raz分级阅读 中国故事

中国寓言故事英文版中国寓言故事英文版1. The Foolish Old Man and the Sons (愚笨的老人和他的儿子们)In ancient China, there was an old man who wanted to teach his sons the value of unity. He gathered a bundle of sticks and asked each of his sons to try and break it. Despite their efforts, none of them succeeded. Then, the old man untied the bundle and gave each stick to his sons. As they tried to break the sticks individually, they found it effortless. The old man explained that unity was their strength, just like the bundle of sticks.2. The Clever Monkey (聪明的猴子)Once upon a time, in a forest, there was a clever monkey who loved playing tricks. One day, he found a beehive filled with delicious honey. Instead of eating it all, the monkey decided to trick the other animals. He called them together and said that a treasure was buried beneath the beehive. As the animals dug furiously, the monkey enjoyed the honey all by himself. The animals learned the importance of caution and not being easily deceived.3. The Tortoise and the Hare (乌龟和兔子)In a forest, a tortoise and a hare lived. The hare was always boasting about his speed, so the tortoise challenged him to a race. The harelaughed, thinking victory was certain. He took a nap during the race, assuming he would easily win. Meanwhile, the tortoise continued at a slow and steady pace. When the hare woke up, he found the tortoise had already crossed the finish line. The tortoise taught the hare that perseverance and consistency are essential to success.4. The Greedy Farmer (贪婪的农夫)Once, there was a farmer who had a magic goose that laid golden eggs. The farmer became greedy and wanted to get all the golden eggs quickly. He thought there must be a lot of gold inside the goose. So he killed the goose, only to find that it was just like any other ordinary goose. The farmer lost the goose that laid the golden eggs, teaching him the lesson that greed leads to loss.5. The Fox and the Grapes (狐狸和葡萄)A hungry fox spotted a ripe bunch of grapes hanging from a vine. The fox tried to reach them but couldn't. He kept trying until tired. Finally, he gave up and said, "Those grapes must be sour and not worth eating." The fox made himself believe that the grapes were undesirable rather than admitting his failure. The moral of the story is that it is easy to despise what we cannot have.6. The Ant and the Grasshopper (蚂蚁和蝗虫)In a field, an ant worked hard to collect food for the winter. Meanwhile, a grasshopper played all day long. When winter arrived,the ant had enough food to survive, while the grasshopper had none. The ant learned the importance of hard work and planning for the future, while the grasshopper learned the consequences of laziness.7. The Fisherman and the Golden Fish (渔夫和金鱼)A fisherman caught a golden fish that turned out to be a magical creature. The fish pleaded to be released in return for granting any wish. The fisherman made extravagant wishes but was never satisfied. Finally, he realized his greed and asked the fish to return him to his humble life as a fisherman. The story teaches that contentment brings true happiness.8. The Dove and the Ant (鸽子和蚂蚁)A dove, flying over a river, noticed an ant struggling in the water. The dove plucked a leaf and dropped it next to the ant, saving its life. Later, the ant returned the favor by biting a hunter who was about to shoot the dove. The story highlights the importance of kindness and the idea that helping others will ultimately benefit oneself.9. The Boy Who Cried Wolf (撒谎的男孩)A mischievous boy lived in a village and often lied about a wolf threatening the flock. The villagers rushed to help him every time, only to discover he had tricked them. Eventually, when a real wolf appeared, the boy cried for help, but no one believed him. The moral is that repeated dishonesty will lead to a loss of trust and credibility.10. The Lion and the Mouse (狮子和老鼠)A mighty lion was caught in a hunter's net. A little mouse, moved by his cries, helped the lion by nibbling through the ropes to set him free. Later, when the lion fell into a trapper's trap, the mouse returned the favor and gnawed through the ropes. The story teaches that even the smallest of creatures can be of great help.These Chinese fables showcase important morals and life lessons that have been passed down through generations.。

raz分级阅读中中国故事摘要：一、raz分级阅读简介二、raz分级阅读中的中国故事特点三、raz分级阅读对中国故事的改编意义四、raz分级阅读在分级阅读中的优势五、推荐阅读正文：raz分级阅读是一种风靡全球的英语分级阅读体系，其丰富的故事内容和多样的主题深受孩子们喜爱。

在raz分级阅读中，中国故事占据了重要地位，它们以生动有趣的方式传递了中国文化的精髓。

raz分级阅读中的中国故事具有以下特点：首先，故事情节富有趣味性，能够吸引孩子们的注意力。

例如，《狼和小羊》、《小猫钓鱼》等经典故事都以寓言的形式传达了道德观念。

其次，raz分级阅读在改编中国故事时，注重保留传统文化的元素，如人物形象、地理环境、习俗等，使孩子在阅读的过程中能够了解中国传统文化。

raz分级阅读对中国故事的改编具有重要意义。

一方面，它有助于传播中国文化，让世界各地的孩子们了解中国的传统故事；另一方面，通过分级阅读的形式，孩子们可以在不同阶段接触到适合自己阅读难度的故事，提高英语阅读能力。

raz分级阅读在分级阅读中有明显优势。

首先，其故事内容丰富多样，涵盖了童话、寓言、历史等多个领域，满足孩子们的阅读需求。

其次，raz分级阅读按照难度分为多个级别，适合不同年龄段和英语水平的孩子们阅读。

此外，raz分级阅读还注重培养孩子们的阅读习惯，让他们在享受阅读乐趣的同时，提高英语综合素质。

在这里，我们推荐raz分级阅读中的中国故事，希望孩子们能在阅读中感受到中国传统文化的魅力，提高英语阅读能力，培养国际视野。

同时，我们也鼓励家长们参与孩子的阅读过程，与孩子共同分享阅读的喜悦。

总之，raz分级阅读中的中国故事具有较高的教育价值和娱乐价值。

raz里的中国名人故事
中国是一个历史悠久、文化底蕴深厚的国家，有许多令人敬佩的名人。

在raz
所举的中国名人故事中，我特别选取了几位具有代表性的名人，向大家介绍他们的故事和贡献。

一位著名的中国名人是孔子。

孔子是中国古代伟大的教育家、思想家和儒家学
派的创始人。

他生活在公元前551年至公元前479年期间，他的学说对中国乃至整个东亚地区的文化产生了深远影响。

孔子提倡仁爱、学问和社会秩序，他的思想被誉为中国传统文化的核心价值观之一。

他的《论语》是他的学说总结，至今仍被很多人学习和崇拜。

另一位中国名人是诗人杜甫。

杜甫是唐朝时期的一位伟大诗人，他生活在公元712年至770年间。

他以写实主义的风格和深刻的思想被誉为“诗圣”。

杜甫的诗歌
表达了对社会不公、战争和苦难的关切，他的作品带有浓厚的人道主义色彩。

他的代表作有《月夜忆舍弟》、《茅屋为秋风所破歌》等，他的诗歌在中国文学史上占据着重要地位。

中国历史上还有许多其他杰出的名人，如科学家钱学森、文学家鲁迅、政治家
邓小平等。

他们各自在不同的领域取得了重大成就，为中国的发展做出了巨大贡献。

中国名人的故事反映出中国文化的卓越和辉煌。

这些名人通过自己的才华、智
慧和奋斗，留下了不可磨灭的印记，影响着整个国家和世界。

他们的故事激励着后人，让我们感受到中国文化的伟大和丰富多样性。

《牛津树中国故事系列》Level4-5(12本)内容我们一起读一下题目：the Dragon and the Sun龙和太阳What do you think Lee and Kipper are doing with a dragon?Have you read any stories about dragons before?今天故事里的 dragon 是指 chinese dragon。

中国的龙和西方的龙，可是完全不一样的。

The chinese dragon is a legendary creature.It has a horse head and a snake's body.It has four jaws.The dragon is a symbol of power in Chinese folklore.It is historically the symbol of the Emperor of China.But in western culture, It was totally diferent.It has a thin neck, a big dinosaurs-like body and a pair of featherless wings.It can spray fire from its mouth.The dragon in western culture is a kind of evil animal.Ok，这就是中国的龙，和西方的龙的区别。

Now look at the back cover.What will happen if Lee cannot do the dragon dance?What do you think the dragon dance is?Dragon dance is traditional folk sports activities in China.舞龙活动是中国的民间传统体育活动。

raz分级阅读中国故事摘要：一、Raz分级阅读简介二、中国故事在Raz分级阅读中的重要性三、如何选择适合的Raz分级阅读中国故事教材四、提高阅读效果的方法和建议五、总结与展望正文：一、Raz分级阅读简介Raz分级阅读是一种世界知名的英语分级阅读教材，适用于不同年龄段和英语水平的学生。

它以丰富的题材和多样的形式吸引了大量读者，其中也包括了许多中国故事。

Raz分级阅读教材按照难度分为多个级别，旨在帮助学生提高阅读能力、扩展词汇量和培养英语思维。

二、中国故事在Raz分级阅读中的重要性在Raz分级阅读中，中国故事占据了重要地位。

通过阅读这些故事，学生不仅可以了解中华文化的传统美德和智慧，还能加深对祖国文化的认同感。

同时，这些故事也具有很高的教育价值，为学生提供了榜样和启示。

三、如何选择适合的Raz分级阅读中国故事教材1.考虑学生的年龄和英语水平：选择与他们年龄和英语水平相匹配的级别，以保证阅读效果。

2.关注故事内容：选择具有教育意义、寓教于乐的故事，激发学生的阅读兴趣。

3.教材质量：选择内容丰富、插图精美的教材，提高学生的阅读体验。

4.教师和家长指导：在选择教材时，要充分考虑教师和家长的辅导能力，确保学生能够更好地理解和掌握故事内容。

四、提高阅读效果的方法和建议1.创设良好的阅读环境：鼓励学生在安静、舒适的环境中进行阅读，以提高阅读效果。

2.制定合理的阅读计划：根据学生的实际情况，制定适合的阅读计划，确保他们有足够的时间完成阅读任务。

3.引导学生在阅读中思考：鼓励学生边阅读边思考，提高阅读理解能力。

4.开展互动讨论：教师或家长可以组织学生进行讨论，分享阅读心得，促进彼此的交流和成长。

5.定期检查阅读进度：关注学生的阅读进度，对他们的努力给予肯定和鼓励，激发阅读兴趣。

五、总结与展望Raz分级阅读中的中国故事对于提高学生的英语水平和培养他们的文化素养具有重要作用。

通过选择合适的教材、制定合理的阅读计划以及采取有效的辅导方法，我们可以帮助学生更好地享受到阅读的乐趣，提高他们的英语能力和综合素质。

中国小故事英文版3-5分钟Once upon a time in ancient China, there was a small village nestled in the mountains. The villagers lived simple lives, relying on farming and traditional crafts to sustain themselves. In this village, there lived a young boy named Li Wei, who had a remarkable talent for painting.Li Wei's paintings were known for their vibrant colors and intricate details. He would often depict scenes from nature, capturing the beauty of the mountains, rivers, and animals that surrounded the village. His talent was admired by everyone in the village, and his paintings brought joy to their lives.One day, a traveling merchant visited the village. He was amazed by Li Wei's paintings and saw great potential in his talent. The merchant proposed a deal to Li Wei's parents - hewould take the young boy to the city and introduce him to renowned artists who could further nurture his skills.Li Wei's parents were hesitant at first, worried about their son leaving the village and the life they had known. However, they realized that this opportunity could change Li Wei's life for the better. With a heavy heart, they agreed to let him go.In the city, Li Wei was exposed to a whole new world of art and culture. He studied under famous artists, learning new techniques and expanding his artistic horizons. Li Wei's talent continued to blossom, and his paintings gained recognition throughout the city.As time went on, Li Wei became a renowned artist himself. His paintings were sought after by collectors from far and wide. Despite his success, Li Wei never forgot his humble beginnings in the village. He often returned to visit his parents and share stories of his adventures in the city.One day, Li Wei received news that his parents had fallen ill. He rushed back to the village, fearing the worst. When he arrived, he found his parents weak but still filled with love and pride for their son. They told him how they had followed his journey and were grateful for the opportunities he had been given.Li Wei stayed by his parents' side, taking care of them until they recovered. During this time, he realized that his success as an artist was not just about his talent, but also about the love and support he had received from his family and community.Inspired by this realization, Li Wei decided to give back to the village that had shaped him into the artist he had become. He organized art workshops for the children, teaching them the techniques he had learned in the city. He also painted murals on the walls of the village, depicting itsrich history and culture.The village transformed into a vibrant hub of art and creativity. Visitors from all over came to admire the beautiful paintings and learn from Li Wei's expertise. The village became known as a haven for artists, and its economy flourished as a result.Li Wei's story spread far and wide, inspiring others to pursue their passions and give back to their communities. His journey from a small village to a renowned artist became a symbol of hope and resilience.And so, the legacy of Li Wei, the talented artist from the small village, lives on, reminding us that with determination, talent, and the support of our loved ones, we can achieve great things and make a positive impact on the world around us.。

