Before Shanghai was Shanghai, it was Jiangnan. The word means south of the river, and it refers to the region below the lower Yangtze, taking in southern Jiangsu, northern Zhejiang and this city. For more than a thousand years Jiangnan was the richest part of China, because rice grew twice a year here and the canals carried it anywhere. Shanghai is the eastern edge of that region, and the Jiangnan layer sits underneath everything the foreigners built on top of it after 1843.
上海成为上海之前，它是江南。这个词的意思是江的南边，指长江下游以南这一带，包括苏南、浙北和这座城市。一千多年里江南是中国最富的地方，因为这里稻子一年两熟，运河能把它运到任何地方。上海是这个区域的东缘，1843 年之后外国人在上面盖起来的一切，底下垫着的都是江南这一层。
Everything in Jiangnan follows the water. Villages grew along canals1 rather than roads, houses turned their backs to the lane and their fronts to the water, and every family had steps down to it. Goods moved by boat, so a town's wealth showed in its bridges. Zhujiajiao, in the west of Shanghai, still has thirty-six old stone bridges, and the largest of them, Fangsheng Bridge, was built in 1571. Walk that town and you are looking at how this whole region lived before the railway.
江南的一切都顺着水走。村子沿河而不是沿路长起来，房子背对巷子、正面朝水，每家都有一道下到水边的台阶。货靠船运，所以一个镇的富庶写在它的桥上。上海西边的朱家角至今保留三十六座老石桥，最大的那座放生桥建于 1571 年。走一趟那个镇子，你看到的就是铁路出现之前整个区域的活法。
Shanghai has several of these towns: Zhujiajiao and Liantang in Qingpu, Qibao in Minhang, Fengjing in Jinshan, Xinchang in Pudong. And it has Jiangnan gardens. A Jiangnan garden is small on purpose. The designer divides two hectares with walls, water and rockeries2 so that you never see the whole thing, and the result feels endless. Yu Garden, built in 1559, is the one in the city centre. Guyi Garden in Nanxiang and Zuibaichi in Songjiang are quieter and, if you have the time, better.
上海有好几个这样的镇子，青浦的朱家角和练塘，闵行的七宝，金山的枫泾，浦东的新场。上海也有江南园林。江南园林是存心做小的。造园的人用墙、水和假山把两公顷分开，让你永远看不到全貌，结果反倒觉得走不完。1559 年建的豫园在市中心。南翔的古猗园和松江的醉白池更安静，时间够的话更值得去。
The last part is what people made with their hands. Songjiang was the cotton capital of China after Huang Daopo brought better spinning technology back from Hainan in the thirteenth century, and the phrase for it was that Songjiang cloth clothed the empire. Gu embroidery3, from a Ming family garden in Songjiang, is the only school of Chinese embroidery named after a family. Jiading bamboo carving and the silk-and-bamboo music called jiangnan sizhu are both on the national intangible4 heritage list. So when people tell you Shanghai has only a hundred and eighty years of history, the honest answer is that the port does. The city under it is much older.
最后是人用手做出来的东西。十三世纪黄道婆从海南带回更好的纺织技术之后，松江成了中国的棉纺中心，当时的说法是松江布衣被天下。顾绣出自松江一座明代私家园林的顾家，是中国唯一以家族命名的绣种。嘉定竹刻和叫作江南丝竹的丝弦竹管乐，都在国家级非遗名录上。所以有人告诉你上海只有一百八十年历史，老实的回答是港口只有那么久，港口底下的这座城要老得多。