苏州园林虎丘的英语导游词

The Tiger Hill is said to be the most attractive spot of historical interest in Suzhou.

Long time ago, it was a vast sea in this area. This hill used to be one of the small islands. Later, due to the movement of the earth, the sea turned into the mulberry fields. Then the Yangtze River Delta came into being, This Island became the hill on the plain. So it was called the hill of Emergence from the Sea, with 34 meters above sea level, and some 20 hectares in area.

In 514 BC, He Lu, king of State Wu, founded the city of Suzhou and made it his capital. This hill was his summer resort.

In 496 BC the king took the troop to the State Yue, the battle happened in Jiaxing area. The king was seriously injured in the battle and died on his way back home. Then his son named FuChai ordered 100,000 labors to build tomb for his father. Three days after the king’s burial, a tiger was said to appear on the top of the hill to guard his tomb. So the hill’s name was changed into the Tiger Hill.

Then the local people said the shape of the hill looks like a crouching tiger. The building ahead is its head. The gate is regarded as its mouth, two round windows as its eyes and flying eaves as its ears. The hill path is its back, the pagoda atop is its tail.

In the hill, we can see many interesting rocks, behind them, are stories and legends of the king. The most famous highlight is the pagoda, it is known as the leaning pagoda of Pisa in China.

The famous poet Su Dongpo in the Song Dynasty once rema rked, “To visit Suzhou without seeing the Tiger Hill would be a thing for regret.”

Here is the Bridge of Emergence from the Sea. In 1956, when the hill moat was dredged the bridge was built, and it was built of granite. We can see 12 lovely stone carved lions on the railings of the bridge, they are vivid and lifelike. The lion sculpture is a symbol of auspicious in China.

The second entrance hall is also called the Broken Beam Hall. In the hill there are only two things which are original, one is this hall, and the other is the pagoda. This hall was built in the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) some 700 years ago. Since the main beam is made of two logs looking like a broken beam, so that’s why we call it the Broken Beam Hall.

Under the roof around the building are the bracket sets, they bear the weight of the roof and scatter the weight on to the ground through those columns, so we said the walls of the building don’t bear weight, if you move them away, the building will not fall down. All the join ts of the wooden structure were connected with the traditional tenons and mortises, with out a single nail. That’s why the building has been kept so long. It is regarded as a masterpiece of classical architecture.

The wooden tablet facing the south has with four big Chinese characters on it, which means “The well-known place of interest in Suzhou”. The four characters on the other one facing the north mean “containing the real and hiding the ancient.” That is, the real hill, real water, real persons and real deeds, and the ancient pagoda, ancient temple, ancient spring, and ancient tomb in the hill.

The famous Sword -Testing Rock is a big oval rock. It is cleft in the middle as though by a sword. Legend has it that a couple, Ganjiang and Moye, were skillful sword-smiths. They were forced by the king to forge the sharp swords for him. The couple had quiet a few experiments and