视频字幕TheStoryof China（1）Look For AncestorsI. ScriptChina is the oldest nation on earth .For thousands of years it’s rulers believed their task was to keep human society in balance with the eternal order of the universe .The emperor who achieved that harmony would receive the mandate of heaven ,blessed by the ancestors .But in the late 19th century ,the collision with the West shook China to its core .In midwinter 1899,the emperor came here to the Altar of Heaven in Beijing to ask the ancestors for support .In China’s hour of crisis ,as the empire crumbled in the face of rebellion and foreign armies .It was the last time the ritual was performed .Here ,just before dawn on the winter solstice ,the emperor prostrated himself before the powers of the universe .He performed rituals that they believed went back 5,000 years to the Yellow Emperor ,the mythical first founder of China .He made a report to the ancestors about the state of the empire .But that winter of 1899,China faced disaster .The following year 1900,China was plunged into catastrophe with rebellion ,flood and famine ,foreign aggression, and the new century saw swiftly the fall of the Empire ,short-lived republic ,Communist revolution and then the insane madness of the Cultural Revolution .But despite the tragedies of the 20th century ,the Chinese people have come through .Today China is writing its own story once more under a new mandate .So long the greatest civilization on earth ,China is rising again .It’s a great time to be looking at the events which have shaped the history of China and the ideals which have made its culture so distinctive and so brilliant for so long.THE STORY OF CHINA ANCESTORSEvery year in spring millions of Chinese people set off on the journey home.It’s the time of the Qingming Festival,the festival of light,when,since ancient times,the Chinese have honoured the ancestors.I’m heading down to the city of Wuxi for a very special occasiona family reunion.For the last 30 years,Chinese people have grown upin a consumer society.After the break with Communism,China has been on a headlong rush into the future.But there’s a deeper China,for as new freedoms beckon,the people themselves are reaching back to the things that have mattered most to them in their history.And for the Chinese people,identity begins with the family.Sometimes the new proves less enticing than was first thought and the old far more durable than anyone had ever imagined.This is the Qin family of Wuxi.WUXI JIANGSUIt’s dawn on the day of ancestors,what the Chinese call Tomb-Sweeping Day.And the Qin family gather at the grave of their founding ancestor,Qin Guan,a poet who lived 1,000 years ago.They have come from all over China and further afield to make their own report to the ancestors .To tell them how the family is doing and how the ancestors and their values still live on in us.As the ancients used to say,repaying our roots.Amazing scene,isn’t it?It recalls the whole of Chinese hist ory over the last 100 years,wars,revolutions,families broken up and cast to the four winds,and yet they come back with this kind of homing instinct,almost to the tomb of the founder,as if everything can be reconstituted again.These rituals were banned in the Communist era and the grave was lost after the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s.But when the revolutionary time drew to a close.Frank Ching and his sister came searching for the tomb.Back in 1982,when I found that gravestone none of these things existed.When I first sought it out I was like a blank slate.I didn’t know what existed.It’s really very exciting that this is happening.I certainly never expected anything like this to happen when I started my own journey of discovery.More attention is now paid to family values and culture this was interrupted by the cultural revolution.So now we need to pick it up again.Like everyone in China,the Qin family have experienced dizzying change since the end of empire.From colonial subjects to emigres seeking a better life,Communist revolutionaries on the long march with Chairman Mao and even glamour on the Shanghai stage.Their family story mirrors the story of the nation.And now the meaning of that history is flooding back.Family lays the foundation of everything.Prosperity derives from a harmoniousfamily.The whole nation depends on the well being of the family.Our family has 1000 years of history.In that time huge changes have taken place.But now people are beginning to ask themselves what are my roots?I’m going to regret this.So the Chinese people have found again the warmth of home after the vast and terrifying dislocation of the mid-20th century when for a time China turned its back on its past.The Qin family,like the nation itself are seeking a renewed identity,a distinctively Chinese way forward anchored in the Chinese past.And that past goes back thousands of years.China is the oldest continuous stage on earth.There are no historical texts that describe its birth but later muths and traditions take us to the Yellow River plain that gave China its name,Zhonggou,the middle land.And here you can still reach back to those beginnings.This is a rural fair at an ancient temple,closed down in the Communist era.I’m at a great farmers festival in the plain of the Yellow River with a million people all around me.And these vast crowds have come to celebrate an ancient myth that tells of the origins of the Chinese people.As in many ancient cultures,it’s the women who have treasured the tales and handed them down.How much?Three?Especially the tale of the mother goddess of the Chinese people,Nuwa.Little dog.It’s great,isn’t it?This whole great festival is for two ancient gods in Chinese mythology.Fuxi,the male god,and Nuwa,the female god.And she’s famous because she created humanity out of the yellow mud of the Yellow River.And the mud that was left over she made dogs and chickens according to the myth.A long time ago the sky fell and the earth quaked,only Nuwa and her brother Fuxi survived.They bit their fingers and mixed their blood with mud and made primitive humans out of it.Thanks to Fuxi and Nuwa everybody shares the same ancestors.These myths have been handed down for over 4,000 years.And they contain a crucial idea,the uniqueness of Chinese ethnic identity.China is a huge and diverse country with so many languages and cultures.But the vast majority of its people see themselves as Han Chinese,part of the biggest tribe in the world.The myths also tell us about the origins of the Chinese state by the banks of the Yellow River.All four of the great old world civilizations began on rivers,the Nile,the Euphrates,the Indus and the Yellow River.China alone has come down until today.It was the ability to harness thewaters of the river for irrigation that enabled ancient people to feed bigger and bigger populations and eventually to create cities and make civilization.But where the rising of the Nile,for example,was predictable to the day and seen by the Egyptians as a joyful and benign source of life,the Yellow River here in China has been a destroyer.The killer of millions in its great floods throughout Chinese history.right up to the 20th century.And so the beginnings of Chinese history,the control of the river and its environment lay at the very heart of political power.And the tale of the king who tamed the mighty Yellow River and claimed the right to rule the hundreds of tribes along its banks became a myth still told by today’s storytellers.King Yu had two good helpers:Yellow Dragon and Black Turtle.The dragon had a very long tail and the turtle was very strong.To divert the flood the dragon dragged his tail and opened a channel for the water.When King Yu needed to build a dam,the turtle pushed huge amounts of mud into position.King Yu worked so hard to control the river that he d idn’t return home for 13 years!Look at this.This is a Ming Dynasty temple that was built in the 1520s,but on a very,very ancient terrace.And that is King Yu.Historians have always thought the tale of King Yu was just a myth,but the recent find of a bronze bowl nearly 3,000 years old engraved with his story proves the tale goes back to the Bonze Age.The legend says that King Yu was the founder of China’s first dynasty 4,000 years ago.They were called the Xia and they came from the middle plain of the middle land,here in Henan.And at the village of Erlitou,traditions survived until modern times that this had been the seat of China’s first rulers.The most ancient site in the world?Erlitou,yes Erlitou .Incredible!Ancient Greece,ancient Iraq,ancient Egypt.Wherever you look,some memory survives on site.Here,towns first emerged out of China’s myriad Stone Age villages.This is the bunal site of Huangdi.It’s thousands of years old.Huangdi,the Yellow Emperor,the original Emperor of China.North of the River Luo there was an ancient village.This area was excavated,the things they dug out are over there.Under these wheat fields the archaeologists excavated a settlement which had thousands of people and a huge walled enclosure.The white house,the taller one is Palace No.4.Inside it were pillared halls,palaces from different periods between 2000 and 1500 BC.They stood onrammed earth platforms,one of them with a triple gate,the pattern of all later Chinese royal cities.The Xia are still a mystery.But here at Erlitou,archaeologists have found tantalizing clues,pottery,bronze casting,and most intriguing of all,a burial with a sceptre made of 2,000 pieces of turquoise in the shape of a dragon,the symbol of royalty all the way through Chinese civilization.Whether the Xia w ere China’s first dynasty and whether this was their capital is still not known and that’s because we lack the key evidence,writing.Do you think that this was the capital of the Xia or what do you think?Difficult questions.Most historians believe the Xia existed.We are 99% sure of that,but without writing we can’t prove it.If it this was the capital of the Xia,for the Chinese,myth would become history for they would have found the root of the Chinese state.As it is,though,we now have to leap forward to around 1200 BC to find China’s first historical rulers,the Shang Dynasty.And we know about the Shang because they have left us the first Chinese writing.The modern discovery of the Shang is one of the most exciting stories in world archaeology.And it began by chance in one of those storehouses of age-old Chinese wisdom,a traditional pharmacy where beliefs and practices going back into prehistory have come down to us today.And the clues to the mystery of the Shang,unbelievably,were found inside a packet of over-the-counter medicine.The story goes like this,1899,Chinese scholar called Wang Yirong,who was the Chancellor of the Imperial Academy in Beijing,a great scholar and a collector of ancient bronzes.He was interested in the earliest Chinese writing systems.He falls ill with malaria and his local pharmacy,just like this one,delivers a series of ingredients which include dragon bones.These were animal bones.Just like this,they use them today which you ground up and bolied and drank to alleviate the fever.When he opened the packetto his amazement,this is what he saw.Some of the bones were inscribed with what he could see were primitive forms of the old writing that he knew from the inscriptions on his bronzes.And eventually these dragon bones were traced back to a little place in the lower valley of the Yellow River,a country town called Anyang.At Anyang,Chinese archaeologists made their greatest discovery.Huge tombs of the last Shang kings withmass human sacrifice and crucially,written texts on oracle bones.1928 they finally found the location and they started the excavation.From the excavation they found nearly 30,000 oracle bones documenting divination performed on behalf of nine late Shang kings.I love all the portraits of the people.Yes,yes.There is something so optimistic about their faces.They thought that their task is to prove thatChinesehistorywas true .Epoch-making,in world archaeology,really.Absolutely,yes.Now we knew that they were historical.Yes.Anyang was the final capital of the Shang Dynasty.They ruled for 500 years,controlling the whole of central China.The first Chinese state.Their authority rested on force but was validated by divination.The Shang kings and their diviners burned cracks in tortoise shells or cow bones to speak to the ancestors.So basically,they chose one piece of bone or shell and then they drilled some holes,and then they heat up these holes with some special plants and then these will create some cracks,and then they look at the pattern of these cracks.And the cracks come the other side,is that right?Yes.And then they can read these patterns and make their predictions about whether these divinations are auspicious or it is actually against the will of the ancestral spirits,so they should not be carrying out the activity they were asking for.So the diviners are asking for the favour of the ancestral spirits.Yes.So basically it’s their special way to communicate with their ancestors.The ancestors are the key people in their mental universe.Yes.Fantastic.Basically,in every aspect of the their society,including,for instance,the harvest.This one is even about praying for rain.Rain and water would be a big part of their concerns living in the Yellow River plain,I suppose.Yes,for agricultural society it is absolutely crucial.And unlike the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt or the cuneiform of Babylonia,the archaeologists had no need of a key to decipher them for they could see at once that the signs on the oracle bones were the direct ancestors of today’s Chinese writing.That’s the character for rain in modern language.And in oracle bones it’s like this with three drops ,so essentially it’s the same idea,fundamentally.This rain character is characterised by these raindrops.Yeah,yeah.Out of these prehistoric pictographs camethe modern Chinese script with its tens of thousands of signs.So through their script the Chinese are uniquely connected to their deep past and its ways of thinking.More so than any other culture on earth.There seem to be …Is this fanciful?There seem to be themes that we trace all the way through Chinese history the reverence for the ancestors,the divination,the control of writing and writing as a source of power.Is that fair?I agree.I think communicate or interaction between the ancestral spirit and the acquisition of social power is indeed a recurrent theme throughout Chinese history.So power came from the ancestors.In the oracle bones there is a sacred place.It has the same name as the dynasty,Shang.This is not like the shopping malls of Shanghai,that’s for sure.And the archaeologists now turn to a little town in Henan with a tantalizing name.Shangqiu,the mound or ruins of Shang.We are now inside the Ming Dynasty city.This was built in 1511,the previous one destroyed by floods.Lots more underneath it,of course.What’s fascinating is it’s still called Shangqiu,the ruins of Shang.So was this the ancestral place of China’s first great dynasty?That question has intrigued Chinese archaeologists since their first explorations here in the 1930s.But the Bronze Age layers here are 30 feet deep in Yellow River silt.Recently,though,geophysical surveys and test cores have detected the outline of a much earlier city.And the clues to what it was were in the oracle bones found at Anyang.In the 1930s a Chinese scholar called Dong Zuobin worked on the Bronze Age scratched into the oracle bones from the Shang Dynasty.Thousand upon thousand of them,and through the 1930s,when China was driven by civil war and Japanese invasion,he worked transcribing these inscriptions in what,I suppose,you could call self-effacting loyalty to the Chinese past while the catastrophes of the modern world surrounded him.You see there his transcription of one of the turtle shells with all the splits and the inscriptions on them.And he worked out the order of the Shang kings and their calendar and their rituals and their journeys.What he discovered was that the kings came back to do special rituals at the city called Shang.That was here.Its name meant “the place where the ancestors were worshiped”.So state and ancestors were tied together .And amazingly,cults and legends about the Shang still survive here at amysterious temple at the edge of town.The Mound of Shang,it’s a great artificial hill.The legends say this mound was built before the Great Flood,that here mankind first got fire,stolen from the gods.And tradition also said this had been a kind of observatory where the Shang kings watched the stars that protected their dynasty.Because they believed that the stars were powers in heaven and if we understood them properly then we’d know best how to run our kingdom.So the oracle bones and the later myths are clues to early Chinese beliefs about society and the cosmos.Divination,ritual and writing were the basis of state power For their sacred ceremonies they cast beautiful bronzes to hold food and wine offerings to the ancestral spirits,which were consumed at the royal feasts.Some of them bear the symbols of the different lineages of the royal and noble families.Like the ancient Egyptians and Sumerians,the Shang practiced human sacrifice.The oracle bones list the victims.They were captives from the subject peoples the Shang ruled,killed as offerings to the powers of nature,as the Shang diviners asked the ancestors in heaven for guidance,anxiously watching the stars for omens of auspiciousness and omens of disaster.To them,time,as revealed in the movements of the stars and planets,was a truly portentous dimension,full of danger as well as auspiciousness,the planets would reveal heaven’s judgment on their earthly rule.That brings us to one of the key ideas in early Chinese thought,the Mandate of Heaven.The early Chinese believed their rulers should protect the people,keeping harmony with the order of heaven.It was said the first Shang king had been offered himself as a sacrifice in time of drought.But legend said the last Shang king was so depraved and cruel that heaven withdrew its mandate,and it gave a sign.Five planets came together in the rarest of conjunctions.As this happens only once every 516 years,we can pin down the very day.So you can follow any single planet?Yes.It’s just wonderful.We asked the Beijing Planetarium to work out the exact date of the omen and to show us the night sky at that moment.So it’s what historians always want to do,is actually go back in time.Mr Liu can do it for us.He can actually take us back to late May 1058 BC on this computer system,which is 1059 BC on historians’ calculations.This time,this place,the sky you can see them.The tribes who lived under the Shang tyranny saw the sign and made an allianceunder a man known for his virtue,King Wen of the Zhou.This five-planet conjunction happens once every 516 years,but that moment was the closest that has ever happened in human history and at that time the early Chinese chronicles say:when the five planets gather in the constellation called the Chamber, a great vermillion bird landed on the alter of the earth on Mount Qi.In its beak was a jade scepter ,and it spoke,saying,”Heaven has commanded that the king of the Zhou”should overthrow the king of the Shang and take the kingdom.”In the final battle,the wicked Shang king saw his subjects had turned against him.So he burned his palace with his treasures and his concubines and put on his jade suit and walked into the fire.And so the ancestors passed the mandate to the king of the Zhou.And he laid down the pattern of rule for future ages.Rulers must be virtuous and keep harmony between humanity and the cosmos by observing the rites and the music of the heavens.And,amazingly,some of the ritual traditions of the Zhou have come down to us today.China’s oldest religion is Taoism.In their ceremonies and their music the Taoists.the “seekers after the Way”,are a living link with these ancient ideas about the relation of t he kingdoms of earth and heavens.In Daoism Heaven and Earth are two kingdoms,those kingdoms have the same spirit,the same king.Daoiam has inherited China’s ancient beliefs from the Xia,Shang and Zhou dynasties.It’s rooted in Chinese culture and speaks to t he ordinary people.And these very ancient customs and beliefs are still held in affection and practiced by the ordinary Chinese people today.Daoists believe that humans should practice good deeds .And through this practice they realize they are immortal. In later times the Zhou came to be seen as model rulers,fulfilling heaven’s mandate.But China’s fate throughout its history has been to fragment in times of crisis.Eventually Zhou power disintegrated.And the heartland of China descended into chaos.Across the middle land,feuding kings and warlords fought for supremacy.Surrounded by their armies,even in death.Amazing sight,isn’t it?This is one of more than a dozen chariot burial pits that have been uncovered in the middle of Luoyang in the last few years.This with excavated in 2003 during the modern building boom.There’s 18 chariots and their horses here,associated with the tombs of the kings of the Eastern Zhou.It’s the world of Achilles and Hector in more than just themilitary hardware.Politically,just like Agamemnon,the kings here in the central plain of China depended on the co-operation of vassal states,smaller kingdoms.Sometimes more than 100 of them.But these were rivals fighting each other ,just like the Greek heros sacking cities and enslaving their populations.So political instability,warfare and violence were endemic.And for that reason,perhaps,this is the time when a ferment of ideas grows about the nature of kingship,the function of states,duties,obligation and morality.Out of this begins the first golden age of Chinese philosophy.Right across the Old World in the sixth century BC ,thinkers and rulers were debating these ideas.A new age of human thought had dawned,what we call the Axis Age.The Greek philosophers,the Old Testament prophets,the Buddha in India,all of them were wrestling with ideas about conscience and social justice and human autonomy.How can a king be just in violent times?What is law and what is virtue?Here in China it was said 100 schools bloomed.And the most famous thinker came from an obscure state in eastern China.He was descended from a family of Shang diviners,oracle-bone crackers.And his obsession was not the inner life but how we act in the public world.Small-town China,but what a small town.Because this place,Qufu.has nearly 3,000 years of continuity,life on this spot.And it gave birth to one of the most influential figures in the history of the world,Confucius.Ni hao.Confucius lived in a time of cultural and political crisis.China divided into many small states that were always fighting each other and sometimes even divided in themselves,like this one,the state of Lu,whose capital was Qufu.Confucius rose eventually to a quite high ministerial job in which he played a crucial role brokering a peace deal between three feuding clans and persuading them to demolish their fortifications and acknowledge the duke here as their lord.And that kind of experience gave him the idea of his mission,which was nothing less than to restore civilization by teaching rulers to be virtuous.Confucius had a very clear vision.There is definitely this sense of passion him that he wants to be recognized .He wants to contribute to the social orders of society and he wants to make sure that ritual practices are followed very closely.Confucius was very keen on the idea ofhumaneness,or benevolence,and that the ruler set a direct example for the people to follow.There’s a very lively metaphor in the Analects when the character of the ruler is compared to the wind and the character of the ordinary people is compared to the grass,so it’s said that when the wind blows the grass naturally bends.Like Socrates or the Buddha,his saying were turned into a book after his death by his disciples.The Analects,Horrible word,isn’t it?What a mouthful.It means the sort of quotations from but really it should be called the conversations of Confucius,cos that’s what it really is.It’s his saying,and it’s been said that no book in the history of the world,even the Bible,has exerted so much influence for such a long period on so many people.That’s Confucius’s little blue book.18?18,OK,great.The Analects would become China’s guide to the principles of good government.He says that if you govern people by change ,it could be translated as “law”or “punishment”,then you get people who have no sense of shame.You get order but people don’t really know what they are doing wrong .But then if you govern by a sense of virtue,morality,then people have a sense of shame and with that idea it’s implied that they will have moral progress as well.It’s a very old idea in the story of China that the basis of all government is not law but established morality.And the key end – to preserve the state.In the West we tend to think of Confucius as an archconservative,a bit pious and a bit pompous.But without virtue he thought any rule is morally bankrupt and should be resisted,even until death.He travelled the roads of China like some intellectual trouble shooter,trying to sell China’s local rulers his new deal.At his tomb I met a group of Confucian t eachers from Korea.These gentlemen are not priests,they’re scholars.And what they’re doing is not so much religion as ritual.An active reverence for the old master and his ideal of universal brotherhood.Bowing before his tombstone,which was smashed to pieces by the Communist Red Guards only 50 years ago but is now restored.We are here to honour Confucius.But why are you here?Ah,very good question!We are interested in the history of China and Confucius is so important that that is why we are here.Confucius is covering all over the world love.Should spread all over the world.Not just individual.Love,benevolence,courtesy,good manners.These are the way society works,when society works well,in Confucius’s idea.Yeah,yeah,yeah. Confucius was condemned during the Communist revolution as the embodime nt of old ideas and old customs.But now,once more,he’s a national treasure,praised by the government for his stress on social values,though not so much perhaps for his insistence that it is the intellectual’s duty to spe ak truth to power.But in both he’s a symbol of the Chinese way.To have guests come from far away is a pleasure,is it not?Very good!Oh,very good! X ie xie!Thank you very much!Fantastic!Confucius was not an innovator,he was the distiller,the crystalliser of an already ancient tradition.The idea of the virtuous ruler,of filial piety,of ritual and ceremony as the glue that bound society together and the overruling power of education.Those are the values that still underlie Chinese values today.And South Asian values from Korea and Japan all the way down to Vietnam.What a legacy.But the truth is in his own lifetime Confucius was a complete failure.No ruler bought into his manifesto for change.After his death in 469 BC the warring states fought each other for two more centuries until the fall of the last of the Zhou.And when their end came no-one was listening to arguments about morality but only the claims of violence and war.And one of those warring states was the Qin.Through military conquest they swallowed up the Zhou and the other states of the Yellow River plain.And in 221 BC they proclaimed their leader the First Emperor of all China Qin Shi Huangdi.The First Emperor imposed his own revolutionary political system on the conqueredlands.Dispossessing the old aristocracies,creating an enormous captive labour force to build his new state,the Qin.That’s the source of the name China used today by the outside world.Qin Shi Huangdi built the first Great Wall.He made a new road system linking the 36 military provinces.For tax and commerce the weights and measures were standardized .There was to be a uniform coinage.And the Chinese script itself was simplified so the Emperor’s will could be conveyed right down to the local magistrates,who administered a population of more than 30 million people.Almost a third of the world.And the key to the Qin Emperor’s power was the army.It was the image of the empire,discipline,obedience,hierarchy.With their mass-producted bronze weapons and mechanical crossbows there’d been nothing like this in the whole of history.Infantry,archers and cavalry and charioteers,so that’s really the battle。

