同的解释：这种发夹受一个日本卡通表情启发而来。一个笑脸的脑门上长出了一对绿叶子。

Whatever its origins, the fad was raising some international eyebrows. Major newspapers like The Wall Street Journal and The Telegraph puzzled over the strange display.

且不说它究竟起源何处，这股风潮变得全球瞩目了。诸如《华尔街日报》、《每日电讯报》这样的主流媒体都对这种奇怪的现象百思不得其解。

The more attention the sprouts got, the more sales surged. China Daily reported that one Taobao retailer sold 28,850 hairclips in a month. Bean sprouts, dollar weeds and mushrooms were becoming the Beijing equivalent of Mickey Mouse ears at Disney World.

豆芽发夹越受关注，它的销量越好。据《中国日报》报道，某淘宝卖家一个月卖出了28,850个这种发夹。在北京戴豆芽、金钱草和蘑菇就像在迪士尼乐园戴米老鼠耳朵一样。

There’s always a rush to categorize trends, to make them discrete and understandable. Perhaps the hairpins were a symptom of the cute and childlike “meng” culture. Or perhaps they were a nod to surrealism or cartoons or both.

人们总是急于给潮流分门别类，好让它们辨识度高又容易被接受。或许这种发夹就是可爱、童趣的“萌”文化代表，抑或是向超现实主义和卡通致敬。

Who knows? And frankly, who cares? After all, there’s a kind of beauty to the mystery. In a city of 20 million people, a few plastic plants made us all stop and take notice of one another. And together, we all wondered: what the heck is that on your head?

答案不得而知，坦白说，我们也并不想知道。毕竟，美是个玄乎其玄的东西。在一个有2千万人口的城市，一些塑料植物足以让我们驻足一下，关注彼此，然后在心里想“你头上戴的到底是神马啊?”

来源：21英语网