The green pyramid ahead of us is the most recognised roofline1 on the Bund. The building underneath is Sassoon House, number twenty on the Bund, finished in 1929. Seventy-seven metres to the tip, copper on the roof, granite on the lower floors. It has carried four names in ninety years. Sassoon House was the owner's name, the Cathay Hotel was the hotel inside it, the Peace Hotel is what it became in 1956, and the Fairmont Peace Hotel is what it is today.
前面那个绿色金字塔顶是外滩上辨识度最高的屋顶线。下面这幢是沙逊大厦，外滩二十号，1929 年建成。到尖顶七十七米，屋顶包铜，下面几层是花岗岩。九十年里它换过四个名字。沙逊大厦是业主的姓，楼里的旅馆叫华懋饭店，1956 年起叫和平饭店，今天全名是费尔蒙和平饭店。
Victor Sassoon came from a Baghdadi Jewish trading family that had made its money in India. He moved the family business to Shanghai in the late twenties, when Indian tax law turned against him, and he put a great deal of it into property. At one point his companies held more building land in the International Settlement than anyone else. He was a keen photographer, he raced horses, and he walked with two sticks after a flying accident in the First World War. He kept the top floor of this building as his own flat.
维克多·沙逊出身巴格达犹太商人家庭，家族的钱是在印度赚的。二十年代后期印度税法对他不利，他把家族生意搬到上海，其中很大一笔投进了房地产。他名下的公司一度是公共租界里持有建筑用地最多的。他爱摄影，养赛马，一战时飞机失事之后走路要拄两根手杖。这幢楼的顶层留作他自己的公寓。
The Cathay Hotel took floors four to nine, and it was built to be the best hotel east of Suez. Nine suites2 were done in nine national styles, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Spanish, Italian, French, German, British and American, each with its own furniture shipped in. Guests were met at the ship. Noel Coward stayed here in 1930, caught influenza, and wrote the play Private Lives in four days in bed on the fourth floor. That detail always lands with English-speaking guests.
华懋饭店占了四到九层，客房集中在五到七层，目标是做苏伊士以东最好的旅馆。九间套房按九国风格布置，中、日、印、西、意、法、德、英、美，每间的家具各自从原产地运来。客人是在轮船码头接的。诺埃尔·科沃德 1930 年住在这里，得了流感，躺在四楼床上四天写完了剧本《私人生活》。这个细节讲给英语客人听，每次都接得住。
Since 1980 the Old Jazz Band has played in the ground floor bar most evenings, and several of its members were in their eighties when the group made its name. The band has changed players since, and the music has not. The 2010 restoration reopened the octagonal atrium3 under its stained glass4 ceiling, and you can walk into the lobby and look up without being a guest. If your group has twenty minutes, the atrium, the corridor of period photographs and the bar are worth the stop.
1980 年起老年爵士乐队几乎每晚在底层酒吧演出，乐队出名的时候有几位成员已经八十多岁。后来乐手换过，曲目没怎么换。2010 年那次修复重新打开了八角形中庭，头顶是彩色玻璃天棚，不住店也可以走进大堂抬头看。团队要是有二十分钟，中庭、老照片走廊和那间酒吧值得停一下。