视频字幕TheStoryof China（1）Trace The OriginI. ScriptChina is oldest nation on the earth. For thousands of years its rulers believed their task was to keep human society in balance with the eternal order of the universe. The emperor who achieved that harmony would receive the mandate of haven blessed by the ancestors.But in the late 19th century. The collision with the West shook China to its core19,In midwinter 1899,The emperor came here to Alter of Heaven in Beijing, To ask ancestors for support in Chinas hour of crisis. As the empire crumbled in the face of rebellion and foreign armies, It was the last time the ritual was performed1899.Here, just before dawn on the winter solstice The emperor prostrated himself before the powers of the universe .He performed rituals that they believed went back 5000 years to the Y ellow Emperor .The mythical first founder of China .He made a report to the ancestors about the state of the empire .But that winter of 1899China faced disaster .The following year1900.China was plunged into catastrophe with rebellion ,flood and famine foreign aggression .And the new century saw swiftly fall of the empire.Short-lived republic ,Communist revolution and then the insane madness of the Culture Revolution, But despite the tragedies of the 20th century ,The Chinese people have come throughToday China is writing its own story once more under a new mandate, So long the greatest civilization on the earth ,China is rising ag ain. It’s great time to be looking at the events which have shaped the history of China. And the ideals which have made it’s culture. So distinctive and so brilliant for so long timeEvery year in the spring ,millions of Chinese people set off on journey homeIt’s the time of the Qingming Festival .The festival of light. When,since ancient times,the Chinese have honored the ancestors. I’m heading down to the city of Wuxi for a very special occasions, a families reunion. For the last 30 years, Chinese people have grown up in a consumer society.After the break with a communism, China has been on a headlong rush into the future. But there is a deeper China for as new freedoms beckon the people themselves are reaching back to the things that have mattered most to them in their history and for the Chinese people, identity begins with the family, sometimes the new proves less enticing than was first thought and the old far more durable than anyone had ever imagined this is the Qin family of Wuxi. its dawn on the day of the ancestors what the Chinese call Tomb-Sweeping day and the Qin family gather at the grave of their founding ancestors .Qin Guan ,a poet who lived 1000 years ago, They have come from all over China .And further afield to make theirown report to the ancestors. To tell them how family is doing and how ancestors and their values still live on in us.As the ancients used to say, repaying our roots. Amazing scene, isn’t it? It recalls the whole of Chinese history over the last 100 years100 Wars ,revolutio ns, famines, families broken up and cast the four winds ,and yet they come back with this kind of homing instinct, almost ,to the tomb of the founder ,As if everything can be reconstituted again. These rituals were banned in the Communist era. And the grove was lost after the Cultural Revolution of the 1960sBut when the revolutionary time drew to close. Frank Ching and his sister came searching for the tomb. Back in 1982, when I found that gravestone none of this things exist1982. When I first sought it out I was like a blank slate .I didn’t know what existed. It’s very exciting that this is happening .I certainly never expected anything like this to happen when I started my own journey of discovery, more attention is now paid to family values and culture. This was interrupted by Culture Revolution, so now we need pick it up again.Like everyone in China the Qin family have experienced dizzying change since the end of empire, From colonia subjects to emigres seeking a better life, Communist revolutionaries on the long march with chairman Mao and even glamour on the Shanghai Stage their family story mirrors the story of the nation and now the meaning of that history is flooding back family lays foundation of everything prosperity derives from a harmonious family the whole nation depends on the well been of the family, our family has 1000 years of history1000 in that time huge changes have taken place but now people are beginning ask themselves: what are my roots? What are we roots? What are my roots? I’m going to regret this.So the Chinese people have found again the warmth of home after the vast and terrifying dislocation of the mid-20th century when for a time China turned its past .The Qin family ,like the nation itself, are seeking a renewed identity , a distinctively Chinese way forward, anchored in the Chinese past .And that past goes back thousands of years .China is the oldest continuous state on earth .There are no historical texts that describe its birth but later myths and traditions take us to the Y ellow River plain that gave China its name , Zhonggou, the middle land .And here you can still reach back to those beginnings.This is a rural fair at an ancient temple, closed down in the Communist era. I’m at a great farmers festival in the plain of the Y ellow River with million people all around me. And these vast crowds have come to celebrate an ancient myth that tells of the origins of the Chinese people. And in many ancient cultures, it’s the women who have treasured the tales and handed them down.Especially the tale of the mother goddess of the Chinese people, Nuwa.Little dog .Its great, isn’t it? This whole great festival is f or two ancient gods in Chinese mythology, Fuxi, the male god, and Nuwa, the female god. And she’s famous because she created humanity out of the yellow mud of the Y ellow River. And the mud that was left over she made dogs and chickens, according to the myth. A long time ago, the sky fell and the earth quaked. Only Nuwa and her brother Fuxi survived. They bit their fingers and mixed their blood with mud and made primitive humans out of it. Thanks to Fuxi and Nuwa everybody shares the same ancestors.These myths have been handed down for over 4000 years. And they contain a crucial idea, the uniqueness of Chinese ethnic identity. China is a huge and diverse country, with so many languages and cultures. But the vast majority of its people see themselves as Han Chinese, part of the biggest tribe in the world. The myths also tell us about the origins of the Chinese state by the banks of the Yellow River. All four of the great old world civilizations began on rivers the Nile, the Euphrates, the Indus and the Y ellow River.China alone has come down until today. It was the ability to harness the water of the river for irrigation that enabled ancient people to feed bigger and bigger populations and eventually to create cities and make civilization. But where the rising of the Nile, for example, was predictable to the day and seen by the Egyptians as a joyful and benign source of life, the Y ellow River here in China has been a destroyer.The killer of millions in its great floods throughout Chinese history, right up to the 20th century20 And so the beginnings of Chinese history, the control of the river and its environment, lay at the very heart of political power. And the tale of the king who tamed the mighty Y ellow River and claimed the right to rule the hundreds of tribes along its banks became a myth still told by todays storytellers.King Yu had two good helpers: Y ellow Dragon and Black Turtle. The Dragon had a very long tail and the turtle was very strong. To divert the flood the dragon dragged his tail and opened a channel for the water .When Kong Yu needed to build a dam the turtle pushed huge amounts of mud into position. King Yu worked so hard to control the river that he didn’t return home for 13 years!This is a Ming Dynasty temple that was built in the 1520s, but on a very, very ancient terrace. And that is King Yu. Historians have always thought the tale of King Yu was just a myth, but the recent find of a bronze bowl nearly 3000 years old engraved with his story, proves the tale goes back to the Bronze Age.The legend says that King Yu was the founder of Chinas first dynasty 4000 years ago. They were called the Xia and they came from the middle plain of the middle land, here in Henan. And at the village of Erlitou, traditions survived until modern times that this had been the seat of China s first rulers. The most ancient site in the world?Inside it were pillared halls palaces from different periods between 2000 and 1500 BC. They stood on rammed earth platforms, one of them with a triple gate, the pattern of all later Chinese royal cities. The Xia are still a mystery. But here at Erlitou archaeologists have found tantalizing clues-pottery, bronze casting, and most intriguing of all, a burial with a scepter made of 2000 pieces of turquoise in the shape of a dragon. The symbol of royalty all the way through Chinese civilization .Whether the Xia were Chinas first dynasty, and whether this was their capital is still not known, and that’s because we lack the key evidence-writing. Do you think that this was the capital of the Xia or what do you think? Difficult question .Most historians believe the Xia existed. We are 99% sure of that but without writing we cant prove it. If it this was the capital of the Xia, for the Chinese, myth would become history, for they would have found the root of the Chinese state. As it is, though, we now have to leap forward to around 1200 BC to find Chinas firsthistorical rulers, the Shang Dynasty. And we know about the Shang because they have left us the first Chinese writing.The modern discovery of the Shang is one of the most exciting stories in world archaeology. And it began by chance in one of those storehouses of age-old. Chinese wisdom, a traditional pharmacy where beliefs and practices going back into prehistory have come down to us today .And the clues to the mystery if the Shang, unbelievably, were found inside a packet of over-the-counter medicine .The story goes like this-1899, Chinese scholar called Wang Yirong, who was the Chancellor of the Imperial Academy in Beijing, a great scholar and a collector of ancient bronzes. He was interested in the earliest Chinese writing systems.He falls ill with malaria and his local pharmacy, just like this one, delivers a series of ingredients which include dragon bones.These were animal bones. Just like this, they use them today which you ground up, and boiled and drank to alleviate the fever. When he opened the packet, to his amazement, this is what he saw. Some of the bones were inscribed with what he could see were primitive forms of the old writing that he knew from the inscriptions on his bronzes. And eventually these dragon bones were traced back to a little place in the lower valley of the Y ellow River, a country town called Anyang.At Anyang, Chinese archaeologists made their greatest discovery.Huge tombs of the last Shang kings with mass human sacrifice and crucially, written texts on oracle bones .1928 they finally found the location and they started the excavation. From the excavation they found nearly 30000 oracle bones documenting divination performed on behalf of nine late Shang kings. I love all the portraits of the people. Y es, yes. There is something so optimistic about their faces. They thought that their task is to prove that Chinese history was true. Epoch making, in world archaeology, really .Absolutely, yes .Now we knew that they were historical. Y es. Anyang was the final capital of the Shang Dynasty. They ruled for 500 years, controlling the whole of central China. The first Chinese state. Their authority rested on force but was validated by divination. The Shang kings and their diviners burned cracks in tortoise shells or cow bones to speak to the ancestors. So basically, they choose one piece of bone or shell and then they drilled some holes, and then they heat up these holes with some special plants, and then these will create some cracks, and then they look at the pattern of these cracks. And the cracks come the other side, is that right? Y es. And then they can read these patterns and make their predictions about whether these divinations are auspicious or it is actually against the will of the ancestral spirits, so they should not be carrying out the activity they were asking for. So the diviners are asking for the favor of the ancestral spirits. Y es. So basically its their special way to communicate with their ancestors. The ancestors are the key people in their mental universe. Y es. Fantastic .Basically, in every aspect of their society, including, for instance, the harvest .This one is even about praying for rain.Rain and water would be a big part of their concerns living in the Y ellow River plain, I suppose .Yes, for agricultural society it is absolutely crucial .And unlike the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt or the cuneiform of Babylonia, the archaeologists had noneed of a key to decipher them, for they could see at once that the signs on the oracle bones were the direct ancestors of todays Chinese writing .That’s the character for rain in modern language. And in oracle bones its like this With three drops, so essentially its the same idea, fundamentally This rain character is characterized by these raindrops. Yeah, yeah.Out of these prehistoric pictographs came the modern Chinese script with its tens of thousands of signs. So through their script the Chinese people are uniquely connected to their deep past and its ways of thinking. More so than any other culture on earth .There seem to be Is this fanciful?There seem to be themes that we trace all the way through Chinese history the reverence for the ancestors, the divination, the control of writing and writing as source of power. Is that fair? I agree. I think communication or interaction between the ancestral spirit and the acquisition of social power is indeed a recurrent theme throughout Chinese history.In the oracle bones there is a sacred place. It has the same name as the dynasty, Shang. This is not like the shopping malls of Shanghai, that's for sure. And the archaeologists now turn to a little town in Henan with a tantalizing name. Shangqiu, the mound or ruins of Shang. We are now inside the Ming Dynasty city. This was built in 1511,the previous one destroyed by floods.Lots more underneath it, of course. What's fascinating is it's still called Shangqiu, the ruins of ShangSo was this the ancestral place of China's first great dynasty? That question has intrigued Chinese archaeologists, since their first explorations here in the 1930s.But the Bronze Age layers here are 30 feet deep in Y ellow River silt. Recently, though, geophysical surveys and test cores