导游资格考试英语导游词：上海豫园

 Yuyuan Garden, located in the southern part of Shanghai, is a famous classic garden. The owner of the garden, Pan Yunduan, once a treasurer of Sichuan Province, had the garden built to please his parents in their old age. Hence the name of the garden "Yu", which means "pleasing one's parents".

　　The construction started in 1559 but went on and off for lack of money and did not come to completion till 28 years later. Unfortunately, Pan's father did not live to see the garden completed. What's more, the Pans went down the drain and his descendents were eager to sell the garden. Some businessmen soon bought it at a low price and incorporated it into the City God Temple to become its "West Garden", and later turned it into many trade guild offices. During the Opium War and the Taiping Revolution, foreign aggressors stationed their troops in the garden for more than once. So, the garden experienced repeated calamities in its history and lost much of its former grandeur. With the care of the people's government since 1949, Yuyuan Garden has gone through many renovations with the recent one carried out in 1987 to restore its eastern part. And since 1982, it has been under the special protection of the State Council.

　　Yuyuan Garden is a residence garden and one of the best in southern China. Although a small one, with an area of only 2 hectares, it strikes visitors as quite large because of its zigzag layout. With pavilions, halls, chambers, towers, ponds and rockeries, it presents more than 40 vista points. At least 10,000 people visit the garden every day. No wonder people say "Those who have come to Shanghai but missed Yuyuan Garden and the City God Temple Bazaar cannot claim that they have been to the city."

　　Before entering the garden, you will see a beautiful lotus pond. Across the pond is a bridge with a pavilion in the middle. The Mid-lake Pavilion was rebuilt in 1784 and converted into a teahouse 80 years ago. One of the best in Shanghai, the tea-house is a popular place for senior citizens, who enjoy chatting with each other over a cup of tea.

　　By the tea-house is a nine-zigzag bridge. The bridge is an indispensable part of a Chinese garden. It divides up the water space. A zigzag bridge slows down visitors' pace so that they may enjoy the scenery more leisurely and it also enables them to have a different view whenever they make a turn. But why nine zigzags? It is because "nine" is the biggest digit before ten and is, therefore, a lucky number.

　　This is the Three Corn-ear Hall, the largest and tallest in the garden. Called the "Hall of Happiness and Longevity" at fir5st, it was a place where the host entertained his guests and held banquets. There are three plaques in the hall. The top plaque is "Mountains and Forests in the City". It expresses Pan Yunduan's love for landscape. As Shanghai lies in a flat country with no mountains or forests around, he had the garden built with plenty of trees and plants and rockeries, hoping to bring natural beauty into it. The middle plaque is "Lin Tai Jin Shi". "Lin Tai" refers to the high terrace where the King of Zhou Dynasty offered sacrifices to his ancestors. The hall used to be a place for the gentry to explain and study the imperial edicts, so this plaque is used to suggest this function. The third plaque is "Three Corn-ear Hall". After the hall was turned into an office for the rice and bean businessmen, the name was changed into "Three Corn-ear Hall", reflecting the wishes of businessmen for a rich harvest. For the same reason, there are crops and fruits carved on the doors of the hall.

　　Yuyuan Garden boasts many lattice windows, which are found in the corridors and on the walls. They were covered by papers or foils of shells 400 years ago before glass was introduced as construction material. Built with a mixture of clay, lime and alum, each of them presents a different design. On the windows near the Three Corn-ear Hall are designs of pine, crane, and linzhi herb, which symbolize fortune, wealth, longevity and happiness.

　　Behind the Three Corn-ear Hall stand the Yanshan Hall (Hall for Viewing the Mountain) built in 1866. Opposite the hall is a beautiful rockery. Designed by Zhang Nanyang, a famous landscape architect, it is a rarity in southern China. While sipping tea with your friends in the hall, as the owner did, you can enjoy the rockery in front. As is described by the words on the plaque in the hall "High Mountain Ridges", the 12-merter-high rockery hill, dumped with 2,000 tons of rocks, is noted for its steep cliffs and hidden, winding paths. It is no exaggeration to say that the rockery is the crystallization of the wisdom and creativeness of the working people as to move the rocks from 200-kilometer-away Wukang in Zhejiang Province alone was no easy job at all. What is more amazing is that the rocks were stuck together by cooked glutinous rice mixed with alum and lime, for at that time cement was not available. Visitors feel as if they were on real mountain ridges once they ascend the rockery covered with trees and flowers and with streams flowing down the slopes into the pond below. The pavilion on the hilltop, the highest point in Shanghai 400 years ago, commanded an excellent view of the Huangpu River by sails and masts, hence the name "Pavilion for Viewing the River".

