北京故宫英文导游词
故宫作为一个名胜，每天都有不少的中外友人来I参观，下面就来看看北京故宫英文导游词范文!
北京故宫英文导游词【1】
Entering the Meridian Gate, there are five marble bridges on the Inner Golden Water River, shaped like a bow.
The five marble bridges just look like five arrows reporting symbolically to heaven.
The five bridges were supposed to represent the five virtues preached by Confucius-benevolence, righteousness, rite, intelligence and fidelity.
Across the Inner Golden Water Bridge, we get to the Gate of Supreme Harmony.
During the Ming and early Qing dynasties, here was the place where the emperor gave his audience, accepted documents from his ministers and made decisions here.
There are two bronze lions guarding in front of the Gate of Supreme Harmony.
The male lion was usually put on the left, playing with an embroidered design ball, which is said to show the emperor's supreme power.
The other one on the right is the female lion, playing with a lion cub with its left paw symbolizing prosperity of the royal family's offsprings.
Across the Gate of Supreme Harmony , we come to the Hall of Supreme Harmony.
Here the emperor held grand ceremonies such as the emperor's enthronement ceremony, the wedding ceremony, dispatched generals to the battles, and the emperor received the successful candidates of the imperial examination etc.
Also, the emperor held grand feasts each year on New Year's Day, Winter solstice and his own birthday.
The Hall of Supreme Harmony is 35.
5 meters high with double layered roof that represents the highest construction rank of all.
Now, let's ascend the stairs and move on to look at articles in display on two sides of the hall.
On the top layer of the terrace stands a sundial on the east an imperial grain measure on the west.
The sundial is an ancient time measure or a time-measuring apparatus used in the old days.
The sundial tells the time by seeing the shadow of the metal pin on the sundial, which has an inclination angle of 50 degrees with the graduation on it.
The grain measure was used as the national standard measure in agriculture in the old days.
Both the grain measure and the sundial were symbols of the emperor's justice and rectitude.
There are two pairs of incense burners in the shape of bronze dragon-headed tortoises and bronze cranes placed on each side.
They are both symbols of longevity.
When you look up the building in the Forbidden City, you can see mythical animal statues on the eaves of each building.
Originally, there used to be big wooden nails on the roof to prevent the tiles from sliding down.
Later they were replaced by glazed tiles, which were shaped into mythical animal statues for better beautification.
They are symbols of auspiciousness and peace, and people believed that they are capable of subduing fire and warding off evil spirits.
Inside of the Hall of Supreme Harmony, you can see the gilded caisson ceiling high above the throne with a magnificent sculpture of a curling dragon playing with a huge pear was called “Xuanyuan Jing”， representing orthodox succession.
This hall is supported by 72 giant columns inside.
In the old days, the traditional way of the Chinese to calculate a “room” is that: a square enclosed by four pillars was treated as one “room”， so the hall can be said to have 55 “rooms” in total.
The six columns inside are gilded and painted with coiled dragon amidst clouds, and the rest are painted red.
The emperor's throne is placed on the dais in the center, and carved in cloud and dragon patterns and gilded.
On both sides of the throne are a pair of elephant-shaped incense burners symbolize universal peace and two incense burners shaped as a mythical animal 9,000 kilometers per day and speaking all the languages of nearby kingdoms.
Around the throne stand a pair of bronze cranes and in front of the dais is four cloisonné incense burners.
The floor on the ground is paved with “Gold Bricks”， specially made in Suzhou.
The Hall of Middle Harmony is a square-shaped hall with a single pyramidic roof standing behind the Hall of Supreme Harmony.
This was the place where the emperor would take a short rest before he went to the Hall of Supreme Harmony for grand ceremonies.
Every year before the emperor went to the Altars and Temples, the emperor would receive and read the sacrificial address here.
Before the emperor went to the Altar of Agriculture for offering the sacrifice, the seeds intended for spring sowing and the ploughs were examined here, just to show the concern of the emperor for agriculture.
According to the rule, the imperial genealogy should be revised every ten years.
The ceremony of presenting the genealogy to the emperor for revision and approval would also be held here.
Now, we come to the Hall of Preserving Harmony, the last of the three front halls.
In the Ming and Qing dynasties, on each New Year's Eve and the 15th day of the lunar moth, banquets would be held to entertain the civil and military officials and the princes and envoys of the Mongolian nobles and other nationalities.
To celebrate the princess's marriage, the emperor would incite the bridegroom and his father as well as their relatives who served for the imperial government to a banquet.
The Imperial Palace Exam was held here once every three years in the Qing dynasty.
Just behind the Hall of Preserving Harmony, there is a big Marble Rampcarved with mountain cliffs, sea waves, clouds and nine dragons.
It is 16.
57 meters long, 3.
07 meters wide and 1.
7 meters thick, and weighs about 250 tons.
北京故宫英文导游词【2】
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I am pleased to serve as your guide today.
