London has impressed itself upon the world as an imperial metropole, a financial hub, a destination for migrants – and now as a subject of moral panic. Excitable chronicles of this “billionaire’s playground” have become a genre of foreign journalism in recent years.

伦敦给世界留下的印象是一个帝国大都市、金融中心、移民目的地，如今也成为一个道德恐慌的课题。有关这个“亿万富翁”游戏场的兴奋记叙，近年成为外媒的体裁之一。

According to these lurid dystopias, which have been given new life since the Ukraine crisis, London is being hollowed out by venal and sometimesbloodstained plutocrats from countries steeped in authoritarianism. Entire streets stand empty – it is rarely specified which ones – as the mere investments or trophies of remote foreigners. Ordinary people flee the excruciating cost of everything. Between the overclass and the indentured workers who serve them (exactly how they serve them if they are not present is never explained) languishes a withered, resentful middle.

根据这些可怕的敌托邦言论（自乌克兰危机爆发以来，这些言论被注入新的生命力），来自威权国家、唯利是图而且有时身背血债的富豪，正在导致伦敦空心化。整条街道空空荡荡（媒体很少指明是哪些街道），沦为来自遥远国度的外国人的投资或战利品。普通人逃离了价格高得令人不堪忍受的伦敦生活。在权贵阶层和为他们服务的契约劳动者（至于如果权贵阶层在一年里很少住在伦敦，劳动者究竟如何为他们服务，则从来没有解释）之间，苦闷而不满的中产阶级勉强度日。

Against this kind of hysteria, only numbers will do. Between 2001 and 2011, London’s population grew from 7.3m to 8.2m. It is expected to reach 9m before the decade is out. The only one of the 33 boroughs to experience a drop was Kensington and Chelsea, which lost 200 of its 158,000 residents. Westminster council, which includes Mayfair, Marylebone and other oligarch neighbourhoods, grew by 21 per cent.

在这种歇斯底里的情绪下，只有数字才说明问题。2001年至2011年，伦敦人口从730万增至820万。到本10年末，预计将达到900万。在33个区中，唯一一个人口出现下降的是肯辛顿-切尔西区，从15.8万减少了200人。包括梅费尔、梅利本等富豪地段的威斯敏斯特地方议会的人口增长21%。

The exact nature of London’s population boom rebuts the gloominess as much as the mere fact of the boom. Fertility rates have driven up the numbers, not just immigration. In other words, the city is becoming such a Babel of gaudiness and moral turpitude that lots of people choose to come here and existing residents choose to have lots of children here. As a way of registering their disapproval of the place, it is eccentric.

伦敦人口增长的具体性质既反驳了那种沮丧情绪，也澄清了人口增长的事实。推升人口数据的是生育率，而非只是移民。换句话说，伦敦正变成一个华美和道德沦丧共存的巴别塔，很多人选择来到这里，现有的居民也选择在这里留下很多的子嗣。如果这是表现他们对这座城市不满意的一种方式，那可是很古怪的。

According to the annual Wealth Report by Knight Frank, a property consultancy, London has more ultra-wealthy individuals – those with at least $30m in assets, aside from their main home – than any other city in the world. Still, they number only 4,224. The notion that their comings and goings could affect the feeling of fullness in a city of more than 8m people does not even make sense in theory. For almost all Londoners almost all of the time, the presence or absence of foreign tycoons is not palpable at all. The only one most of them could name is Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea Football Club.

根据房地产咨询公司莱坊(Knight Frank)的年度财富报告，伦敦的超富个人（除了主要住所以外，资产至少达到3000万美元的个人）数量超过全球其它任何城市。可话说回来，具体数字仅为4224人。如果有人认为，这些人的行踪能够影响一个人口超过800万的城市的“人气”，那即使在理论上也是说不通的。对于几乎所有伦敦人而言，在几乎所有时候，外国大亨的在与不在根本不明显。多数伦敦人叫得上名字的外国富豪只有一个：切尔西足球俱乐部(Chelsea Football Club)老板罗曼•阿布拉莫维奇(Roman Abramovich)。

Whether London’s unquestioning openness to outsiders is right or wrong, it is not new. In the 19th century, European regimes resented London for hosting exiled radicals trying to foment revolution across the continent. One of them – his name was Karl Marx – made his home in Hampstead. In the 1970s, there was snooty distaste as wealthy Arabs made London their home from home (“They owned Al-Klaridges, Al-Dorchester, Al-Browns . . .” wrote Anthony Burgess in his dystopic novel 1985). The French sneered at “Londonistan” for its tolerance of Islamic radicals.

