杭州西湖英语导游词West Lake.docx

杭州西湖英语导游词West Lake The West Lake Ladies and Gentlemen, Good morning! I’m a tour guide .My name is ...I’m very glad to accompany you all to visit the West Lake.I’ll try my best to make your tour an enjoyable one.I expect your support and cooperation.If you have any questions or demands, please let me know and I’ll do my utmost to accommodate your needs.Thank you! As a popular saying goes,“there is a paradise above, so are there Hangzhou and Suzhou below”.In the 13th century, Marco Polo came to Hangzhou and declared it to be “the finest, most splendid city in the world...where so many pleasure may be found that one fancies oneself to be in the paradise.” The annual visitor to this paradise amount to 20 millions, ten times as many as the local residents.But you will not feel crowded here because the lake is large, walkways are wide, the causeways are long. The focus of the exceptionally beautiful city is West Lake(Xi Hu).West Lake covers an area of 6.38 square kilometers.The average depth is 2.27meters with deepest being 5 meters.It is 3 miles acro and 9 miles around, with islets and temples, pavilions and gardens, causeways and arched bridges, flowers and trees.Three sides of the lake are surrounded by verdant（翠绿的） mountains and one side the prosperous（旺盛的） city.After a large scale reconstruction（重建）, the current West Lake has recovered the panorama（全景） over 300 years before when it reached the most prosperous period in history。

All these have made Hangzhou’s West Lake“a landscape composed by a painter.” West Lake or Xī Hú is a famous fresh water lake located in the historic area of Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province in eastern China.It evolved from a shallow bay through which the Qiantang River flowed into the East China Sea.In the ancient times it was called Wulin Waters, Golden Buffalo Lake, Qiantang Lake and Xizi Lake. The name of West Lake was fixed as early as the Tang Dynasty (618-907).In the Song Dynasty (960-1279), the Chinese renowned(闻名)poet Su Dongpo wrote a poem to praise the West Lake and compared it to Xizi, a Chinese legendary beauty.Since then, the West Lake has another elegant name Xizi Lake.And as it lies in the west of Hangzhou, it is usually called the West Lake.The West Lake is also famous for its historical flavor with numerous celebrities.National heroes Yue Fei, Yu Qian, Zhang Ruoshui and Qiu Jin were all burined along the West Lake, leaving their illustrious names and noble spirits in the green hills and blue waters.Moreover, many ancient poets and artists, such as Bai Juyi, Su Dongpo, Liu Yong and Pan Tianshou, had also left countle famous writings. History One of the major attractions in West Lake: Three Pools Mirroring the Moon islandIn middle of the Tang Dynasty Zhenyuan era (785-804), poet Bai Juyi came to Hangzhou as governor.Already an accomplished poet, his deeds at Hangzhou made him a great governor.He realised that the farmland nearby depended on the water of West Lake, but due to negligence of former governors, the old dyke had collapsed, the water level of West Lake dried out, and the local farmers suffered severe drought.He ordered the construction of a stronger and taller dyke, with a dam to control the flow of water, and thus solved the drought problem.The livelihood of local people of Hangzhou improved over the following years.Now that Bai Juji had more leisure time to enjoy the beauty of West Lake, he visited West Lake almost every day.He ordered the construction of a causeway connecting the Broken Bridge with the Solitary Hill, to facilitate walking on foot, instead of depending on boat.Then he planted peach trees and willows trees along the dyke, making it a beautiful landmark of West Lake.This causeway was later named Bai Di Causeway in Bai Juyi\'s honour. Over two hundred years later, in the beginning of Song Dynasty\'s Yuanyou era (1086-1094), another great poet, Su Shi (Su Dongpo), came to Hangzhou as governor.By that time, the farmers suffered drought again, due to overgrowth of the weeds at the bottom of the lake clogging the irrigation ducts.He ordered dredging of the lake and piled up all the mud into another causeway, in the style of Bai Causeway, but much wider and nearly three times as long, he also planted willow trees along its banks.This causeway was later named after him as the Su Causeway.There are six bridges along the 2.6 km Su Causeway.\"Spring Dawn on the Su Causeway\" is one of The attractions oat the West Lake. The Bai Causeway was named after Bai Juyi, a famous poet in Tang Dynasty , who fell into disfavor in the capital and was sent here to serve as a governor in 822~824A.D.He saw to the construction of the causeway ,which was composed of the silt dredged from the lake.At the north end of the causeway is the well-known Broken Bridge (断桥），so named because the bridge looks artistically broken in distance when winter snows first melt on the bridge.According to The Tale of Whit。