陕历博英文导游词

The Shaan’xi History Museum

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. So nice to see you again, today we are going to visit the Shaan’xi History Museum, which is the best place to learn about history of this ancient city.

The Shaan’xi History Museum is located o ne kilometer northwest of big wild Goose Pagoda, and the building design is characteristic of the Tang Dynasty. As the traditional Chinese style, the Tang building is symmetric in design, with a main hall in the middle and side pavilions. It covers an area of 70,000 square meters, and houses 370,000 historical and cultural relics unearthed in Shaan’xi Province. This museum was consist of three parts: the permanent exhibition, temporary exhibitions and special exhibitions. Today, we will mainly visit the permanent exhibition. It contains 7 sections; now let’s go into the entry or preface Hall.

This hall acts as a “preface” to the museum. But you will see no characters or words but just three Massive pictures and a Giant Lion. This lion is regarded as the “Number one lion in Orient”. It has exquisite craftsmanship and an imposing appearance. Stone lions and other carving skills were introduced to China from Afghanistan, and this lion represents the local civilization and the culture exchange between China and other countries. Behind this lion, we can see three pictures: the one in the middle shows the famous Hukou waterfall of the Yellow River. In the side picture we can see the loess plateau in North Part of Shaan’xi province.

Since the giant lion and three pictures comprise this special preface hall, we call it “no words” preface hall.

Ok, now let’s go into the first gallery. Here we entered the prehistoric age which dates back 1.15million years ago to the 21st century BC.

Please look at these fossil skulls. This one was discovered in LanTian County in 1964, so men in this period were called to be “LanTian Ape-man”. They had a very low brain volume, about half the volume of people now, and it is the earliest homo-erectus found in Northern Asia. So this is of great significance to the study of evolution of human beings. Scholars believe it is a 30 year old female who lived 1.15 million years ago. In this showcase, we can see some pieces of stone implements and tools. They look very rough and crude. This period is Paleolithic age. And next, this is Yangshao culture about 7000BC to 5000BC. The Banpo ruin is a type of this culture in Shaan’xi Province. The women had dominant roles at that time. The stone tools in this period were much exquisite than before.

Ok, now le t’s have a look at the Zhou Dynasty which was a slave society. The Zhou Dynasty is the first Dynasty which set its capital in Shaan’xi Province. So we say history of Shaan’xi begins here. In Western Zhou Dynasty, the bronze casting technology was in the high period, so we usually call it “Bronze age”. Here we can see a group of bronze wares. This one is a wine vessel. The bottom is in shape of ox, the mouth in

shape of tongue, the handle is ox’s tail, and the lid is in the shape of a small tiger. This wine vessel vividly shows the high quality of bronze casting technology in the western Zhou Dynasty.

Next, we are going to the Qin period. The first Qin Emperor named “YingZheng”, he had annexed all the six independent states and establish the first centralized autocratic feudal empire in the long history of China. After the unification of the whole country, he standardized the coinage, weights and measures, legal codes, written scripts and so on. Also he took 37 years to build a magnificent mausoleum for himself.

Ok, now let go to the second gallery of the Han Dynasty. The Han Dynasty is the first peak of Chinese ancient feudal society. The western Han Dynasty influenced a lot to Chinese culture; today we have 56 nationalities, but about 95% of the population is the traditional Han nationality. This is a national treasure---a Jade seal. It was found nearly ChangLing Mausoleum, a shared tomb with Emperor Liu Bang and Empress Lv. Scholars regard this jade seal to be of Empress Lv by judging from the four characters.

Then we can see the Wei, the Jin, the South and North Dynasties. It was the most turbulent period in ancient times. Then there were wars of unification and national division.

Now, we are at the third gallery of the Sui and Tang Dynasties. The Sui and Tang Dynaties were the most prosperous period in ancient China. The

Sui Dynasty was a very short period but it made a strong base for the development of Tang Dynasty. This map shows us the capital Chang’an city during the Tang Dynasty. It covers an area of 83.1 square meters, and was divided into 3parts: palace city, royal city and the outer city. It was the biggest walled city in our country, and the population was more than 1 million in Tang dynasty.

Here we can see many beautiful handicrafts uncovered of this dynasty like the tri-color pottery, the porcelains, and the gold and silver ware. This one is a tri-color pottery. It was made mainly of three colors—yellow, brown and green. Every pottery was different, so it is very precious and quite beautiful.

Also gold and silver wares constitute a major part of the Tang Culture relics. Here I will show you another national treasure: the Lotus-flower design golden- bowl, which was discovered in October 1970 in Hejia Village. There are many designs cut on back of the lotus, such as dragon, phoenix, deer and so on. The base of bowl was welded on together. It shows the handicraft technology at that time.

Here is a group of mural paintings; they have vividly showed us the social and royal life in Tang dynasty. For exampl e, the painting “polo game”, showed us the popular game in Tang Dynasty; the painting “courtiers and foreign envoys” showed the active exchange of friendly and diplomatic visit between China and other countries.

After Song dynasty, Shaan’xi lost the capita l position, but it remained a place of military importance for the feudal dynasties. We have also discovered important relics of these dynasties.

Ok, these are the main information of the Shaan’xi History museum. I think maybe you were fascinated by the lo ng history of Shaan’xi Provice, so I will give you 1 hour to look around. We will leave at 2 o’clock and I hope you can have a good memory in your life of this trip! Thank you for listening~