　　Above the Yangshan Hall is the "Rain Rolling Tower" with its named derived from the Tang Dynasty poet Wang Bo's poem. A verse of it reads "Dusk finds the pearl curtain rolling up the rain drifting from Western Hill." It is true that on the four sides of the hall there used to be pearl curtains, which gave off a kind of rain-like sound against the wind. While enjoying in the hall the excellent views of the rockery and pond full of lotus blossoms and goldfish, visitors seem to hear the sound of rain, thus feeling carried away by the poetic surrounding with mountains in the rain.

　　Behind the rockery is a wall topped with a dragon, called the reclining dragon. There are five dragon walls in the garden, dividing the garden into different scenic sections.

　　In Yuyuan Garden there are many brick carvings and clay sculptures, dating back to the Qing Dynasty, 300 years ago. Here is a clay sculpture called "Plum Wives and Crane Sons". The legend connected with the carving describes Lin Heqing who loved plum and crane as if they were his wife and son. Hence the title. Though a great poet, Lin fell out of favor. Disappointed, he lived in seclusion in a country co9ttage on the Gushan Hill in Hangzhou. During the twenty years of his stay there, he did nothing but plant plum trees and raise a crane. Every year, when the plum bloomed, he simply stayed at home and enjoyed the plum blossoms. That was why he was able to write a number of beautiful poems in praise of plum trees, which have ever since been greatly admired and recited by people. His crane Wuno was also a great help to him. When, occasionally, his friends called on him and found him out, his crane would fly around. Seeing the crane, he got the message that would return home immediately to receive his guests. The death of its master mad the crane so sad that it stood in front of his tomb day after day, crying till it died. The crane was buried not far from Lin's tomb. By the side of Wono's tomb, a pavilion, the Crane Pavilion, was built in memory of this faithful and loyal wading bird. Perhaps, Mr. Pan Yunduan used this clay sculpture to express his idea that he and Mr. Lin Heqing had the same fate.

　　The brick carving on the right describes a warrior who came out first in the military examinations at three levels.

　　At the entrance to the corridor are two iron lions. Cast in the Yuan Dynasty, they are nearly 700 years old. Iron lions are very rare in China as most of them are made of wood or stone. Regarded as the king of animals, lion signified "dignity" and "majesty". Such lions, usually put in front of palaces or courts, were meant to show the owner's prowess. It is very easy to tell the sex of the two lions. The rule is that the female one is always put to the left while the male one stands on the right. What is more, the female lion fondles a baby, while the male plays with a ball. There is an old saying in China, "The lion's cub has to learn how to rough it." The mother lion makes it a point to give the baby a hard time so that it will be trained into a brave animal. From the way the lion keeps it under her paws, we know that it is the female.

　　These two lions were originally found in Anyang County, Henan Province. They were shipped to Tokyo and did not return to China until the victory of the Anti-Japanese War in 1945. However, they were put among scraps under the KMT's regime, which did not care about the historical relics. They were recovered after 1949 and moved to this garden.

　　We are now walking through the corridor. A corridor provides the link between buildings in ancient gardens. Appearing in different forms---straight or zigzag, high or low, hill-climbing or water-hugging, a corridor is a visitor's guideline. It divides up the space and combines the views. With every step the visitor takes following a corridor, the view changes. A technique in building court gardens is to create paralleled views. That is to say the pavilions, halls, chambers, and towers should match each other. Here is a case in point. Standing on the Rain Rolling Tower and looking on the right, visitors seems to see a landscape painting dominated by the rockery resembling a real mountain. When visitors on top of the rockery cast their eyes to their left, they will be struck by a genre painting centered on towers and chambers with pavilions, bridges, and ponds tucked away as the background.