The word haipai is hard to translate. Hai is the second character of Shanghai, and pai means a school or a style, so a literal version would be the Shanghai school. But it does not mean Shanghai-made. It means what happened when Chinese and foreign ways of doing things were put in the same street for a hundred years and neither one won. The result is neither Chinese nor Western, and Shanghai people are quite proud that you cannot file it under either.
海派这个词不好翻。海是上海的海，派是流派、风格，直译就是上海这一派。但它不是上海制造的意思。它指的是中国和外国的做事方式在同一条街上摆了一百年，谁也没赢过谁，最后长出来的那个东西。结果既不中也不西，而上海人对它归不进任何一类这件事，还挺得意。
It came out of a specific situation. After the port opened in 1843, foreign settlements1 grew up next to the old walled town, and people arrived from everywhere: merchants from Ningbo and Guangdong, refugees from the Taiping war, White Russians, Jews from Baghdad and later from Europe. Nobody was in the majority, so nobody could impose a single way of living. What survived was whatever worked, and what worked was usually a mixture.
它是特定处境的产物。1843 年开埠之后，租界在老城厢旁边长了起来，人从四面八方来，宁波和广东的商人、太平天国战乱的难民、白俄、从巴格达来的犹太人，后来还有从欧洲逃来的。没有哪一群是多数，所以没有哪一群能把自己那套强加给别人。留下来的是管用的，而管用的通常是混出来的。
You can see it most clearly in buildings. The Bund is fifty-two Western buildings in a row along a Chinese river. The shikumen2 lane house behind you puts a Baroque stone door frame on a Chinese courtyard plan, and packs it into a terrace the way a London street is packed. Even the Art Deco3 apartment blocks along Huaihai Road, which look entirely European, were laid out for families who cooked Chinese food in them. The city did not copy. It absorbed and rebuilt.
最容易看见的是建筑。外滩是五十二幢西式房子沿着一条中国的江排开。你身后的石库门在中式的院落格局上装了一道巴洛克石门框，再照伦敦街区的密度联排排开。连淮海路上那些看着完全是欧洲样子的装饰艺术公寓楼，格局也是给在里面烧中国菜的人家设计的。这座城市没有照抄，它是吸收之后重造。
It is also in things you can eat and watch. Local restaurants serve borscht and breaded pork chops with Worcestershire sauce, dishes that came in with Russians and the British and were rebuilt for Shanghai mouths. The qipao4 as the world knows it, close-fitting and with a high slit, was a Shanghai invention of the 1920s, not an ancient garment. Huju opera sings in the local dialect about ordinary city life rather than emperors. If you want to see all of this in one afternoon, walk the Wukang Road area, then Xintiandi, then the Bund at dusk. Three stops, one idea.
它也在能吃能看的东西里。本地餐馆供应罗宋汤和配辣酱油的炸猪排，这些菜跟着俄国人和英国人进来，又照上海人的口味改过。全世界认得的那种旗袍，收身、高开衩，是二十年代的上海发明，不是古装。沪剧用本地话唱普通市民的日子，不唱帝王。想在一个下午把这些都看到，走一趟武康路一带，再去新天地，黄昏时到外滩。三站路，一个意思。