英文导游词 长城

The Great wall

The Great Wall is the symbol of China’s ancient civilization and one of the famous, grand and splendid ancient construction wonders in the world. In 1987, it was listed as the world culture heritage by the UNESCO.

For many centuries, the Great Wall served as a military gigantic defensive project to keep out the invading troops of the northern nomadic tribes. The construction of the Great Wall first began in the seventh century BC. That period of time was called the Spring and Autumn Warring States Period. The first wall that appeared in China was built by Kingdom Qi and Chu. They built a high wall, which was called “square wall”surrounding their own territories that could make the invading enemy feel terrified by the high wall, so it was known as the Qi and Chu Great Wall. During the Warring States Period there were seven small kingdoms. In order to defend themselves against the neighboring states, all the kingdoms had high walls built around their own territories. The three states of Qin, Zhao, and Yan had the high walls built along their northern frontiers as defensive projects. There high walls were the primitive type of the present day Great Wall and laid the foundation of the present Great Wall.

In Chinese history, large-scale construction of the Great Wall was concentrated in three dynasties: Qin, Han, and Ming dynasties.

In 221 BC, after Qin Shihuang defeated the other six kingdoms and unified China, he gave himself the title: the First Emperor of Qin Dynasty, Emperor Qin Shihuang. Then he decided to link up all the separated high walls built by different kingdoms into the Great Wall. Especially the high walls in the northern part of China built by Qin, Zhao and Yan were linked up and extended into a Great Wall to ward off harassment by the Huns and for the use of further defensive project. It took 10 years to finish and involved on million people, about one fifth of China’s population at that time. The Qin Great Wall started from Lintao in Gansu province in the west and ended in Liaodong, Liaoning province in the east. It covered a distance of 7000 kilometers, so it was called the “Ten-thousand Li Great Wall”. Li is Chinese unit of distance, about 500 meters in one Li.

Large-scale construction of the Great Wall was continuously carried out during the reign of emperor Wu Di in the Han dynasty. Apart from maintaining and utilizing the Qin Great Wall, they built an Outer Great Wall about 500 kilometers to the north of the Qin Great Wall. They also had the Great Wall extended towards the west for another 3000 kilometers long up to the Lop Nur Lake in today’s Xinjia Uygur Autonomous Region. The Han Great Wall started from Liaodong in the east and ended at the foot of the Tianshan Mountain in Xinjiang, with a total, length of 10,000 kilometers. It was the longest Great Wall in the Chinese history.

The last large-scale construction project on the Great Wall was carried out in the Ming dynasty. In 1368, right after Zhu Yuanzhang established the Ming dynasty he started the reconstruction of the Great Wall in order to ward off the harassment of the Mongol

troops and the newly raised ethnic tribe of “Nu Zhen”in the northeast. The whole project took more than 200 years to complete. After that, the total length of the Ming Great Wall was more than 6000 kilometers from Yalu River in the east to Jiayuguan Pass in the west.

Badaling Great Wall is about 75 kilometers northwest of Beijing, and it’s the best-preserved part of the Great Wall. Bada in English means convenient transportation to all directions. From here people can go to all directions, hence the name of Badaling. Badaling Pass is very important in the defense of Beijing. And an old Chinese saying can be the best description,”if one man guards the pass, then thousand can’t get through”. The Great Wall at Badaling averages 7.8 meters high, 6.5 meters wide at its base, and 5.8 meters on the top, wide enough for five horses or ten soldiers waking abreast on the wall. Here the Badaling section is with single side battlements while the parapet is on the other side. The outer side of the wall is topped with crenellated battlements, which is about 2 meters high and with a square hole below for shooting arrows and also for keeping a watch over the enemy, while the parapet about 1 meter high is on the inner side.

At the commanding points, beacon towers were built on both sides of the wall. They were used for making signals of warning messages when enemy was sighted. Fires were set up on the top of the beacon towers at night, and smoke in the day time when there were invading enemies. And the number of the fire and smoke signals could signify the number of invading enemies.

And watch-towers were built on the Great Wall for watching over the invading enemy, and they are usually of two stories. It was also the place to store weapons and for the soldiers to live.

Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway

There is a railway running by the Badaling Express Road, known as the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway. It is famous in china because it is the first railway designed and constructed by Chinese themselves. The chief designer was Zhan Tianyou, the famous railway engineer in China. It was very difficult to build a railway among the mountains at Badaling. But Zhan Tianyou designed a zigzag-shaped railway, and used two engines on a train to solve the problem.

Juyongguan Pass is located 50 kilometers northwest of Beijing. It was also a place of great strategic importance in defending the capital of Beijing. There was a 20-kilometer-long valley called Guangou from south to north with 4 passes along the valley named “Nankou, Juyongguan, Shangguan, and Badaling”. Juyongguan Pass was built in a mountain gap between mountain peaks with only one road leading to the capital Beijing, which determined its military significance in ancient times through many dynasties and it has been a contested point place by military strategists through the ages.

Cloud Terrace

At the Juyongguan Pass, there is a famous terrace called Cloud Terrace. Cloud Terrace is an ancient marble platform, built during the Yuan dynasty, inside the Juyongguan Pass. There used to be three Tibetan style pagodas built on the terrace with a road passing through under it. Therefore it was also called “the crossing road pagoda”. Later after the three pagodas were unfortunately destroyed, a temple was built on the very site and it was called “Taian Temple”. However the temple was burnt down in the Qing dynasty, so only the terrace remained.

The carvings on the terrace are of high artistic level. In the middle edge of the archway, there is carving of “golden-winged-bird” with carvings of elephants, dragons, snakes and plants. Inside the arched passage there are carvings of Buddhist images on the wall. The images of the Four Heavenly Kings, the Buddha of Ten Directions and 1000 Buddha statues were carved on the wall. And Buddhist scriptures were also inscribed on the stone wall. They were inscribed in 6 languages: they are Sanskrit, Tibetan, Basiba, Xixia, Uygur and Han language. They are valuable to the study of Buddhism and ancient languages.