北京故宫英文导游辞.doc

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北京故宫英文导游辞

forbidden city(紫禁城)
(in front of the meridian gate)

ladies and gentlemen:

i am pleased to serve as your guide today.

it is believed that the palace museum, or zi jin cheng (purple forbidden city), got its name from astronomy folklore, the ancient astronomers divided the constellations into groups and centered them around the ziwei yuan(north star). the constellation containing the north star was called the constellation of heavenly god and star itself was called the purple palace. because the emperor was supposedly the son of the heavenly gods, his central and dominant position would be further highlighted the use of the word purple in the name of his residence. in folklore, the term ”an eastern purple cloud is drifting” became a metaphor for auspicious events after a purple cloud was seen drifting eastward immediately before the arrival of an ancient philosopher, laozi, to the hanghu pass. here, purple is associated with auspicious developments. the word jin (forbidden) is self-explanatory as the imperial palace was heavily guarded and off-explanatory as the imperial palace was heavily guarded and off-limits to ordinary people.

the red and yellow used on the palace walls and roofs are also symbolic. red represents happiness, good fortune and wealth. yellow is the color of the earth on the loess plateau, the original home of the chinese people. yellow became an imperial color during the tang dynasty, when only members of the royal family were allowed to wear it and use it in their architecture.

manpower and materials throughout the country were used to build the forbidden city. a total of 230,000 artisans and one million laborers were employed. marble was quarried from fangshan country mount pan in jixian county in hebei province. granite was quarried in quyang county in hebei province. paving blocks were fired in kilns in suzhou in southern china. bricks and scarlet pigmentation used on the palatial walls came from linqing in shandong province .timber was cut ,processed and hauled from the northwestern and southern regions.

the structure in front of us is the meridian gate. it is the main entrance to the forbidden city. it is also knows as wufenglou(five-phoenix tower). ming emperors held lavish banquets here on the 15th day of the first month of the chinese lunar year in hornor of their counties .they also used this place for punishing officals by flogging them with sticks.

qing emperors used this building to announce the beginning of the new year. qing emperor qianglong changed the original name of this announcement ceremony from ban li(announcement of calendar)to ban shou(announcement of new moon )to avoid coincidental association with another emperor` s name, hongli, which was considered a taboo at that time. qing dynasty emperors also used this place to hold audience and for other important ceremonies. for example,when the imperial army returned victoriously from the battlefield ,it was here that the emperor presided over the ceremony to accept prisoners of war.

Wade–Giles romanization Wu-t’ai Shan , Pinyin Wutai Shan mountain and mountain chain in northeast Shansi Province, China. The mountain chain is a massif with a southwest–northeast axis, separated from the Heng Shan (mountains) to the northwest by the valley of the Hu-t’o Ho (river), which curves around its southern flank to flow into the North China Plain in Hopeh Province. Mt. Wu-t’ai is actually a cluster of flat-topped peaks from which the mountain takes its name (Five Terraces). The highest peak is 10,033 ft (3,058 m) above sea level.

Mt. Wu-t’ai is particularly famous as one of the great holy places of Chinese Buddhism. Great numbers of temples, including some of the oldest wooden buildings surviving in China, are scattered over the mountain; the largest temples—such as the Hsien-t’ung, the Ta-ta-yüan, and the Pu-sa-ting-shen-jung-yüan—are grouped around the town of T’ai-huai-chen.

Mt. Wu-t’ai appears first to have become a holy mountain to the Taoist adepts of the later Han dynasty (AD 25–220) but came into prominence in the 5th century under the Northern Wei dynasty (386–534/35) when, as Ch’ing-liang Shan, it became identified as the dwelling place of Mãnjuśrī bodhisattva (a heavenly being who voluntarily postpones his Buddhahood in order to work for worldly welfare and understanding). The cult of Mãnjuśrī was intensified under the T’ang dynasty (618–907). In early T’ang times Mount Wu-t’ai was closely associated with the patriarchs of the Hua-yen Buddhist school, becoming the principal centre of their teaching. During this period it attracted scholars and pilgrims not only from all parts of China but also from Japan, who continued to visit and study there until the 12th century.

