都江堰景区导游词英文版

1、the explanation of dujiangyan scenic areahello friends, welcome to dujiangyan. i am so happy to meet you all here and be your tour guide. you can call me *.as you may know, dujiangyan irrigation system and mt qingcheng were listed on the world cultural heritage by unesco on nov. 29th, 2000. maybe yo

2、uve noticed there is a big stone with 7 chinese characters on it“世界遗产都江堰”, which means “the world heritage dujiangyan”.the entire scenic area consists of 3 parts: lidui park, where we are now; dujiangyan irrigation project which was built about 2000 years ago and is composed of three parts: the fish

3、-mouth water diversion embankment, the feishayan spillway, and the bottleneck water inlet; and erwang temple, which was built to commemorate li bing and his son, who led the people to build dujiangyan irrigation project. well, well probably take 1hour and a half to 2 hours for the whole visit. the p

4、ark where we are now is named lidui park. during chinas song and qing dynasties, it was a private garden owned by the rich and powerful families. so the ordinary people were forbidden to get in. and it was opened to the public by the gov. since 1931. thats why now we can see here are so many bonsais

5、 (or miniascape) on each side of the road. these bonsais are the id cards of gardens with sichuan style. you can see those trees, little but with very beautiful figure and shape. many of them, esp. the gingko tree, the crape myrtle, and nanmu, are over 200 years old. as dujiangyan is situated in the

6、 interior subtropical zone, the average temperature here is about 15.2 degrees centigrade annually. so its suitable for most of the plants to grow here. on the left side of the road, there are some trees in brown which seem without bark. those are the crape myrtle trees. in daoism, it is believed cr

7、ape myrtle can bring people good luck. so its not surprising to see such trees in many daoist temples. and there are indeed two very old crape myrtle in the temple we will soon visit. ok, now lets move on to the spring before us. you must noticed the four iron pillars in the middle of the spring. bu

8、t what are they used for? and why are there four of them? in fact, they are used as markers or signs for workers to clean and dig the riverbed. so when workers see them in the riverbed, they are supposed to stop digging the silt out further. as you may know, dujiangyan irrigation system is composed

9、of many manmade watercourses. these watercourses need to be cleaned and dug every year so as to keep it work smoothly. but the depth of them is a kind of question, like to be or not to be, for it cannot be too deep, nor too shallow. if the riverbed is too deep, its volume will be increased and there

10、 would be too much water flowing into chengdu plain, which might cause flood; yet if too shallow, there would not be enough water for chengdu plain since its a large area of fields. through a long time of observation and tests, the engineer li bing and his fellows laid some stone carved horses on th

11、e riverbed as markers for digging the riverbed. but those stone stuff were very easily to be rushed away and workers could not find them the next year. so later they were changed into the iron pillars in ming dynasty. since iron can also be eroded by water and sand, people later put the other three

12、into the river in qing dynasty, 1927 and 1994 respectively. around the spring lies a circle of bamboo cages filled with pebbles and some wooden tripods. they are used as tools to block the water of minjiang river and to build the dikes of the fish-mouth water diversion embankment and the feishayan s

13、pillway, even until 1974. but if bamboo is put into water for a long time, it can decay very easily. so workers needed to change them totally every year, and it cost a lot of man power and money. in order to save money and labor, the gov. changed those bamboo cages into concrete in 1974. here id lik

14、e to let you clear that dujiangyan irrigation system is the only irrigation system without dam but still working today worldwide since 2266 years ago. later, you will find there is no dam here. ok, now lets move on. the road we are walking on now is named yangong road. the two chinese characters “ya

15、ngong” means the weir workers or workers of the irrigation system. it was built in 2000 to commemorate those who had made great contribution to the preservation and protection of dujiangyan irrigation system. on each side of the road stand six bronze statues. they are all the top officials of sichua

16、n province in ancient times, and all of them had made great contribution to the preservation work of this irrigation system. without these gov. officials and many other anonymous weir workers, the irrigation system could have been abandoned thousand years ago, and you would not be here today to visi

17、t such a world heritage called dujiangyan irrigation system. the 1st statue on the left is ding baozhen. all of you must be familiar with a dish called gongbao chicken. this dish is closely related to this person. he lived in late qing dynasty and was a very honest and uncorrupted official. when he

18、was in office, he spent great efforts and money to restore the old irrigation system. unfortunately, he met a very strong flood and all his restoration work was destroyed. so he was degraded again and again later. when he died his family didnt even have the money to buy him a coffin. in order to com

19、memorate this tough and honest man, people later cooked this dish and used the name of his gov. post to name it. here gongbao is the teacher of the crown prince. between each two statues stands a very beautiful but old bonsai. those are gingko trees. many of them are about 1000 years old. the combin

20、ation of these old gingko trees and the statues of ancient figures is trying to show that human being and nature can be rolled into one and we should learn from nature as much as we can. dujiangyan city is not only famous for its irrigation system but also famous for its daoist culture. as you may k

21、now, mt. qingchen is a famous daoist mountain and actually its one of the origin of the religion daoism. later we will see there have been a lot daoist spirit that is used in the construction of this irrigation system. on the right, there are four very tall and straight trees. these trees are nanmu.

