In front of you is the Oriental Pearl Tower, the building that put Pudong on the map. The name comes from a line of Tang poetry written more than a thousand years before the tower existed. The poet Bai Juyi described the sound of a lute as large pearls and small pearls falling on a plate of jade. The architect, Jiang Huancheng, took that image and turned it into a structure1: eleven spheres2 of different sizes, strung along three great columns.
你们面前这座是东方明珠，把浦东带上地图的就是它。名字出自一句唐诗，比这座塔早了一千多年。诗人白居易形容琵琶声，说是大珠小珠落玉盘。建筑师江欢成把这个画面变成了一座建筑，十一个大小不一的球体，串在三根巨柱上。
The tower was completed in 1994 and stands four hundred and sixty-eight metres high. When it opened it was the tallest tower in Asia, and no tower in China passed it for more than a decade. The three columns are each nine metres across, and they carry two very large spheres, one at ninety metres and one at two hundred and fifty metres, with a small sphere near the top. Because the spheres are hollow, the whole tower weighs far less than it looks, and it is built to sway a little in a typhoon3 rather than resist it.
塔 1994 年建成，高四百六十八米。落成时它是亚洲第一高塔，此后十多年国内没有比它更高的塔。三根立柱每根直径九米，托起两个大球，一个在九十米处，一个在两百五十米处，接近顶端还有一个小球。球是空心的，所以整座塔远比看上去轻，遇到台风它靠的是晃一晃，而不是硬扛。
There are two levels open to visitors. The one at two hundred and fifty-nine metres has a glass-floored4 walkway running right around the sphere, and I promise you that the first step onto it is the hardest. The higher observation deck5, the space capsule at three hundred and fifty metres, gives you the whole skyline6 in one turn. If the weather is poor and the view is grey, the basement is worth your time instead. The Shanghai Municipal History Exhibition Hall sits under the tower, and its street scenes of old Shanghai are full size, so you can walk into them.
对游客开放的有两层。两百五十九米那层有一圈玻璃地板的走道绕着球体，我保证第一步最难迈。更高的那层是三百五十米处的太空舱，转一圈就把整条天际线看完。要是天气不好，看出去灰蒙蒙的，那就把时间花在地下。上海城市历史发展陈列馆就在塔底，里面老上海的街景做成了真实大小，人能走进去。
Before we go up, turn around once and look across the river. What you see is the Bund, and almost every building over there is older than any of us. Thirty years ago the ground under your feet was farmland and warehouses7. Two banks, one hundred years apart, four hundred metres of water in between. We have about ninety minutes here, including the queue for the lift. Please keep your ticket, you will need it again on the way down.
上去之前，先转过身看一眼对岸。那是外滩，那边几乎每一幢楼都比我们在座任何人年长。三十年前，你脚下这块地还是农田和仓库。两岸相隔一百年，中间隔着四百米江面。我们在这里大约停九十分钟，含排队等电梯的时间。票请收好，下来的时候还要用。