无论伦敦这种海纳百川而不提出疑问的态度是对是错，它都早已存在。19世纪，欧洲一些政权憎恨伦敦，就是因为它接纳了企图在整个欧洲大陆煽动革命的流亡激进分子。卡尔•马克思(Karl Marx)就是其中之一，当年他在伦敦汉普斯特得落户。上世纪70年代，随着富有的阿拉伯人将伦敦作为第二故乡，一种傲慢的厌恶情绪浮出水面。安东尼•伯吉斯(Anthony Burgess)在他的敌托邦小说《1985》中写道：“他们拥有了克拉里奇、多切斯特、Browns……”。法国人讥笑伦敦成了“伦敦斯坦”(Londonistan)，因为伦敦宽容对待伊斯兰激进分子。

The idea that London was a fortress of gentlemanly values until a moral fall that occurred at some indistinct time around the millennium is ahistorical. It has always been open to the point of nihilism, hosting even troublemakers and scoundrels, some rich, some not. If that is lamentable, it was worth lamenting 30, 50 or 100 years ago. It should not be shown as a particular quirk of our age in frothy works of zeitgeist journalism.

有人认为，伦敦曾经是绅士价值的堡垒，直到一场道德滑坡在千禧年前后某个时间点发生——这种看法是没有历史根据的。伦敦自古以来就开放到近乎无政府主义的地步，甚至收容麻烦制造者和无赖，其中有富人，也有不富有的人。如果这算可悲的话，那么早在30年前、50年前或者100年前就该哀叹了。它不应在流行媒体的浮躁报道中成为我们这个时代一件特别的怪事。

Neither should we pretend that London’s hospitability to globalisation does nothing for ordinary Londoners. Foreign investment and contributions from the City (which, given the internationalism of that financial centre, amounts to the same thing) are helping to pay for London’s most extensive makeover since at least the docklands revival of the 1980s, which itself had foreign help. Areas that used to serve as bywords for dilapidation – King’s Cross, Battersea power station, Elephant and Castle – are the subjects of lavish regeneration. The colossal Tate Modern, the world’s most-visited modern art gallery, is getting even bigger to meet demand. Taking shape underground is Crossrail, the biggest construction project in Europe. This great fury of building – London is now a city of cranes and giant drilling machines – would not happen in a city that turned away from globalisation.

我们也不应假称，伦敦对于全球化的接纳对伦敦人一点好处也没有。外资和伦敦金融城的贡献（鉴于这个金融中心的国际性，这两个因素是一回事）正帮助为自上世纪80年代港区复苏以来伦敦范围最广的改造买单，港区的复苏得到了外资的帮助。一些曾经是荒废代名词的地区（国王十字火车站、巴特西电站、Elephant and Castle）都成了大手笔改造的对象。为了满足需求，全球参观人数最多的现代艺术馆——巨大的泰特现代美术馆(Tate Modern)正扩大规模。欧洲规模最大的建设项目伦敦横贯铁路(Crossrail)正在伦敦地下推进。这种巨大的建筑热潮（伦敦现在是一个起重机和大型钻机林立的城市）是不会出现在一个厌恶全球化的城市的。

Critics say London is an unequal city as though Paris, Moscow and New York are not. They lament the price of property as though Hong Kong and Tokyo are famous for their affordable town houses. London suffers all the pathologies of a city of its size and importance.

批评者表示，伦敦是一个不平等的城市，就好像巴黎、莫斯科和纽约不是这样一样。他们哀叹伦敦的房地产价格，就好像香港和东京以住宅价格适中闻名一样。伦敦患有像它这种规模和重要性的城市的所有病症。

There was a time when London really was depopulating year on year, when infrastructure decayed, when whole parts of town were left to fester without even a plan for revival. These were the decades before the 1980s, a period romanticised by those down on the London of Abramovich. It is now a city of ever more people, of endless construction, of falling crime and improving schools – a magnet to Europe’s young.

伦敦确实有过人口同比下降的时候，那时基础设施老朽不堪，某些城区在没有复苏计划的情况下日益衰败。那是上世纪80年代之前几十年的情形，那些看不起如今这个接纳阿布拉莫维奇之流的伦敦的人，把那个时期浪漫化了。现在它是一个人口更多、建设无止境、犯罪率下降且学校质量改善的城市，它就像一块磁石，吸引着欧洲的年轻人。

Londoners appreciate the anguish shown on their behalf by the foreign media. But, really, we are coping.

伦敦人感激外媒为他们渲泄苦恼。但其实，我们过得还不错。