Many of the other monasteries in the region were attached to Ch’an Buddhism, which in the 9th century found patronage in the region from the provincial governors of the neighbouring areas of Hopeh, who were able to protect Mount Wu-t’ai from the worst ravages of the great religious persecution that occurred from 843 to 845. Under Mongol rule in the late 13th century, Tibetan Buddhism (Lamaism) was first introduced to Mount Wu-t’ai. During the Ch’ing dynasty (1644–1911/12), when the Tibetan Buddhist religion was an important element in relations between the Chinese court and their Mongol and Tibetan vassals and when the state gave lavish support to monasteries inhabited by lamas (monks), Mount Wu-t’ai was one of the principal monastic centres.

Few of the present buildings are very old, but the main hall of the Hua-kuang Ssu, dating from 857, is the oldest surviving wooden building in China.

The Exhibition of Inscribed Bamboo Tablets of Wu Kingdom of the Three Kingdoms at Changsha  Ladies and gentlemen,
Welcome to Changsha museum. Well be here to visit “The Exhibition of Inscribed Bamboo  Tablets of Wu Kingdom of the Three Kingdoms at Changsha and The Years of Unearthed  Most Valuable Cultural Relics”. I hope my explanation can satisfy you! 
    Now, we are in the first exhibition hall. Here, it adopts panoramic technique, and restores the site of unearthing Bamboo Tablets of Wu Kingdom. In 1996, during July to November, in the southeast of Wu Yi square, team up with Ping He Tang Department. The exhumations were carried on by Changsha relics work teams. They unearth 61 archaic wells during the
Warring States period and the Ming and Qing Dynasty, and found out 3000 kinds of relics, like copper, iron bamboo, wood, ceramics, and so on. To people’s astonishment, in the No.22 archaic well, they found lots of bamboo tablets and wooden
slips. After confirming, they are the relics of Sun Wu in Three kingdoms 1700 years ago. These patches of relics would replenish the lacked historical materials of three kingdoms exactly. Our country once had four discoveries: The oracle bone inscription of Yin, bamboo tablets and wooden slips of Tunxu in northwest China, Cultural books of Dunhuang stone room, Files of Qing cabinet. Bamboo Tablets of Wu Kingdom of the Three Kingdoms at Changsha can be mentioned in the same breath with the four discoveries, and become the searching subject of international academia.
Everybody! Please look at the cross section reconstruction of the NO.22 archaic well. Its upper part of opening was damaged when it was excavating. This is an irregular circular shape vertical shaft; the bottom has a bag form likely. The opening of the well has a length 3.5 m from south to north, 3.1 m from east to west, and 5.6 m in depth. The opening is covered with pure red brown color clay, 1.5 m deeper of which is the bamboo tablets and wooden slips layer. The bamboo tablets and wooden slips layer is 50 cm thick in center and 20 cm thin on all sides, piled up with slope form. The ropes tied the bamboo tablets and wooden slips have become rotten, but we can see they were buried by bundles at that time. There are more than 10,000 pieces of bamboo tablets and wooden slips by the initial statistics. The second layer is the gray brown clay layer of 3.1 m thick, among them mix up
with lots of bamboo wood scrapes, grass scrapes, leaves, fragmentary bricks, pottery and porcelain and so on. At the bottom of the well is another small well, which has square wooden frame. The four corners are nailed by a stick of spile inlayed with two wooden boards as the well wall. The circle of the well is 93 cm long, 58 cm tall. The function of this small well is probably for gathering the groundwater from all sides of the well, and then put forward to pour out with water pitcher and other tools in order to maintain the well space dry. This is the living photo taken by the time of excavating.
   Analyzing the structure and relics of the well NO.22, it is an ancient well for storing food. The climate of Changsha is so hot, wet and rainy that the food is easy to be rot, but the circumstance under the ground of 10 m depth is just like as a modern refrigerator. The archaeological discoveries approved that people had used this storing method from the time of Shang dynasty. 
You may ask that, why were the bamboo tablets of Wu Kingdom buried in the well? There are two statements. The first one considered that in the period of Three Kingdoms, there were so many wars, the suddenly burst-out war made people bury them here in a hurry. The other considered that to bury them in the well may be a way of dealing with the records in the past.
　Now please look at the photo. This is the photo of unearthing the No.22 well. We can see that the bamboo tablets and wooden slips were soaked in the mud. Why can they be kept intact for over 1700 years? One of the important reasons is that the ground water level in Changsha was very high, and the bamboo tablets and wooden slips were soaked in the water. Besides, they were buried deeply; they can be sealed up wall. With these, they can be kept intact for over 1700 years.
　Next, let’s visit the second exhibition room. In this room we can get the detailed introduction of the bamboo tablets and wooden slips. Before we visit, I have a question to ask. Do you know whether the words on the bamboo tablets and wooden slips were written or carved on them? With the question, let’s look at the photo of the pottery figurine. This pottery figurine was unearthed in a Western Jin tomb in Jinpenling in Changsha in 1950s. On the left of the photo there is a man handing a wooden slip and reading something, the man on the right who were holding a hair pencil in a hand and a wooden slip in the other was writing something. The pottery figurine shows us the condition of ancients writing on the bamboo tablets and wooden slips. Now, we can say, the word on the bamboo tablets and slips were written on them. Did you guess it?
To see another set of photos. This is a hair pencil unearthed from one of the tombs of the Warring State at Zuojiagong Mountain of Changsha in 1954. Its shaft is long and small but easy to be broken. On the side of it there is a bamboo pipe used for containing the pen when it is collected and preserved. This is an ink stone with little ink blocks near it. Here also remains a bronze chopping knife which is used for the calligrapher to make inscribed bamboo and wooden slips and correct writing mistakes. This is a set of photos of calligraphy tools discovered in No.168 Tomb in Jinan city of former capital of Chu State. In addition to this, there are 6 pieces of wooden slips without character. This is also the most complete and most typical set of Han Dynasty’s stationery ever seen up to now. Uniting our ancient people calculates the number of the inscribed bamboo tablets and wooden slips are not “slice”, but “jin”. It is recorded in history that the 1st emperor of Qin Dynasty did not have a rest until he finished reading over 120 jin of memorial to throne and inscribed bamboo and wooden slips. 

