Look up at the golden roof, then turn round and look at the office towers behind you. That contrast is the whole point of this place. Jing'an Temple sits in the middle of the most expensive shopping district in Shanghai, with a metro1 station directly underneath it and a luxury mall across the road. The name means peace and quiet, which today is more a hope than a description.
先抬头看那片金顶，再转身看你身后的写字楼。这个反差就是这地方全部的意思。静安寺立在上海最贵的商业区中间，脚下就压着一个地铁站，马路对面是一家奢侈品商场。寺名的意思是安静，今天这两个字更像一种愿望，而不是描述。
The monastery2 traces itself back to the year 247, in the Three Kingdoms period, which would make it older than the city around it by well over a thousand years. It did not start here. The original site was beside the Wusong River, and in 1216, under the Southern Song, the whole institution was moved to this spot because the river was eating away the bank. In front of the gate there was once a spring famous enough to be ranked among the best in the empire. It is gone now, covered by the road.
这座寺院把自己的历史追到公元 247 年，三国时期，那要比它周围这座城市早上一千多年。它不是从这儿起家的。原址在吴淞江边，1216 年南宋嘉定年间，因为江水不断啃塌河岸，整座寺迁到了现在这个位置。山门前从前有一眼泉，名气大到进过天下名泉的排名。现在没有了，压在马路底下。
Almost everything you see is new. The temple was closed and used as a factory for a period in the twentieth century, and the halls were rebuilt from the 1980s onwards, in a heavy Tang style with a great deal of Burmese teak. In the main hall there is a seated silver Buddha weighing about fifteen tonnes, and in another hall a Buddha carved from a single block of jade. The incense3 burner in the courtyard is where most people stop, and the smoke drifting up past the office windows is the photograph everybody takes.
你看到的几乎全是新的。二十世纪有一段时间寺院关闭，作过工厂，殿宇从八十年代起陆续重建，用的是厚重的唐式做法和大量缅甸柚木。大殿里有一尊坐姿银佛，重约十五吨，另一座殿里是一尊整块玉料雕成的佛像。院子里的香炉是大多数人停下的地方，香烟越过写字楼的玻璃升上去，这就是人人都拍的那张照片。
A few words before we go in. This is a working temple, not only a monument, so please walk round the outside of a hall4 rather than straight across in front of someone who is praying. Step over the raised threshold5, not on it. Photographs are fine in the courtyards but not of the images inside the halls. If you would like to offer incense, three sticks is the custom, and you hold them at the height of your forehead. We have forty minutes.
进去之前交代几句。这是一座在使用中的寺院，不只是古迹，所以请从殿的侧边绕行，别从正在拜的人前面直穿过去。门槛要跨过去，不要踩上去。院子里可以拍照，殿内的佛像不要拍。想上香的话，习惯是三炷，举到额头的高度。我们有四十分钟。