have detected.The outline of a much earlier city underneath the town. And the clues to what it was were in the oracle bones found at Anyang. In the 1930s a Chinese scholar called Dong Zuobin worked on the Bronze Age inscriptions scratched into the oracle bones from the Shang Dynasty. Thousand upon thousand of them, and through the 1930s,when China was driven by civil war and Japanese invasion, he worked transcribing these inscriptions in what, I suppose, you could call self-effacing loyaltyTo the Chinese past while the catastrophes of the modern world surrounded him. Y ou see there his transcription of one of the turtle shells with all the splits and the inscriptions on them.And he worked out the order of the Shang kings and their calendar and their rituals and their journeys. What he discovered was that the kings came back to do special rituals at the city called Shang. That was here. Its name meant "the place where the ancestors were worshiped".So state and ancestors were tied together. And amazingly, cults and legends about the Shang still survive here at a mysterious temple at the edge of town. The Mound of Shang, it's a great artificial hill. The legends say this mound was built before the Great Flood, that here mankind first got fire, stolen from the gods.And tradition also said this had been a kind of observatory where the Shang kings watched the stars that protected their dynasty. Because they believed that the stars were powers in heaven and if we understood them properly then we'd know besthow to run our kingdom.So the oracle bones and the later myths are clues to early Chinese beliefs about society and the cosmos.Divination, ritual and writing were the basis of state power. For their sacred ceremonies they cast beautiful bronzes to hold food and wine offerings to the ancestral spirits, which were consumed at the royal feasts.Some of them bear the symbols of the different lineages of the royal and noble families.Like the ancient Egyptians and Sumerian, the Shang practiced human sacrifice. The oracle bones list the victims.They were captives from the subject peoples the Shang ruled, killed as offerings to the powers of nature, as the Shang diviners asked the ancestors in heaven for guidance, anxiously watching the stars for omens of auspiciousness and ome ns of disaster.To them, time, as revealed in the movements of the stars and planets, was as truly portentous dimension, full of danger as well as auspiciousness, and especially for the rulers, for they knew that in time the planets would reveal haven's judgment on their earthly rule. That brings us to one of the key ideas in early Chinese thought, the Mandate of Heaven. The early Chinese believed their rulers should protect the people keeping harmony with the order of heaven. It was said the first Shang king had even offered himself as a sacrifice in time of drought.But legend said the last Shang king was so depraved and cruel that heaven withdrew its mandate, and it gave a sign. Five planets came together in the rarest of conjunctions. As this happens only once every 516 years, we can pin down the very day. -So you can follow any single planet? -Y es. -It's just... wonderful.We asked the Beijing Planetarium to work out the exact date of the moment and to show us the night sky at that moment. So it's what historians always want to do, is actually go back in time -- Mr Liu can do it for us He can actually take us back to late May 1058 BC on his computer system, which is 1059 BC on historians' calculations.This time, this place, the sky... you can see them. The tribes who lived under the Shang tyranny saw the sign and made an alliance under a man known for his virtue, King Wen of the Zhou.This five-planet conjunction happens once every 516 years but that moment was the closest that has ever happened in human history and at that time the early Chinese chronicles say.....when the five planets gather in the constellation called the Chambera great vermillion bird landed on the altar of the earth on Mount Qi.In it’s beak was a jade , and it spoke, saying "Heaven has commanded that the Kingof the Zhou should overthrow the King of the Shang and take the kingdom"In the final battle, the wicked Shang king saw his subjects had turned against him.So he burned his palace with his treasures and his concubines and put on his jade suit and walked into the fire.And so the ancestors passed the mandate to the King of the Zhou. And he laid down the pattern of rule for future ages.Rulers must be virtuous and keep harmony between humanity and the cosmos by observing the rites and the music of the heavens. And, amazingly, some of the ritualtradition of the Zhou have come down to us today.At a mysterious temple at the edge of town. The Mound of Shang, it's a great artificial hill. The legends say this mound was built before the Great Flood, that here mankind first got fire, stolen from the gods. And tradition also said this had been a kind of observatory where the Shang kings watched the stars that protected their dynasty. Because they believed that the stars were powers in heaven and if we understood them properly then we'd know best how to run our kingdom.So the oracle bones and the later myths are clues to early Chinese beliefs about society and the cosmos. Divination, ritual and writing were the basis of state power. For their sacred ceremonies, they cast beautiful bronzes to hold food and wine offerings to the ancestral spirits, which were consumed at the royal feasts. Some of them bear the symbols of the different line ages of the royal and noble families. Like the ancient Egyptians and Sumerians, the Shang practiced human sacrifice. The oracle bones list the victims.They were captives from the subject peoples the Shang ruled, killed as offerings to the powers of nature, as the Shang diviners asked the ancestors in heaven for guidance, anxiously watching the stars for omens of auspiciousness and omens of disaster. To them, time, as revealed in the movements of the stars and planets49 was a truly portentous dimension, full of danger as well as auspiciousness, especially for the rulers, for they knew that in time the planets would reveal heaven's judgment on their earthly rule. That brings us to one of the key ideas in early Chinese thought, the Mandate of Heaven.The early Chinese believed their rulers should protect the peop le, keeping harmony with the order of heaven It was said the first Shang king had even offered himself as a sacrifice in time of drought. But legend said the last Shang king was so depraved and cruel that heaven withdrew its mandate, and it gave a sign. Five planets came together in the rarest of conjunctions. As this happens only once every 516 years, we can pin down the very day. So you can follow any single planet? Yes. It's just...wonderful. We asked the Beijing Planetarium to work out the exact date of the omen and to show us the night sky at that moment. the thing which every host want to do is actually go back in time. He can actually take us back to late May,1058 BC on his computer system, which is 1059 BC on historians' calculations.1059This time, this place, the sky... you can see them.The tribes who lived under the Shang tyranny saw the sign King Wen of the Zhou. This five-planet conjunction happens once every 516 years but that moment was the closest that has ever happened in human history and at that time the early Chinese chronicles say...when the five planets gather in the constellation called the Chamber a great vermillion bird landed on the altar of the earth on Mount Qi. In its beak was a jade , and it spoke, saying, "Heaven has commanded that the King of the Zhou "should overthrow the King of the Shang and take the kingdom. "In the final battle, the wicked Shang king saw his subjects had turned against him. So he burned his palace with his treasures and his concubines and put on his jade suit and walked into the fire.And so the ancestors passed the mandate to the King of the Zhou. And he laid down the pattern of rule for future ages. Rulers must be virtuous by observing the rites and the music of the heavens, and keep harmony between humanity and the cosmos .And amazingly, some of the ritual traditions of the Zhou have come down to us today. China's oldest religion is Taoism. In their ceremonies and their music the Taoists, the "seekers after the Way", are a living link with these ancient ideas about the relation of the kingdoms of earth and heaven. In Daoism Heaven and Earth are two kingdoms those kingdoms have the same spirit , the same king Daoism has inherited Chinas ancient beliefs from Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties .It is rooted in Chinese culture and speaks to the ordinary people .And these very ancient customs and beliefs are still held in affection and practiced by the ordinary Chinese people today. Dao believes that humans, should practice good through this practice they realize they are immortal in later times the Zhou came to be seen as model rulers, fulfilling heaven's mandate. But China's fate throughout its history has been to fragment in times of crisis.Eventually Zhou power disintegrated. And the heartland of China descended into chaos. Across the middle land, feuding kings and warlords fought for supremacy. Surrounded by their armies, even in death. Amazing sight, isn't it? ?This is one of more than a dozen chariot burial pits that have been uncovered in the middle of Luoyang in the last few years. This with excavated in 2003 during the modern building boom.2003 There's 18 chariots and their horses here, associated with the tombs of the Kings of the Eastern Zhou. It's the world of Achilles and Hector.in more than just the military hardware. Politically, just like Agamemnon, the kings here in the central plain of China depended on the co-operation of vassal states, smaller kingdoms. Sometimes more than 100 of them. But these were rivals fighting each other, just like the Greek heroes sacking cities and enslaving their populations. So political instability, warfare and violence were endemic.And for that reason, perhaps, this is the time when a ferment of ideas grows about the nature of kingship, the function of states, duties, obligation and morality. Out of this begins the first golden age of Chinese philosophy. Right across the Old World in the sixth century BC, thinkers and rulers were debating these ideas. A new age of human thought had dawned, what we call the Axis Age. The Greek philosophers, the Old Testament prophets, the Buddha in India, all of them were wrestling with ideas about conscience and social justice and human autonomy. How can a king be just in violent times? Here in China it was said 100 schools bloomed. And the most famous thinker came from an obscure state in eastern China. He was descended from a family of Shang diviners, oracle-bone crackers. And his obsession was not the inner life but how we act in the public world. Because this place, Qufu, has nearly 3,000 years of continuity, life on this spot.And it gave birth to one of the most influential figures in the history of the world, Confucius. Ni hao. Confucius lived in a time of cultural and political crisis. China divided into many small states that were always fighting each other and sometimes even divided in themselves, and it's been said that no book in the history of the world,like this one, the state of Lu, whose capital was Qufu. Confucius rose eventually to a quite high ministerial job in which he played a crucial role.....brokering a peace deal between three feuding clans and persuading them to demolish their fortifications and acknowledge the duke here as their lord. And that kind of experience gave him the idea of his mission, which was nothing less than to restore civilization by teaching rulers to be virtuous.Confucius had a very clear vision. There is definitely this sense of passion in him that he wants to be recognized. He wants to contribute to the social order of society and he wants to make sure that ritual practices are followed very closely. Confucius was very keen on the idea of humaneness, or benevolence, and that the ruler set a direct example for the people to follow. There's a very lively metaphor in the Analects when the character of the ruler is compared to the wind and the character of the ordinary people is compared to the grass, so it's said that when the wind blows the grass naturally bends. Like Socrates or the Buddha, his sayings were turned into a book after his death by his disciples. The Analects. Horrible word, isn't it? What a mouthful. It means the sort of quotations from...but really it should be called the conversations of Confucius, It's his sayings, even the Bible, has exerted so much influence for such a long period on so many people. That's Confucius's little blue book.18? 18, OK, great! The Analects would become China's guide to the principles of good government. He says that if you govern people by cheng it could be translated as "law" or "punishment" -then you get people who have no sense of shame. Y ou get order but people don't really know what they are doing wrong. But then if you govern by de - a sense of virtue, morality and with that idea it's implied that they will have moral progress as well. In the west we tend to think of Confucius as an archconservative, a bit pious and a bit pompous .but without virtue he thought any rule is morally bankrupt and should be resisted .even until death. He traveled the road of China like some intellectual troubleshooter .trying to sell China's local rules his new deal. At his tomb I met a group of Confucian teaches from Korea. These gentlemen are not priests, they are scholars.And what they are doing is not so much religion as ritual. An active reverence for the old muster and his idea of universal brotherhood. Bowing before his tombstone, which was smashed to pieces by the Communist Red Guard only 50 years ago but is now restored ."We are here to honor Confucius. But why are you here?" Ah very good question! We are interested in the history of China and Confucius is so important that is why we are here. Confucius is covering all over the world love. These are the way society work, when society works well, in Confucius's idea. Y eah, Confucius was condemned during the Communist revolution as the embodiment of old ideas and old custom. But now, once more, he 's a national treasure, praised by the. Government for his stress on social values, thought not so much perhaps for his insistence that is the intellectual's duty to speak truth to power. But in both he's a symbol of the Chinese way. "To have guests come from far away is a pleasure is it not?" Very good ! Oh, very good! Xie xie! Thank you very much! Fantastic! Confucius was not an innovator, he was the distiller, the cry distiller of an already ancient tradition. The idea of the。