This is the palace museum; also know as the Purple Forbidden City.
It is the largest and most well reserved imperial residence in China today.
Under Ming Emperor Yongle, construction began in 1406.
It took 14years to build the Forbidden City.
The first ruler who actually lived here was Ming Emperor Zhudi.
For five centuries thereafter, it continued to be the residence of23 successive emperors until 1911 when Qing Emperor Puyi was forced to abdicate the throne .
In 1987, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization recognized the Forbidden City was a world cultural legacy.
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.
The Forbidden City is rectangular in shape.
It is 960 meters long from north to south and 750 meter wide from east west.
It has 9,900 rooms under a total roof area 150,000 square meters .
A 52-meter-wide-moat encircles a 9.
9-meter—high wall which encloses the complex.
Octagon —shaped turrets rest on the four corners of the wall.
There are four entrances into the city: the Meridian Gate to the south, the Shenwu Gate(Gate of Military Prowess) to the north, and the Xihua Gate(Gate of military Prowess) to the north, and the Xihua Gate(Western Flowery Gate )to the west ,the Donghua (Eastern Flowery Gate) to the east.
北京故宫英文导游词【3】
Ladies and gentlemen:
The Palace Museum is located in the center of Beijing.
It is also known as the Forbidden City in the old days.
Actually it was the imperial palace for the emperors and served as both living quarters and the venue of the state administration in the Ming and Qing dynasties.
Its name, on the one hand, comes from ancient Chinese astronomers' belief that God's abode or the Purple Palace, the pivot of the celestial world, is located in the Pole Star, at the center of the heavens .
Hence, as the Son of God, the emperor should live in the Purple City.
On the other hand, except for palace maids, eunuchs and guards, ordinary the Forbidden City and the Purple City.
It took 14 years to complete the magnificent palace.
Construction began in 1406 and finished in 1420.
The following year, in 1421 the capital of the Ming Dynasty was moved from Nanjing to Beijing.
Starting from the third emperor of the Ming Dynasty Zhu Di to the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty Pu Yi, altogether 24 emperors lived here for a total of 491 years.
14 of then were Ming emperors and 10 were Qing emperors.
The Forbidden City covers an area of 72 hectares with a total floor space of about 163,000 square meters.
It is rectangular in shape, 960 meters long from north to south and 750 meters wide from east to west with a10-meter high city wall surrounded and encircled by a 52 meter-wide moat.
At each corner of the surrounding wall, there is a magnificent watchtower which was heavily guarded in the old days.
The Forbidden City now consists of more than 90 palaces and courtyards, 980 buildings with rooms of 8,704.
Most of the structures in the Forbidden City were made of wood with white marble, stone or brick foundations.
The building materials were from parts of our country.
The timber came from Sichuan, Guizhou, Guandxi, Hunan and Yunnan provinces in southwest China.
But in the Qing Dynasty, the timbers were transported from northeast China.
Other construction materials, including brick, stone and lime, were used by both Dynasties.
The golden bricks that paved the halls were manufactured in Suzhou, refined bricks used to build the foundation of halls were made in Linqing, and lime came from Yizhou.
White marble was provided regularly by Fangshan County and glazed tiles by Sanjiadian.
The Forbidden City can be divided into two parts: the Outer Court and the Inner Palace.
The Outer Court consists of three main buildings where the emperors attended the grand of rear three main buildings and the six eastern palaces and six western palaces where the emperor used to handle daily affairs and the living quarters for the emperor, empress and imperial concubines to live in.
The Forbidden City is the best-preserved imperial palace in China and the largest ancient palatial structure in the world.
In 1987 it was listed as the world cultural heritage by UNESCO.
The Meridian Gate is the main entrance to the Forbidden City.
It is called Meridian Gate because the emperor believed that the meridian line went right through the Forbidden City and his imperial residence was the center of the whole universe.
It is 35.6meters high with five towers on the top, so it is also nicknames as the “Five-Phoenix Tower.”
The Meridian Gate was the place to announce the new lunar year calendar on the first day of 10th lunar month every year.
Lanterns would also be hung up on the Meridian Gate on the 15th day of the first lunar month during the Ming Dynasty, when all the officials would have a feast in the Forbidden City and ordinary citizens, when all the officials would have a fast in the Forbidden City and ordinary citizens would go to the Meridian Gate to look at the beautiful lanterns.
When a general returned from battle, the ceremony of “Accepting Captives of War” was held here.
The “Court Beating” also took place here.
The gate has five openings.
The central passageway was for the emperor exclusively.
But apart from the emperor, the empress could use the central passageway on the day of the imperial wedding ceremony.
However, after the palace examination, the first top three outstanding scholars were allowed to go through the central gate.
The high-ranking civil and military officials went in through the side gate on the east.
The two smaller ones on both sides at the corner were for the lowranking officials.
During the Palace Examination all the candidates went in from these two side-gates according to the odd number or even number.