　　Please notice the following brief tablet about information of the inscribed bamboo and wooden slips unearthed from all parts of the nation from this century. Among this, the column in red character is the number of the inscribed bamboo and wooden slips excavated from Changsha this time. The number this time has exceeded the total amount of that unearthed from all parts of the nation these years. Therefore, it is named as “the surprising wonder of the world”and “one of the most important archaeological discoveries of this century.”
It is well known that document history in the Three Kingdom Period handed down is very rare.”The Annals of Three Kingdom”by Chenshou in Xijin has 65 volumes, among which there are 30 volumes of Wei Book, 15 volumes of Shu Book, 20 volumes of Wu Book with total of more than 1 million characters. Over the years, the unearthed inscribed bamboo slips and wooden tablets in nationwide archaeology is also rarely seen and only exist tens of pieces in Anhui, Jiangxi and Hubei .But nowadays in Changsha, the total number of the excavation of the inscribed bamboo from Wu State in Three Kingdom Period reaches 10 thousand pieces for just one time and the total wordage reaches more than 3 million if counted with 20 words in each piece. These character materials greatly surpass the total wordage in that of the “Annals of Three Kingdom”, which offers abundant material for the study of social economy, political system, inscribed bamboo and volume system, history and geography and also fill the vacancy of historic works. We can forecast that the discovery of inscribed bamboo slips from Wu State in Changsha will surely influence many aspects of the Chinese historic study and anew examining and verifying the past final conclusion. 

　　Well, let us have a look at this map. Though the series archaeological excavation around the “Wuyi square ”by our archaeological workers, we have preliminarily defined the region of the ancient Changsha .It extends northward to “Lao Zhaobi ”, southward to “Pozi Street”, eastward to “Cai’e Road”and westward to “Shanghe Street”which shaped rectangle. And the center of Changsha is today’s “Wuyi Square, which, we can say, hasn’t changed basically nearly 3000years.
　The unearthed inscribed bamboo slips and wooden tablets for this time, if according to their shape, they can be distributed to big and small inscribed bamboo slips, wooden tablets and so on; if according to their use, they can be distributed to five kinds: 

　　The first kind is document. It can be subdivided into two parts. One is the land rent document with 0.5m long, 2.5cm wide and 100 to 200 Chinese characters on. The other is the official document which recorded the distribution and exc