虎阅英语·中国风系列分级阅读1.引言1.1 介绍虎阅英语·中国风系列分级阅读的背景和意义虎阅英语·中国风系列分级阅读是一套融合中国文化元素的英语分级阅读故事书籍系列，旨在帮助学习者通过阅读感受中国文化的魅力，提升英语阅读能力。

在当今全球化的背景下，学习英语已经成为人们的必备技能之一。

而分级阅读作为英语学习的重要方法之一，不仅能够帮助学习者巩固语言基础，提高阅读能力，还能让学习者在阅读中了解不同的文化背景，增加跨文化交流能力。

虎阅英语·中国风系列分级阅读的背景和意义在于，它不仅是一种英语学习工具，更是一扇了解中国文化的窗户。

通过阅读这些故事书，学习者可以了解中国的传统文化、风土人情，感受中国古代和现代的故事，增进对中国的了解和理解。

这有助于培养学习者的跨文化意识，拓展视野，促进国际间的友好交流与合作。

在全球化的今天，学习英语已经不再是单纯的语言学习，更是一种文化学习。

虎阅英语·中国风系列分级阅读的背景和意义就在于结合语言学习与文化传承，让学习者在学习英语的能够感受到中国传统文化的魅力，增强对中华文化的认同感和兴趣。

这对于学习者来说，将是一种全新的学习体验和认知升级。

1.2 强调学习英语分级阅读的重要性学习英语分级阅读的重要性英语分级阅读是指将阅读材料按难易程度划分等级，供学习者选择适合自己水平的阅读材料。

这种阅读方式有着重要的意义和作用，特别适合英语学习者在阅读过程中提高语言能力和理解能力。

学习英语分级阅读可以帮助学生在阅读中逐步建立起自信心，因为随着等级的提升，学生可以感受到自己的进步，从而增强学习动力。

分级阅读能够帮助学生逐步扩大阅读量，培养阅读兴趣，因为他们可以通过适合自己水平的材料感受到阅读的乐趣，激发阅读兴趣，从而愿意不断地进行阅读。

学习英语分级阅读有助于提高学生的词汇量和语法能力，因为学习者可以在适合自己水平的阅读材料中巩固和扩展自己的语言知识。

raz分级阅读中中国故事raz分级阅读是一种全球流行的英语分级阅读体系，其内容丰富多样，涵盖了世界各地的文化和故事。

其中，中国故事作为一部分，不仅让全球孩子了解中国文化，还帮助他们提高英语阅读能力。

一、raz分级阅读简介raz分级阅读是由美国教育专家和教育机构研发的英语阅读教材，分为多个级别，适用于不同年龄段和英语水平的儿童。

分级阅读体系以有趣、易懂的方式呈现各种故事和知识，激发孩子的阅读兴趣，培养他们的英语素养。

二、raz分级阅读中的中国故事特点在raz分级阅读中，中国故事占据了一定比例。

这些故事具有鲜明的中国特色，涵盖了传统节日、民间传说、历史人物等多种题材。

编写者巧妙地将中国文化融入故事情节，让孩子在阅读的过程中，既能享受故事的乐趣，又能了解中国文化。

三、raz分级阅读对中国故事的改编意义raz分级阅读中的中国故事在保留原有故事精髓的基础上，进行了适度的改编。

这种改编有助于全球孩子更好地理解和接受中国故事，提高他们的跨文化交际能力。

同时，改编后的故事以英语呈现，有助于孩子在阅读过程中提高英语水平。

四、raz分级阅读中的中国故事对儿童教育的价值raz分级阅读中的中国故事不仅具有趣味性和知识性，还对儿童教育具有很高的价值。

通过阅读这些故事，孩子可以学到传统美德、历史知识和文化特色。

同时，这些故事还培养了孩子的道德观念和良好品质，引导他们树立正确的人生观和价值观。

五、推荐列表以下是几本raz分级阅读中的中国故事推荐：1.《端午节的故事》2.《孙悟空三打白骨精》3.《猫捉老鼠》4.《小红帽》5.《狼来了》总之，raz分级阅读中的中国故事以生动有趣的方式，向全球孩子传播中国文化，提高他们的英语水平。

