《中华百年看天津》..
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1 《中华百年看天津》历史陈列英文讲解词
前言：
Welcome to Tianjin museum. Tianjin museum has a history of nearly 90 years;
this new building of our museum was set up in 2004. It’s the biggest museum in Tianjin
with more than 200,000 cultural relics. There are 8 exhibition halls, this one is the biggest
one called ‘Tianjin and modern China’. I’m very glad to introduce Tianjin’s history to you.
Tianjin’s history is the representative of China’s development from 19th century to 20th
century.
In 1404 AD, fortification and a city were built at Sancha Outlet, an intersection
where the Haihe river meets the Beijing-Hangzhou Canal, by the ruler of Ming Dynasty in
the hope of controlling the transportation on both rivers and sea since it was a vital region
which could connect the capital Beijing in the north, the southern part of Yangze river in
the South, Bohai sea in the east and Liaodong peninsular in the northeast.
一、英勇悲壮的抗争——第二次鸦片战争主战场
ZhuDi, the emperor Yongle of Ming Dynasty named it ‘Tianjin ’, which simply
names ‘the place where the emperor crossed the river’.
With the 300 years development of water transport of grain to the capital, salt
industry and commodity circulation and the burgeoning of culture and education，in 1731,
when the prefecture was established, Tianjin grew from a garrison command into a
medium-sized city. This is a model of a ship navigating in the Haihe River.
After further development and up to 1850 or so, TJ became the second largest city
in North China, next only to the capital of Peking.
This is the longest abacus in China, 3 meters long with 117 digits, used in
DaRentang, Pharmacy of TJ. The abacus was so large that it could be used for counting by
one or more shop assistant simultaneously, which mirrored the size of the Pharmacy and
business prosperity at that time.
These are the signboard of groceries; this one is a signboard of pawnshop.
The economic prosperity of TJ drew merchants from different places to do
business here. In order to nurture the friendship among people from the same place and
safeguard their own interests, these merchants founded a group of guilds in TJ. This is a 2 wooden tablet of Huaiqing Guild.
In ancient TJ, the continuity of a family depends on the vigorous population, so
people in that period often believed that the more children they had, the more blessing
they would get. Therefore, at that time, a lot of mud babies were put in front of the statue
of the goddess of pregnancy in the Tianhou Palace for people to take away so that the
goddess would bless women to bear sons.
This is a model of TJ before 1860, when TJ was opened as a trading port. TJ was in
the shape of a rectangle, long from east to west and short from north to south. The city
wall, which had four city gates, was 4526 meters in perimeter and about 12 meters in
height. In the reign of the Hongzhi in the Ming Dynasty, a drum tower was established in
center of the city. On the top of the tower, there was a big bell which stroke in the morning
and in the evening as a signal of opening and closing the city gates. On the 4 sides of the
drum tower, there were altogether 4 gates, each of which was decorated with a horizontal
stone tablet inscribed with North, South, West, and East. In 1900, the allied forces of 8
powers destroyed the city walls. Now there are four roads there.
With the start of Opium War in June 1840, China’s history entered into
semi-feudal and semi-colonial period. As Beijing’s gateway to the sea, TJ was the primary
city chosen by the western powers to impose political blackmail and military attacks on
China. Thus TJ also became the forefront of Chinese people’s resistance against foreign
invasions. This scenery shows the second safeguarding battle at Dagu port in TJ, in the
second opium war. It is the first victory achieved by Chinese people in fighting against the
foreign invaders.
On September 8, 1860, after the fall of TJ, the British and French allied forces (or
Europeans) invaded Beijing via TJ. On October 18, British Minister James Bruce Elgin
ordered to destroy YuanMingyuan-a gem of world culture. On October 24 and 25, 1860,
Britain and France compelled the Qing government to sign ‘The convention of Beijing’.
This convention provided TJ as a trading port, so that western colonial forces entered TJ
on a large scale, which marked the beginning of modern history of TJ. This picture is the
scene of the signing ceremony of China and Britain.
After Tianjin was opened as trading port, Catholicism spread very fast through
out the city. In 1869, a French built the Blessed Virgin Mary hurch in the area of Sancha