22、 they are good materials for construction. in ancient times they are usually used as the pillars of great palaces. and still many emperors preferred to use them to make their coffins. later we will climb the little hill in our front. the hill is named the isolated hill, but why it is isolated ill ex

23、plain it to you when we get to the real site, for its name is closely related to the construction of the irrigation system. on the top of the hill stands a typical daoist temple called fulong temple. fulong means to surrender the evil dragon in chinese. according to a legend, there was an evil drago

24、n in minjiang river about 2000 years ago when the engineer li bing came to be the magistrate of the then shu prefecture. the dragon always spoiled water to flood the lower reaches and destroy peoples housing and fields. so people were suffering. later li bing asked his second son erlang to come here

25、 and defeat that evil dragon and surrender it under this little hill and let serve chengdu plain forever. in the end, people built this temple in order to commemorate erlangs brave action and his contribution to the people. in the middle of the front hall stands a stone statue of li bing. it was une

26、arthed in 1974 when workers dig the riverbed. but when we found it, it faced the riverbed, so the characters carved in its front was not eroded by water and sand. now we can see there are three lines. in the middle it reads “故蜀郡李府君讳冰”, which means its a statue of the magistrate li bing. so here we g

27、ot its identification. on the right it reads “建宁元年闰月戊申二十五日都水撰”, which means this statue was carved in chinas east han dynasty, about 1800 year ago by the department in charge of water control in dujiangyan irrigation system. on the left it reads “尹龙长陈壹造三神，石人珍水万世焉”, which means the official in charge

28、 of water control had made three statues in total and put them on the riverbed to commemorate li bing and pray for the river god. this is the oldest evidence we found about the commemoration of the engineer li bing. besides, it also helped us to end a dispute to some extent, for before we found it p

29、eople always disputed about whether it was li bing who led the people to build the irrigation system. but its discovery provided us a more persuasive evidence that it was li bing who led people build the irrigation system. on the left side of the hall stands another big statue. this statue was unear

30、thed in 1975. but when we found it, its head had been lost. so its identification became a problem. according to the tool in his hands, a shovel, some experts guess it could be a weir worker. yet some others disagree because of the clothes he wears. because in east han dynasty only the rich and powe

31、rful families had the right to wear such extravagant clothes. so the ordinary workers might not have the access and this person must be very close to li bing in his social status. then they guess he would be li bings son erlang. but who he exactly is nobody knows and we still dont know where lies th

32、e third statue. but about the question of li bings son, we will talk about it when we reach erwang temple. in front of us is a sand table of dujiangyan irrigation system. from here we can get an entire view of the irrigation system. the red building there is where we are now. it is composed of three

33、 parts. the fish-mouth water diversion embankment at the beginning of this fish-like island, from here minjiang river is divided into two branches: the outer river on the left, which is the natural watercourse of minjiang river and is now used to discharge the flood and drain the excessive sand and

34、stone; the inner river on the right, which is mainly used for irrigation. the second part is feishayan spillway which is used for flood discharge and sand drainage. and the bottleneck water inlet which is the only entrance for the water of minjiang river to reach chengdu plain. minjiang river flow d

35、own from the snow caped mountain in this direction. before the construction of this irrigation system, minjiang river did not flow into chengdu plain directly, yet it flew toward the giant buddha in leshan and later converged into yangtze river at yibin, a city in southern sichuan province. but at t

36、hat time chengdu plain needs a lot of water for irrigation. in order to solve this problem, the engineer li bing had to lead people excavated a manmade watercourse so as to flow the water of minjiang river into chengdu plain. they started from here and they piled the sand and stone produced from the

37、 excavation along the bank and formed this fish-like island finally. but at this end they used the bamboo cages to piled up a triangle dike or weir, which looks like the mouth of this big fish. hence the name of the fish-mouth. then the water from the upper reaches can flow into chengdu plain. but i

38、n flood season the water come into the inner river could be too much for chengdu plain. in order to help chengdu plain avoid flood, he led people to build the second projectfeishayan spillway, at the end of this fish-like island. this spillway is about 200 meters long and 100 meters wide. its a join

39、t connection between the inner river and the outer river. but its only 2.15 meters high. so once the water level of the flood is higher than 2.15 meters, it can be flown over through here naturally. and since its only about 100 meters long, the excessive water can be discharged in a shortest time. v

40、ery clever, isnt it? at last, the left water will flow toward the bottleneck water inlet and get into chengdu plain at last. you must be wondering why we call it the bottleneck. according to topography, chengdu plain looks like a triangle bottle. since here is the only entrance for the water of minj

