When tugboats towed Jumbo Floating Restaurant away from Hong Kong last week, the giant vessel’s owner sent the public its “best wishes for a brighter future.”

上周，当拖船将水上餐厅珍宝海鲜舫拖离香港时，这艘巨船的所有者曾向公众“送上至诚的祝福，愿明天更好”。

That future now lies at the bottom of the South China Sea.

那个“明天”现已沉没在南海的海底。

The 260-foot, three-story eatery capsized and sank as it was being towed through deep water over the weekend, its owner, Aberdeen Restaurant Enterprises, said on Monday. No one was injured, it said.

珍宝海鲜舫的所有者香港仔饮食集团周一表示，这艘船长76米、高三层的水上餐厅在周末拖入深水区时倾斜沉没。公司表示无人受伤。

Jumbo’s loss reverberated across Hong Kong, a Chinese territory where the neon-lit colossus — built in the style of an imperial palace — had sat in the same harbor for nearly half a century. Generations of Hong Kongers celebrated weddings and cut business deals there over Cantonese fare like crispy pork belly and wok-baked mud crab. For many people in the former British colony, the restaurant symbolized a period of local history more optimistic than the present.

珍宝海鲜舫的沉没在整个香港都引发了很大的反响。这座宫殿风格、饰以霓虹灯的巨船曾在香港的同一港口停泊了近半个世纪。几代香港人在这里办婚宴、洽谈生意时，都要吃脆皮烧肉和避风塘炒蟹等粤菜。对这个前英国殖民地的许多人来说，这家餐厅象征着一段比现在更乐观的当地历史。

Jumbo’s demise comes at a time of immense upheaval in Hong Kong, one that began when anti-government protests convulsed the city for months in 2019. That prompted the Chinese government in 2020 to impose a powerful national security law on the territory that has since eroded what was left of its democratic institutions.

珍宝海鲜舫的沉没发生在香港出现巨大动荡的时候，这些动荡始于持续了数月之久的2019年反政府抗议活动。抗议活动导致中央政府在2020年对香港实施了强有力的国家安全法，之后，香港所剩无几的民主制度已被这部法律侵蚀。

The turmoil continued through the pandemic, as border closures and social distancing measures wiped out thousands of mom-and-pop shops and threatened some of the city’s best-known businesses, including the popular Star Ferry.

动荡在疫情期间继续，关闭边境、保持社交距离等措施迫使数千家各式小店难以为继，还威胁到香港一些最知名的企业，包括大众喜爱的天星小轮。

At a time when the Star Ferry and other visual icons of Hong Kong are under threat, “it seems as if its most visible symbols are all disappearing one by one,” said Louisa Lim, the author of the book “Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong.”

当天星小轮和香港其他的视觉标识受到威胁时，“香港的视觉象征似乎正在一个接一个地消失。”《不可磨灭的香港：香港的剥夺与反抗》一书的作者林慕莲(Louisa Lim)说。

“That, combined with the massive political changes brought in by the national security legislation, leave Hong Kongers questioning what will be left of their city,” she added.

“这一点之外，再加上香港国安法带来的巨大政治变化，让香港人对他们的城市还会剩下什么充满疑问，”她补充说。

Jumbo was opened by the Macau casino tycoon Stanley Ho in 1976 and was for years part of a complex called Jumbo Kingdom that included a smaller floating restaurant, Tai Pak. The larger vessel’s opening was delayed by a 1971 fire that killed 34 people and injured dozens of others, according to The South China Morning Post.

珍宝海鲜舫由澳门博彩业大亨何鸿燊于1976年开设，多年来一直是珍宝王国水上餐厅的一部分，珍宝王国还有一个较小的水上餐厅叫太白海鲜舫。据《南华早报》报道，由于1971年发生的一场导致34人死亡、数十人受伤的大火，珍宝海鲜舫推迟了开业。

A number of celebrities visited Jumbo Kingdom over the years, including the actor Tom Cruise, the businessman Richard Branson and Queen Elizabeth II of Britain. Jumbo Floating Restaurant also featured in the 1974 James Bond film “The Man with the Golden Gun” and several local blockbusters.

多年来，不少名人去过那里，包括演员汤姆·克鲁斯、商人理查德·布兰森，以及英国女王伊丽莎白二世。这个巨大水上餐厅还曾出现在1974年的007电影《金枪人》和几部香港大片中。

In “Contagion,” a 2011 thriller about a global pandemic, a pivotal scene was shot at the restaurant: Gwyneth Paltrow’s character becomes the pandemic’s first victim by contracting a deadly virus from a chef.

2011年关于一场全球大流行病的惊悚片《传染病》的一个关键场景也是在这家餐馆拍摄的：格温妮丝·帕特洛饰演的角色从这家餐厅的一名厨师那里感染了一种致命病毒，成为大流行病的第一个受害者。

Even as giant residential towers sprang up around Jumbo, its garish neon sign and imperial-style architecture still dominated the skyline around Aberdeen Harbor, on the southwest side of Hong Kong Island. And it was still a place where Hong Kongers went to make memories; Ms. Lim, the writer, wrote on Twitter last week that going there had been an annual ritual for her family.