中国民间故事英文版3分钟1、The Tortoise and the Hare龟兔赛跑兔子向动物们吹嘘自己的奔跑速度，动物们有的为它喝彩，有的感到十分无聊。

这时，乌龟却说，自己能在跑步上打败兔子，并邀请兔子与之一战。

比赛开始了，兔子跑得很快，一会儿乌龟就落在了后面，兔子便在一棵树下打起盹来。

乌龟爬啊爬，它能战胜兔子吗？Welcome to ALO7’s Power to Learn. Today’s story is The Tortoise and the Hare, retold by Jenny Lam and Sheila Higginson, and narrated by Judy Luxton.HOP! HOP! HOP! Rabbit jumped very fast.HIPPITY! HOPPITY! HOP! HOP! Rabbit jumped even faster.“Look at me,”bragged Rabbit. “I am the fastest!”His animal friends watched. Some cheered. Some were bored. They had seen Rabbit run many times before.“Here he goes again,”said Cat. “Rabbit is always running.”“And he is always bragging about being the fastest runner,”said Owl.“He does run fast,”said Monkey.Tortoise walked up slowly to the other animals.Tortoise spoke slowly. “Is Rabbit bragging about being the fastest runner again?”he asked.The animals nodded their heads yes.“I will challenge Rabbit to a race. I can beat him,”said Tortoise calmly.All the animals got excited. “A race!”they cried.Rabbit laughed. “All right. Let’s race. I will win anyway.”Tortoise and Rabbit went to the starting line.“On your mark. Get set. Go!”cried Owl. He flapped his wings! Rabbit and Tortoise crossed the starting line. The race began!Rabbit ran fast. He hopped, and he ran. He hopped again. He ran even faster.Rabbit was far ahead of Tortoise. He kept running. He kept hopping.He stopped by a tree. He looked behind him. Where was Tortoise?Tortoise walked slowly. He was far behind.Rabbit yelled, “Hey, how do you expect to beat me? You are walking so slowly! You will never beat me. You will never win!”Rabbit sat down under the tree.“I will take a rest,”said Rabbit. “Tortoise is slow. He will never catch up. I have plenty of time to relax.”Rabbit rested under the tree. He got comfortable. Then he stretched out.Soon he was lying flat on the ground. He fell asleep. He snored loudly.Tortoise walked slowly. He kept walking. And walking. And walking.He walked to the tree where Rabbit was sleeping. He did not stop. He kept walking and walking and walking.Tortoise never stopped. He didn’t take a rest. He just walked.He kept walking until he got to the finish line.All the animals cheered. They were amazed that Tortoise won. He never gave up. He just kept walking and walking and walking.The cheering was very loud. It woke Rabbit. He jumped up from his sleep!“What happened? What’s that noise?”asked Rabbit. He began to run.He ran faster and faster and faster. But he was too late. Tortoise had already crossed the finish line. Tortoise won the race.以下翻译来自百度翻译：欢迎使用ALO7的学习能力。

Popular Chinese StoriesThe Death of Qū Yuán 屈原On the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, the day of the dragon boat festival (Duānwǔ jié 端午节), people eat zòngzi 粽子(although people also eat them at other times, since they are delicious).The association of zòngzi with this occasion is said to be in memory of the poet QŪ Yuán 屈原, an official of the state of Chǔ 楚during the Warring States Period (period 04e, 200s and 300s BC). The famous warring states included Yān 燕, Qí 齐, Zhào 赵, Wèi 魏, Hán 韩, Chǔ 楚, And Qín 秦, as well as the diminutive Wèi 卫, Dōngzhōu 东周, Sòng 宋, and Lǔ 鲁(where Confucius lived). Among all these, the state of Qín was by far the most powerful and sought to dominate or absorb the others. (Eventually it succeeded. That’s where the Qín dynas ty came from.)Qū Yuán was a scion of an aristocratic family and a trusted counselor at the court of king Huái, 怀), where he was an advocate of close alliances with the other states in the hope of frustrating Qín’s expansionist ambitions. But he was hated by an envious competitor for the king's attention. In the late 280s BC the state of Qín 秦broke its alliance with Chǔ, and many battles ensued. eventually Qín suggested that the Chǔ monarch go to Qín for peace talks. Qū Yuán counseled against doing so, for he did not trust Qín. But king Huái's son Qǐng Xiāng 楚顷襄argued in favor of the trip, and king Huái went.As Qū Yuán had predicted, king Huái was arrested, held in exile in Qín for three years, and finally executed. Meanwhile his son Qǐng Xiāng became monarch, and selected Qū Yuán's old enemy as his prime minister, who immediately persuaded him to have Qū Yuán banished. He moved to his old home in what is today northern Húběi 湖北and spent his time collecting folklore and writing poetry.In 278 BC Qín forces, under the command of the famous general BÁI Qǐ 白起, occupied Yǐng 郢, the Chǔ capital (in modern Jiānglíng county 江陵县in Húběi).Qū Yuán was in despair both at the injustice of his exile and at the loss of his homeland to the Qín conquerors because his advice had not been followed. He commemorated his sorrow in a long poem still widely respected, called "Leaving the Tumult" or “The Sorrow of Leaving” (Lǐsāo 离骚) (usually translated “Encountering Sorrow”) and in many other melancholy poems, often including t he word lament (āi 哀) in the title, such as "Lament for [the Fall of] Yǐng" (Āi Yǐng 哀郢). Eventually on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, overcome by his depression, Qū Yuán committed suicide by jumping into the nearby Mìluó river 汨罗江.People were unable to find his body, and made sacrifices to his spirit by throwing rice into the river. Later, fearing that the rice would be too readily eaten by fish, they tied the rice into wrappings of bamboo leaves. (Other accounts say that the wrapped rice was thrown in to feed the fish and thus prevent them from eating Qū Yuán's body.)Although people do not throw rice into rivers any more, the custom of preparing and eating rice wrapped in bamboo leaves (zòngzi 粽子) is still associated with the fifth day of the fifth month.如有侵权请联系告知删除，感谢你们的配合！。

英语阅读中华小故事3分钟中华文化源远流长，其中包含了许多寓意深刻、引人深思的小故事。

这些故事不仅传承了我国优秀的传统文化，还能帮助我们学习英语。

下面是三个英语阅读中华小故事，希望您能在阅读的过程中，感受到中华文化的魅力，同时提升英语水平。

故事一：The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the MountainsOnce upon a time, there was a foolish old man who lived at the foot of two high mountains.He was very upset because the mountains blocked his view and made it difficult for him to travel.One day, he decided to move the mountains.People laughed at him, saying it was an impossible task.However, the old man believed that with perseverance, he could achieve his goal.He worked hard every day, digging and carrying the earth away.His determination inspired his sons, and they joined him in his efforts.Finally, after many years, the foolish old man and his sons successfully removed the mountains.这个故事告诉我们，只要有恒心和毅力，就能战胜一切困难。

故事二：The Painted DragonLong ago, there was a painter named Zhang Sengyou who was famous for his skill in painting dragons.One day, he decided to paint four dragons on the walls of a temple.When he finished, the dragons looked so realistic that they seemed to be flying out of thewalls.However, Zhang Sengyou felt that something was missing.He realized that the dragons needed eyes to make them come to life.So, he carefully painted eyes on them.Suddenly, the dragons came to life and flew away.From this story, we learn that the finishing touch can make all the difference.这个故事告诉我们，细节决定成败。

中国故事英文版3—5分钟In ancient China, there was a magical monkey named Sun Wukong who possessed immense strength and intelligence. He was known as the Monkey King. One day, the Monkey King learned about the existence of powerful weapons and decided to seek them out.After a long and perilous journey, Sun Wukong arrived at the Undersea Palace, where he discovered a magical staff called the Ruyi Jingu Bang. This staff had the ability to change its size at will and weigh as little or as heavy as desired.With the Ruyi Jingu Bang in his possession, the Monkey King became even mightier. He could defeat any opponent and was seemingly invincible. This newfound power, however, made the Monkey King arrogant and disrespectful towards the gods.The gods could not tolerate the Monkey King's arrogance and sought to subdue him. They called upon the most powerful deity, the Jade Emperor, to teach the Monkey King a lesson. The Jade Emperor challenged him to a contest of strength, which the Monkey King readily accepted.During the contest, the Jade Emperor unleashed his celestial forces, but the Monkey King easily evaded and defeated them. Realizing that he could not defeat the Monkey King through brute force, the Jade Emperor decided to trap him under a mountain, where he would remain for five centuries.After five hundred years, a monk named Xuanzang began his journey to the west in search of sacred Buddhist scriptures. The heavens, recognizing his noble quest, sent the Monkey King to accompany and protect him on his journey.As they traveled together, the Monkey King faced numerous challenges and overcame perilous obstacles with his agilemind and physical prowess. Through their adventures, the Monkey King learned humility and the importance of compassion.Finally, after many trials and tribulations, Xuanzang and the Monkey King reached their destination. The sacred scriptures were obtained, and the Monkey King was rewardedfor his loyalty and transformation by attaining Buddhahood.In this classic Chinese tale, the Monkey King's journey represents the internal journey of self-discovery, and the transformation from arrogance to humility. It teaches the values of loyalty, courage, and the power of redemption.The Legend of the Monkey King is a beloved Chinese story that has been passed down through generations. Its enduring popularity worldwide demonstrates the universal appeal of themes such as personal growth, friendship, and theimportance of overcoming one's flaws.With its vibrant characters and profound teachings, the tale of the Monkey King continues to captivate and inspire readers of all ages across the globe.。

Starfall 家长辅导参考（4） - I'm Reading- 我在读书篇非常不好意思，仔仔和妞妞妈最近这段时间在研究Raz-kids 和Reading A-Z，这是一个非常好的以提高孩子听书读能力的英语分级阅读网站，适合美国4到12岁的孩子。

网站有1000多本图书，有朗读，有孩子自己跟读录音，还有小测验，加入班级的孩子每完成一项作业都有小星星拿，拿了小星星可以买东西武装自己的家，中国孩子考大学前都可以用，个人感觉最高级z级的书，难度和新概念第三四册有一拼。

这个网站另外还有写作班，科学班，数学班等等，但是加入班级之后的孩子，老师的监督批改是非常重要的部分。

等介绍完starfall 再介绍这个给大家。

Starfall 第四部分 I’m Reading 是一些简单的故事等，句式也很简单。

包括6个小部分：1. Three Little Plays 三个小独幕剧2. Fiction（小故事）和Nonfiction（非小故事）3. Comics 滑稽剧4. Folk Tales 民间故事5. Greek Myths 希腊神话6. Chinese Fables 中国寓言（主要是成语故事）每一个部分都是由一些小故事或者小独幕剧组成，它们都是由大量的简单句组成，是最初级的阅读材料。

孩子的阅读，都可以从这里开始。

每篇文章的每个单词，点点，都会有朗读，有些文章的句子前面有小耳朵图标，点点小耳朵，就可以听到整句话的朗读。

比如：Happy Monther’s Day， Dear Dragon（母亲节快乐）讲一个小男孩请小龙和他一起做一个母亲节礼物，然后送给母亲。

点小耳朵图标就会有整句整段的朗读，点某个单词，就会有单词的朗读。

所以孩子可以很容易地从单词到句子进行跟读。

这部分3岁以下的孩子有可能会觉得枯燥，可以用作床头小故事，3岁以上就可以用作学习阅读和朗读了。

下面就一个一个地来介绍：1. Three Little Plays 三个小独幕剧Dog and Cat（狗和猫）； Guess，Guess（你猜，你猜）；Cookies（饼干）最上边的Introduction 是人物介绍，也就是小男孩和小女孩对话要来演出下边的三个独幕剧。