41、iang river to reach chengdu plain, so here must be its bottleneck. later we will first visit the bottleneck, and then move on to the feishayan spillway and the fish-mouth at last. ok, lets move on. this is a tablet of the isolated hill. it was carved in qing dynasty, but was broken into pieces later

42、. in order to protect from breaking again, we put it here. the same tablet we saw before the front hall is only a copy of it. the river below is the inner river. it flows into chengdu plain. nowadays, more than 90% of its water for irrigation and most of its water for industry and peoples daily life

43、 are satisfied by the water from here. now on the left bank lies the feishayan spillway, and under our feet the bottleneck water inlet. this watercourse is the inner river. the engineer li bing led people to excavate the watercourse of the inner river here 2266 years ago. but they met a very difficu

44、lt question when they arrived here, because in front of them lies a big mountainmt. yulei. the mountain mainly composed of gravel, a very hard sedimentary rock. and the hill under our foot was originally a part of mt. yulei in the opposite side of the river. at that time there is no explosives, no m

45、odern machines and even iron tools had just been invented not for a long time. so how could they complete this project here? they first cut down the trees on the mountain, put the trees beside the cliff of the mountain, used fire to burn them, and poured the cold water of minjiang river onto the roc

46、k when it got very hot. then we can imagine what would happen. yes, the rock would split immediately and became easy to break. they used this method again and again and spent 8 years to complete this project. now we can see the water of minjiang river flow into chengdu plain, but at the same time th

47、e little hill under our feet is separated from its mother mountain on the other side. so it becomes isolated. thats the name of the isolated hill. this opening is 20 meters wide in average. it can not only pass water into chengdu plain, but it can also control the amount the water that will pass it.

48、 as we can see, it is much narrower than the inner river. so in the flood season, no matter how much water comes down, the bottleneck is only 20 meters wide and can only allow enough water pass through it and block the excessive water outside of it. when water is blocked outside of it, the water lev

49、el here will be raised naturally. in this way, it can help feishayan spillway discharge the flood. now lets talk about feishayan spillway. ive mentioned the spillway can flow over the excessive water when the water level here is higher than 2.15 meters. but those water drained is only the surface wa

50、ter. in chinese the character “fei” means to fly or to cast off; “sha” means sand and stone. so its second function is closely related to sand drainage. but as we know, sand and stone will not float to the surface water by itself. instead, they are usually at the bottom. so if we want to drain them

51、from the spillway, we must make use of other natural forces. as you may noticed, on the right bank is the mountain, below our feet the cliff of the isolated hill and on the left the dike of the river. so when water reaches here it will be blocked on three sides and we actually get a u-shaped groove

52、here at last. at the same time, the water does not flow into the bottleneck directly, but itll hit the cliff under our feet first. when it hit the cliff, some water will be hit back and is now running back along the left bank. do you see it? its speed can be reduced too, which is easy for the sand a

53、nd stone to sink. then the engineer came up with a very good idea: he asked workers digging a very deep pool down here, about 20 meters deep. when the sand and stone sink, it will sink to the bottom of the pool. but with this u-shaped groove, the water will be whirled here at the same time. when the

54、 water is whirled, we can imagine things at the bottom could be stirred up, because the whirlpool here can produce a very strong centrifugal force. it looks like we are making a cup of coffee: we use the spoon to stir the water, and then the coffee at the bottom will be lifted up. so when those sand

55、 and stone are lifted to the surface water, it can go back with the water that is hit back. and once the water level there is higher than 2.15 meters, they will be flown over. now we can see there is a pile of pebbles on the spillway. those were scattered on the spillway by the overflow of water and

56、 collected by workers later. here actually make use of a very interesting daoist theorytaichi, by which the soft power can turn and shift the strong force from the other side and make use of it finally. the u-shaped groove here just looks like a man who extends his hands and play taichi boxing. he p

57、ull and push his hands in the water, and then the water will be whirled very easily. but at the same time the horrible force of the flood is reduced and turned into the centrifugal force which we use for drain the excessive sand and stone. so this is the wisdom of the ancient people. in such an unde

58、veloped society, their idea had become quite developed; they tried to make the best of nature not against and they did make it. ok, lets get down the little hill and move on to feishayan spillway. here in front of us is an ancient wood. its called ebony. did you heard of it. ebony is wood that lived

59、 in 2000-10000 years ago. but it was pushed into the river and buried under the river bed by mudslide, flood or other natural disasters. through a long history, it was airproofed, under great pressure and with the effort of those microorganisms, and was carbonized into a half-fossil, half wood stuff finally. ebony is considered more precious than gold and silver in china, not only because its rare, but also because it has many special usages. in ancient times, people liked to put ebony carved god statue at h