尽管珍宝海鲜舫的周围已盖起了高大的住宅楼，但这家餐厅耀眼的霓虹灯招牌和宫殿风格的建筑仍让其在香港岛西南的香港仔湾的天际线中具有显眼地位。它曾是香港人缔造美好回忆之地；林慕莲上周在Twitter上写道，去那里吃饭曾是她家每年的传统。

By 2020, though, Jumbo had lost millions of dollars, and Hong Kong’s pandemic restrictions on dining and tourism forced the business to close. Aberdeen Restaurant Enterprises said at the time that it could not afford to keep up with maintenance and inspection costs, and it offered to donate Jumbo to a local theme park at no cost.

但到2020年时，珍宝海鲜舫已累积亏损超过1亿港币。为了遏制新冠病毒大流行，香港对餐饮和旅游业采取的限制措施导致这家餐厅关门。香港仔饮食集团当时曾表示，他们已无力承担维修和检查费用，提出将珍宝海鲜舫无偿捐赠给当地一个主题公园。

Later that year, Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, said that the government would cooperate with the theme park and local nonprofit organizations in “the rebirth of the floating restaurant.” But the plan fizzled, and Ms. Lam said last month that the government would not invest taxpayer money in the restaurant, which had accumulated losses of nearly $13 million over nearly a decade.

香港行政长官林郑月娥曾在2020年晚些时候表示，政府将与主题公园和当地的非营利组织合作，“让这个水上餐厅重生。”但该计划终成泡影，林郑月娥上个月说，政府不会把纳税人的钱投给这家近十年来已累计亏损逾1亿港币的餐厅。

Jumbo was towed away from Hong Kong on June 14. Aberdeen Restaurant Enterprises declined at the time to say where it was going, though the company had previously said that the boat would be moved out of the city for maintenance and storage.

6月14日，珍宝海鲜舫被拖离香港。香港仔饮食集团当时拒绝透露船的去向，不过公司此前曾表示，船将在香港以外的地方进行维修保存。

In a statement, the company said that Jumbo “began to tip” on Sunday as it was passing by the Paracel Islands, a chain of disputed islands in the South China Sea where China, Vietnam and Taiwan lay territorial claims. It said the accident occurred in an area where the water depth is over 1,000 meters, or 3,280 feet, “making it extremely difficult to carry out salvage works.”

公司在一份声明中说，珍宝海鲜舫在周日经过西沙群岛时“开始倾斜”。中国称为“西沙群岛”的帕拉塞尔群岛是南海一连串有争议的岛屿，中国、越南和台湾都宣称对这些岛屿拥有主权。公司的声明说，事故发生的地方水深超过1000米，“进行打捞工程非常困难。”

Stephen Ng, a spokesman for Aberdeen Restaurant Enterprises, declined to comment on speculation online that the boat might have been scuttled for insurance purposes. There was no immediate evidence to suggest foul play.

香港仔饮食集团的发言人斯蒂芬·吴拒绝就网上有关沉船可能是为了得到保险赔偿的猜测置评。目前还没有证据表明沉船涉及违法行为。

In its statement on Monday, the company said it was “now getting further details of the accident from the towing company.” It did not name the towing company.

该公司在周一的声明中说，“现正向拖船公司进一步了解事故详情”，但没有透露拖船公司的名字。

Not everyone liked Jumbo. Ho-fung Hung, a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University who has studied Hong Kong politics, called it “self-orientalizing” and said it was not worth getting nostalgic over.

并不是所有人都喜欢珍宝海鲜舫。约翰霍普金斯大学研究香港政治的社会学教授孔诰烽称这艘船“自我东方化”，不值得怀念。

“Overpriced bad food for clueless tourists seeking awkward exoticism,” he wrote on Twitter last week. “Get lost and don’t come back.”

“专为那些寻求尴尬异国情调的无知游客提供质次价高的食物，”他上周在Twitter上写道。“走吧，别再回来。”

But for some residents, losing Jumbo was part of a pattern in which things they love about their hometown have vanished since the 2019 protests. A few social media users described the sinking this week as a “nail in the coffin” for the city. Others called it a “burial at sea.”

但对有些居民来说，失去珍宝海鲜舫加深了他们已有的印象，那就是自2019年的抗议活动以来，他们喜爱的关于故乡的东西已在消失。一些社交媒体用户将本周的沉船描述为钉在香港“棺材上的一颗钉子”。还有人把沉船称为“海葬”。

One popular illustration making the rounds on social media showed Jumbo sinking to the bottom of the sea as fish swim by.

在社交媒体上流传的一幅很受欢迎的漫画中，珍宝海鲜舫在游鱼间下沉海底。

In the illustration by Ah To — the nom de plume of a political cartoonist who recently emigrated from Hong Kong, citing the “great mental stress” he would suffer if he stayed — there are two statues on the seafloor. One shows a blindfolded woman holding a scale of justice that lies askance. The other is a woman who holds a torch and resembles the Goddess of Democracy, a protest symbol that was removed from a Hong Kong university campus last year.

笔名阿涂的政治漫画家是这幅画的作者，他最近离开了香港，理由是如果留下会“精神压力巨大”。在阿涂的漫画中，海底已沉着两个雕像。一个是倾斜状的正义女神，另一个酷似去年从香港一所大学校园拆除的抗议象征——民主女神。