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When I was a child growing up in England three decades ago, I was confronted with the visual evidence of social mobility every day – but of the downward, not upward, type. 30年前，当我还是个孩子的时候，我住在英格兰，每天都目睹表明社会流动性的“视觉”证据，不过流动方向是向下的，而不是向上的。 We lived in a suburban, middle-class home. On the walls, however, hung the portrait of an 18th-century Anglo-French aristocrat, a maternal ancestor. In the intervening centuries, my aristocratic forebears had lost their status and wealth due to drink, gambling and poor decisions. Thus, my only link with royalty was that portrait and the fact that I have the same unusual middle name – Romaine – as the noblewoman in the picture. 我们是生活在郊区的中产阶级之家。但家里的墙上挂着一幅18世纪英法贵族的画像，她是我母亲家族的一位祖先。从她往后的几个世纪里，我的贵族祖先们由于饮酒、赌博和一些糟糕的决定而失去了地位和财富。因此，我与贵族仅有的联系就是那幅画像，以及我有一个不同寻常的中间名罗曼(Romaine)，与画像中的贵妇一样。 A rare example of social mobility or a widespread pattern? Today, that is a very politically charged question, particularly in countries such as the US. But it is also a very hard question to answer definitively. 这是社会流动性的一个罕见例子，还是一种普遍模式？如今，这是一个充满政治意味的问题，尤其是在像美国这样的国家。但这个问题很难明确回答。 | 