视频字幕The Story of China（4）The Ming DynastyI. ScriptIn all countries,the first duty of the state is to protect the people from anarchy,invasion and insurrection. But sometimes in history, the rebels become the rules. In the Story of China, we've reached the 14th century and beginning of China's most dazzling age. Here in Nanjing, is the tomb of the founder of that age-one of the greatest Chinese emperors. And yet the man who built this was a rebel." The story of the man who rose to this splendour is well, literally, incredible. He came from the poorest peasant family. His mother and father had given him away when he was a child. He'd spent years as a wandering beggar, as a penniless Buddist monk. He'd risen through the ranks of the secret peasant societies fighting against the government and won a series of staggering victories, both against the government and against his peasant rivals. When he became emperor,he gave himself the title Hongwu-literally 'above all mighty in war.' TheTerminator.He wassuspicious,coarse,brutal,utterly ruthless, but a creative genius. And he founded one of the greatest eras of stability in government and in society and high civilization in the history of the world. The new dynasty was to be called 'the bringer of light'Ming."China has been a great power for most of its history and yet repeatedly invaded and subjugated by foreigners.When the future emperor Hongwu was young. China was under the rule of the Mongols, whose empire stretched to the gates of Europe. But in the 1350s,the Mongol empire began to crumble. In China, resistance armies rose against them in different regions. But then the land was torn apart as warlords fought each other in civil war. Chaos ruled but opportunity beckoned for the peasant generalZhu Yuanzhang. Here in Nanjing, Zhu made his stronghold. With his reputation for justice and good governance, vast number of refugees flowed into the city-a safe haven in time of war. And now the people called on Zhu to declare himself emperor. But he was a peasant,and unwilling to take power. So, he asked for a sign-a tale told by the traditional storytellers."ZhuYuanzhang had a remarkable life story. He had been both an outlaw and a monk. But when he achieved success and fame,the people wanted him to be the Emperor. Feeling unworthy, Zhu asked the heavens ' Should I become Emperor?'The week before he ascended the throne it rained every day. But on the day of his coronation the sun burst through the clouds. Zhu Yuanzhang sat on throne and said contentedly: ' It was indeed the will of heaven'."That same year-1368-now the Hongwu Emperor, he drove the Mongols out of North China and made Nanjing capital of his new dynasty. And now he sets out to rebuild the Chinese state, not with Confucian ideas of virtue, which had inspired the Song Golden Age, but by force and fear. He surrounded his capital with giant walls to show the might and legitimacy of Ming rule."It's just epic, isn't it?This isn't a castle, it's a gate!Three great courtyards lead to the main gate. From the moat, you've got to cover about a kilometer to get through it into the city." Believing himself to be guided by heaven,Hongwu reshaped the layout of Nanjing as a cosmic city based on ancient Daoist mystical beliefs."The capital that emperor had created was the greatest city on Earth and it still has the greatest set of city walls on Earth,33kilometers of them. 'Like a crouched tiger and a coiled dragon,' it was said,' snaking over hills and round the rivers and lakes.' It wasthought to represent the constellation of Ursa Major, the Big Dipper along with Ursa Minor and the 13 cities matched the 13 great stars. The centre of power would replicate the harmonious order of heaven whose mandate had now passed to the ruler of the Ming. "Hongwu now set out to put all-powerful state at the centre of people's lives. His thirst for control is even stamped on the bricks in the city wall."Now, look at this. This is a wonderful insight into Ming power. Late 1300s, they got a census,they registered households, the country was thousand of what I suppose what we'd call tithings-groups of communities. And 152 of these areas contributed to making the bricks for this vast enterprise here. And all the bricks are stamped with who made it and where it was made. Just look at that!So, if you made a bad brick they knew who you were and where to find you."But for the real story of Hongwu's revolution, you have to leave the city and go out into the countryside,for here he thought was the true soul of China. Born a peasant, Hongwu identified with the peasants.He registered all land to make taxes fairer,he had irrigation systems built and reduced the demands for forced labour. For him, the village was the basis of society.Villages like this one:Tangyue in Anhui.Here, the Baofamily was head of their tithing and they soon rose in the Ming state.-"Let's just have a look at where we are. I've got your lovely map here."-"Yes. This location is the east side of this village and also a main entrance from the Shexiancounty.So,here is the main ritual centre in the Ming dynasty."-"So, we've got a street, we've got an academy for education and a temple."-"Yeah. "-"So, the village is making... People are making money now."-"Yes."And the family used their money to build ancestral halls for their men and their women,who did their duty as loyal wives and mothers under the new order. The Bao story is told in the old printed edition of their family history,first put together in the Ming.-"So, how many copies of something like this would be produced?"-"There wouldn't be many copies.Each family would keep theirs carefully. In the Ming dynasty the most prominent figure was Bao Xiangxian. He had a senior post in the Ministry of War. When there was a rebellion in the borderlands,he was sent to handle it."Hongwu had been an outlaw in these hills and his bitter experience of the time of anarchy drove him to compile an all-embracing set of laws and punishments the Great Ming Code.It drew on a thousand years of Chinese law,but its severity has never been forgotten.Here, one local story has been turned into a play showing Ming law at work.An innocent woman is condemned for the murder of her new husband.Accused of infidelity, she's tortured and executed by a harsh magistrate."I play a woman whose husband went missing. Searching, she found his body by the dam.So she went to the magistrate to ask for the case to be investigated."But the body on the dam wasn't her husband. He turns up, but too late.Hongwu's strict law had taken its course.But as the tale is remembered by the people of this town,the letter of Ming law was not always justice."Punishment under the Ming was very cruel, especially to women.The wooden donkey and hand-clamping caused awful pain and humiliation."So, like other autocrats in history, Hongwu wanted to force people to be good.In a country so vast and so diverse,the state had to be seen to be strong."If I'm lenient," he said, "how am I a good ruler?"How will the people live peaceful lives?"Hongwu's rule rested on the hard realities of power. But his grandfather had been a village diviner and the emperor also believed implicitly in divination. "I rest neither night nor day," he said,"to restore the ancient customs of the people."By returning to the roots of Chinese culture,he thought he could find the Dao -the true way...the right direction. The Wu family firm has been making these divinations compasses since the Ming."We use a meteorite passed down from our ancestors to magnetise the needle. It interacts with the Earth's magnetic field so it works forever."The Ming dynasty itself would last for nearly 300 years.But Hongwu's reign would be a turning point in Chinese history. He concentrated power in the person o f the emperor himself. It would prove a dangerous legacy. In 1398 he died and China was plunged into crisis."If a person of such authority, of such stature, dies...Who takes over?And is the next person in line as able with the same kind of vision?Could he do the job?"As his successor, Hongwu had named his grandson.But the boy's uncle rose against him."He took the excuse of weeding out disloyal ministers,and staged an uprising. And then after three years of civil war,he took the throne and became the Yongle Emperor."Yongle , it means perpetual happiness.And when a tyrant calls himself that you have to watch out.Having done away with his nephew, he ruthlessly purged his enemies."Of course people knew he was a usurper, but there were rumoursalso that he was illegitimate that he hadn't been the son of the first emperor, Hongwu.So he ordered all the ministers of the previous ruler to swear allegiance to him or die.And among them was the chief minister, Fang Xiaoru. Loyal, severe, honest.He was ordered to write the edict proclaiming the legitimacy of the new emperor.He threw his brush down. 'I would rather die,' he said, 'You are not the true emperor.Where is your nephew?' The emperor ordered his death, but with the most cruel sentence that was possible under Chinese law -death by nine degrees.That meant that not only you died, but your parents and your grandparents and your children and your grandchildren and your brothers and your cousins and your nephews,to nine degrees of relationship.And the emperor paused and said,'But make it ten.' "And now Yongle took a momentous decision.In 1403 he ordered the building of a new capitalat his own power base 700 miles to the north.There, on top of the old Mongol capital, he built a vast new city -Beijing."This is Tiananmen Square in the heart of today's Beijing,and it's a great place to get a sense of the majestic scale of the Ming Dynasty city.Over there Tian'anmen Gate -the gate of heavenly peace.With the famous portrait of Chairman Mao above it.You go through the gate and you're into the imperial city and the forbidden city in its very heart."The construction of Beijing took a million men 20 years.Like other autocrats in history, Yongle wanted to create an architecture of absolute power.But Ming Beijing was more than an imperial capital,it was also a vast ritual space where the emperorpetitioned the powers of heaven to ensure that fertility of the Earthand the stability of the social order."Well, this is the end point of that great way that we traced all the way from Tiananmen Square.It's the altar of heaven.This is the site of the most sacred rituals in the Ming Dynasty state.I find this an incredibly moving place, even when you're surrounded with all the business of tourism.This altar symbolizes that Chinese surge to find harmony between the three layers of the cosmos, symbolized in this the Earth, humanity and the heavens."Reaping the benefits of stability,in the early 1400s small market towns sprang up everywhere,and China's economy began to grow and diversify.In a gigantic engineering project, the Grand Canalwas refurbished for 1,000 miles between Beijing and the south,ferrying raw materials, timber and rice up to the new capital.It's still a mainstay of the Chinese economy today.-"So this is a nice way of life Mr Hu. I like the calmness of it."-"Yes,it is calm. My whole family is on the boat.We've got bedrooms and a toilet at the back.When we are free or have guests we play mahjong or watch TV."-"How much of the year do you spend on the boat?"-"Basically 350 days on the boat and the rest at home."Helped by the Grand Canal, in the 15th century China's economy became once more the largest in the world."Although the renovation was an imperial project,there's thousands of small operators - individual boat owners,like Mr Hu here, who conducts their own business.A person wrote at the time, 'Travel up and down the canaland everybody is doing business.' "So the Ming saw the spread of a mercantile mentality across China -making money out of trade.The population rose to between 150 and 200 million.Incredibly, in the15th century, when less that three million lived in Tudor England,a third of the people of the world lived under Ming rule.So after the shock of the Mongol occupation China was restored,and in Chinese eyes the borders of the Ming were again those of civilization itself.And now, rather like today, China went out to the world.In the early 1400s, decades before Columbus and Vasco da Gama,they sent seven great voyages westwards, under Admiral ZhengHe.One of the fleet assembly places was the bay of Quanzhouon the coast of Fujian."Here in this great natural lagoon is what the Chinese in the Ming Dynasty called the gathering place of the ships.This is where those huge expeditions waited at anchor for the monsoon winds.Huge fleets - 63 ocean-going vessels -the biggest of them with 28,000 crews,just imagine it,heading out to the barbarian countries of the west."Zheng He was a high-ranking Muslim courtier - an eunuch.He wasn't sent to explore or trade, let alone to conquer,but to receive tribute and show off the glory of the YongleEmperor.As for the ships themselves,little was known till the modern excavation of the Ming dockyards in Nanjing.What they found suggests the largest boats could have reached 240 feet long -the biggest wooden ships yet made.And they're building a replica now in Nanjing.-"Mike, if you look at this assembly shop for a boat,it's pretty sizeable, isn't it?"-"It's sensational. It's absolutely amazing."-"This is not complete yet, it's only half the size."It has six main decks, with watertight compartments and a great decorated stern towering 60 feet above the keel."All these planks, they're naturally curved."Incredibly, it's said Zheng He had 60 of these large vessels.What they called the treasure ships.-"It's just an absolutely fantastic, isn't it?"-"From the inside it looks much bigger than outside."-"It's amazing, amazing.And how many masts would a big ship like this have had?"-"There are six masts, all together,with the two main masts in the middle.The tallest one is 38 meters.That's huge. That's huge.It's big mast.Because only that kind of size of sail and mast can drive this boat."-"You remember Zheng He's inscription says,'And our sails, billowing like clouds.' ""Yes!"" 'Pushed us on day and night' ."-"Exactly!That's the exact description!"-"Fantastic."-"When we have all these sails in full wind it'll look like that.""There's nothing approaching the treasure ships still afloat today.But an ocean-going junk sails out of Hong Kongfor a children's charity, and I hitched a ride."And today, as China reaches out again to the west,Zheng He has become a national hero.A symbol for the new self-confident world of Chinese expansionism and naval might.The great Ming voyages were made possibly by Chinese inventions :the sternrudder, watertight compartments and the magnetic compass,which they already had in the Tang Dynasty."So how did they navigate?Well, didn't have charts like modern charts, but Chinese merchants had sailed to the Persian Gulf before and east Africans far back as the Tang Dynasty.And this is one of the portolan charts that they used.Very schematic maps of direction of travel.A bit like a London Tube map, almost.Top of the page is actually India. North is that way,you sail this way from China,and the main landmarks are all actually written down in little boxes.The area of Mumbai there.Further on, the area of the Gulf of Cambay,and then towards Pakistan,the Makran Coast and Iran.And there's an associated handbook which gives you the distances between the different ports and the star directions, too."The seven voyages between 1405 and 1433 went across the Indian Ocean to the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea and down the coast of east Africa.They brought back new knowledge, rare foods and plants and exotic animals.Even a giraffe, which the Chinese identified with the mythical unicornan auspicious sign for the Yongle Emperor. But after the sixth voyage, Yongle died.And after one more expedition the new emperor, Xuande, called a halt."So why did they stop?Ming Dynasty at that point was the greatest power on Earth, maybe 200 million people.They'd been the great scientific innovators.They'd made the great inventions with which the West would later dominate the world.For some western commentators it shows that Chinese lacked the will to pursue the boundaries of knowledge.It would be like stopping Moon exploration at Apollo 8. But maybe there's somethingelse.Maybe it's about how you use technology.And perhaps the Mingscholar-bureaucrats in the end realised that their interests were better served pursuing the traditional goals of Chinese civilization of achieving harmony between human kind and the cosmos within the borders of China."The truth is, dominating the wider world was not on the Chinese agenda.For the Ming, after all, China was the world.But there may have been a more pressing practical reason for giving up on sea power the threat from their old enemies, the Mongols.Out to the north, Ming armies made almost annual expeditions beyond the mountains into the vast steppe lands of Mongolia.And then in 1449 the Zhengtong Emperor was defeated and captured by the Mongols -the greatest military fiasco in the Ming period.And that led to a massive rebuilding of the Great Walland a new mood of defensiveness."This is the Juyongguan Pass -one of the most famous passes in Chinese history.As important in Chinese history as the Khyber is in the history of India.What you're looking at now, mainly the creation of the Ming Dynasty.You can see the Great Wall snaking down from the mountains all around us, coming down to this point, and down there, too.And it's coming down here to a great fortress.The Chinese emperors called it the First Fortress of the World.See the series of gates where the road originally ran out to Mongolia.The garrison town rooftops over there, and up there the Buddhist and Daoist temples that served the people who lived here.Bristling withweaponry,armoured bowmen on the walls and the watchtowers,beacons to alert the defences,as the Ming Emperors start to define Chinaas a Han civilizationagain,against what lay in the world beyond."But at home, China was changing.Especially in the rich cities of the south like Suzhou.Ming China had begun as agricultural state with a stifling command economy,but now the growth of the market gave birth to a new urban moneyed class,who would begin to loosen the grip of Ming autocracy.Suzhou, they said, was heaven on Earth.Like Renaissance Florence, with its high cultureand its palaces and mansions.These days you can even stay in them.This was the house of the Fang family.They were only middling merchants,but as you can see,they lived the good life."And in your Ming Dynasty guest room there's fine furniture, as you can see,a wooden bath that the servants would fill for you in the evening,and a lovelyfour-poster bed hung with muslin mosquito nets -very necessary here in Suzhou.30 rooms,ancestral hall and a shrine room and a little family school.All belonging to the one extended family."The Fang family had joined a new world of conspicuous consumption, of private wealth and taste.On their table the finest blue-glaze porcelain bought by the new rich from their local art dealers,and made by thousands of indentured workers in the state pottery kilns.To meet the consumer demand old arts reached new heights under the Ming.Among them lacquer making.It's a craft that demands incredible attention to detail.The best work was so coveted that Ming collectors travelled hundreds of miles to buy the top brand names from the most famous houses.Now the Gan family are reviving the old techniques."When the lacquer is thick enough we polish the bowl to make the surface smooth and create beautiful patterns."These gorgeous things would soon become all the rage in Europe, too.Exported by Ming merchants, paid for by New World silver,as China connected with the growing world economy.And wealth brought leisure.Time to read for both men and women.This was the golden age of Chinese fiction,with novels like the Plum in the Golden Vase,where middle class morals were now the subject of Sex and the City satire."Yueniang's eyes were framed by willow shaped eyebrows.She had round breasts and the slimmest waist her movements were graceful and her steps small. Transfixed hereached out to touch her. Yueniang was deeply offended by this advance.But what happens next-will he win her over?We shall see!"Such confusions of pleasure were a long way from the austere world of the first Ming Emperor.Even fashion was now no longer the preserve of the ruling class.And as regards designer labels, well,Suzhou was all the rage."If it wasn't made in Suzhou,people said, people just didn't want to wear it.The hems go up the hems go down,and the fuddy duddy complained these new people,with their newfangled fashions, are erasing the class differences which were implicit in the old, traditional styles of costume."In the cotton and silk industries demand skyrocketed.And Suzhou silk was the best.In every village around Suzhou, they said, the people devoted all their energies to earning a living from silk.A proletariat of textile workers was emerging,but critics now asked was all this pursuit of wealth making a better world?-"Hello, how are you? "-"Hello, fine."-"I'm just looking at your beautiful silk."-"Yes, this a very traditional material."-"May we have a look?Which one do you like?"-"Yeah, the one... It looks like Chinese imperial gown, doesn't it?This is the kind of thing the Mandarins used to wear."-" Yes.This is like gold colour. In the pattern is long life.The meaning is very good - the long life.And here are five bats."-"Beautiful. "-"Yes."-"And people buy this to make dresses or clothes or what?For making wedding dress. For Chinese wedding dress.Maybe Chinese man, the jacket is nice."-"For men too?Really?"-"Yes.Like this one, maybe.I show you."-"Oh, that is beautiful. "-"This is nice."-"You know here is a dragon.The dragon, for a man, it's a perfect pattern."-"Oh, right. So it's strength?The dragon is strong and brave?And good luck as well?"-"Yes, it's like a king!"-"Like a king. The symbol of the king.Yes, of course!Yeah, the emperor wears dragons! "-"Yes."So to paraphrase DrJohnson,if you were tired of Ming Suzhou,you were tired of life.And when you'd made your money and retired,you came home and left your mark with a lovely garden."The founder and owner of this garden was an official in the Ming dynasty. It took him 16 years to complete and it covers 12 acres.Working in this garden gives me great pleasure every day. If I could,I'd work here all my life.It is hard to express my feelings about this beautiful place."This was one of 90 gardens in Suzhou.Adorned with playful poems and inscriptions,it was a feast for the senses.A far cry from Hongwu's day,when the land was simply there to be ploughed by the peasants."These private gardens in the Ming Dynasty were rich men's passions.Passion being the operative word.They travelled hundreds of miles to bring backweirdly-shaped stones to place in the garden.They dug artificial hills, like this one,on which they placed gazebos where you could take in the different view point the Distant Fragrance Hall where the lotuses were planted,the Magnolia Hall, and even better,the Scent of Snow and Rosy Clouds Hall.The pleasures of the Ming for some."The gardens were nature in miniature.And as for nature at large,Ming thinkers had a lot to say about that, too,in a time that saw the rise of tourism andguidebooks.Especially in the remote highlands down to Yunnan and Vietnam.Here the Ming had opened up new territories with exotic tribes and peoples.And intrepid travel writers now describe their landscapes and geology.The most famous Ming travel writer was Xu Xiake."In my eyes, he is like a saint.He was a passionate traveller and a great man.He went to extraordinary places and had a completely original mind.I think he is a saint and a great historical figure."Xu wrote about nature and feeling like the European Romantics.In his record she sounds like a 19th-century natural scientist.But in all his wanderings,from the heartland to the edge of Ming China,what we never sense is the existence of a world beyond.And the world beyond was getting closer.In August 1582,a visitor arrived in the tiny Portuguese trading post of Macau on the South China Sea.It was an event of no apparent significance in the greater scheme of things.But its repercussions would be world-shaking.The visitor was an Italian Jesuitcalled MatteoRicci,and his mission, unbelievably,was to convert China to Christianity.The founding of Macau had been part of the extraordinary expansion of European powers in the few decades since Columbus discovered the New World.Small maritime states on the Atlantic seaboard,they were nothing compared with the greatness and antiquity of China.But with their new knowledge,and propelled by Chinese inventions,it was the Europeans, not the Chinese,who would seize the time.And it all began with a simple trading deal."This is the old fortress on the top of Macau.Portuguese had made their earliest explorations of the Chinese coast in 1513-14.And then in 1557 the Ming government allowed them to actually settle on this peninsula and to live here.Not a formal treaty,and the Ming government looked after them very carefully.They had a landward wall with garrisons to make sure that they didn't come out of here, except at the allotted times -twice a year, when they could sail up to Canton to trade."It was the Europeans' first foothold.Here in the south, Ricci worked for 15 years learning to speak Chinese like native.And then, in 1598, he set off overland to Beijing.The China he travelled through, he wrote was the best-governed state on Earth,and a deeply moral civilization.But Christianity, he thought,would be the completion of their faith.To achieve that, his idea was to go to the very top to find a Chinese emperor like Constantine,who'd converted the Roman Empire to Christianity.He's an honorary Chinese person?Yeah, a great person.He didn't succeed in that,but astonishingly there are 70 million Chinese Christians today.And in a sense you could say their stories begins with Ricci.-"When he was in Shaozhou he wrote two important books.One is a true doctrine of the Lord of Heaven -that's Catholic doctrine.And another one is Euclid's elements."-" Euclid's elements?"-" That's very important, you know, mathematical books.Even after Matteo'sdeath,people at that time, they say,'Oh, we have never had a foreigner to be buried in the capital.'And one important official at that time said,'One worthy only for the Euclid's elements can be buried here.'That's enough!""So you can see how important the works he has done."Most Chinese scholars were more interested in that new knowledge than what one described as "the Christian's strange theology."Ricci prepared for the emperor a map of the world,on which the Chinese learned of new continents,and saw that the world was far bigger than they'd ever imagined.And in Ricci's western science,the Mandarins found even more astonishing revelations." 'These Westerners are passionate about astronomy,'said one of the Chinese scholars.'And they've brought instruments with them connected with that science.And they believe that the Earthhangs in the firmament, and that it's a globe.And that if you go all the way round westwards,you end up going eastwards.And if you go all the way up northwards,you go over the top of the world,and then you travel south wards and come back to where to you started.' As you can see, it's an astrolabe.Oh, but what an astrolabe.Of course it enables you to take very accurate sun measurements and time measurements.The Chinese had used a lunar calendar prior to the arrival of the Jesuits, and MatteoRicci,and now they're, with imperial patronage,have switched their science to a solar calendar,which is much more accurate, of course."。

raz分级阅读m级别thegreatwallofchina练摘要：I.介绍RAZ 分级阅读M 级别A.RAZ 分级阅读的背景和目的B.M 级别的特点和难度II.介绍《The Great Wall of China》A.作者及书籍背景B.书籍主题和内容概述III.《The Great Wall of China》的主要内容A.长城的历史背景B.长城的建筑过程和结构特点C.长城在中国历史上的重要意义IV.练习题及答案解析A.阅读理解题B.词汇练习题C.思考题正文：RAZ 分级阅读是一款针对儿童阅读能力开发的英语分级阅读产品，旨在帮助孩子们逐步提高阅读能力，形成良好的阅读习惯。

M 级别是RAZ 分级阅读中的一个级别，适合具备一定英语基础，能够阅读简单英语文章的孩子们。

《The Great Wall of China》是一本M 级别的RAZ 分级阅读书籍，讲述了中国的长城。

这本书的作者以通俗易懂的语言，向孩子们展示了长城的壮丽景象，并介绍了长城的历史背景、建筑过程和结构特点。

通过阅读这本书，孩子们不仅能了解到有关长城的知识，还能感受到中国历史的厚重和伟大。

在《The Great Wall of China》这本书中，作者首先介绍了长城的历史背景，让孩子们了解到长城是为了抵御外敌侵略而修建的。

接下来，作者详细描述了长城的建筑过程和结构特点，如砖石结构的城墙、烽火台、关隘等。

最后，作者讲述了长城在中国历史上的重要意义，它是古代劳动人民智慧和勤劳的结晶，也是中华民族不屈不挠、自强不息的象征。

为了帮助孩子们更好地理解这本书，书后附有练习题。

这些练习题包括阅读理解题、词汇练习题和思考题。

阅读理解题让孩子们通过阅读文章，回答与文章内容相关的问题。

词汇练习题则让孩子们根据文章中的词汇，选择正确的中文释义。

思考题则鼓励孩子们思考长城在中国历史中的地位和作用。

总之，《The Great Wall of China》是一本很好的M 级别RAZ 分级阅读书籍，通过阅读这本书，孩子们不仅能学到有关长城的知识，还能培养自己的阅读能力和英语水平。

英语中国故事纭本三年级In the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC), there was a qi man who was always afraid that one day the sky would suddenly fall in and he would have nowhere to live. He was so worried about it that he ate and slept unhappily all day.When one of his friends learned of his worry, he was afraid it might damage his health, and went out of his way to reassure him, saying, "Gee, it's just a buildup of gas. And gas is everywhere. For example, you lift your legs, bend down, talk and breathe in the sky. Why do you worry that the sky will fall?"Still frightened, the Qi asked, "If the sky were a collection of gases, wouldn't the sun, moon and stars fall from the sky?""The sun, the moon and the stars are just masses of gas that shine. Even if they fall down, they won't hurt anyone."But qi's worries did not end. "What if the land sinks?" he asked. What should I do?""The earth," said his friend, "is only a pile of rocks. It goes in every direction. There is no place without rocks. For example, if you are standing and walking on the ground, why do you worry that it will sink in?"After listening to his friend's enlightening, the Qi man finally set his heart at rest and was very happy. His friends were glad that he was no longer hurting himself with unjustified sorrow.At that time, chang Luzi, a thinker of the State of Chu, was not impressed by the conversation between his countrymen and his friends. He commented with a smile: "The rainbows, the clouds, the mists, the winds and rains, and the changes of the four seasons, all these accumulated gases together make up the sky; And the mountains, the rivers and the seas, the wood and the flint, all these piles together make up the earth. Since you know that the sky is the accumulation of air and the earth is the accumulation of lumps, how can you be sure that the sky and the earth will not change? It seems to me that heaven and earth are nothing more than a small object in the universe, and yet one of the tangible things, which in itself is not terminating and cannot be exhausted; It is natural that it should be difficult to imagine and understand. Qi's fear that the sky would cave in was indeed a little far off; But his friends said it was impossible, and that was not true. The sky and the earth cannot be without being bad, and they will be, and how can people not be afraid that when they are going to be bad?"For this argument, the Warring States period of the Zheng imperial kou also have a view. "It is absurd to say that heaven and earth can be bad; It is also absurd to say that heaven and earth cannot be bad. Whether heaven and earth will break down or not, we do not yet know. But to say that heaven and earth will be bad is an opinion, and to say that they will not be bad is also an opinion. It was as if the living did not know what it was like to be dead, and the dead did not know what it was like to be alive; The future does not know the past, and the past cannot predict the future. If so, why should I care whether heaven and earth are bad or not?"There is no doubt that if heaven and earth are viewed with today's scientific common sense, we can be sure that the views of the Qizhong and his friends, as well as those of the ancient thinkers Lu Zi and Liyukou, were biased. But the story still shows that people should not be trapped in endless worries about problems that cannot be recognized or solved by an era. It's better to be open-minded in life.。