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Reading A Influtential historic figures in Shanxi
Reading B Historical literary figures in Shanxi

influtential historic figures

Shanxi was called Jin State in ancient times. It has a very long history along which thousands of outstanding figures appeared, including emperors, generals and ministers，cultural figures, strong-willed and valiant commanders, heroic women, and the forerunners of Shanxi merchants. Their great deeds and moral integrity as well as their talents and achievements had very positive influence on the society then. They set models for later generations and left behind valuable intellectual wealth and cultural heritages.
Chonger was one of the Five Powers in the Spring and Autumn Period. In the nine years of his reign, he reformed in politics and economy, laying a solid foundation for the later powerful and prosperous Jin State. He also stipulated a series of laws and decrees which not only helped Jin State become a superpower in the Central Plain but also stabilized the then social pattern to some extent. Li Yuan, the founder of the Tang Dynasty, was not born in Shanxi, but he was once an official of the Sui Dynasty in Shanxi, and at the later years of the Sui Dynasty, Li Yuan and his son, Li Shimin，commanded their troops in Jinyang (the present Taiyuan) and seized Chang'An by force, starting the Tang Dynasty. Wu Zetian was the only empress in Chinese history. She held the state power nearly half a century. The society at her time was very stable and prosperous. But on the other hand, Wu Zetian was a very cruel empress. She killed many people including imperial concubines and even her own child, and put her relatives in important positions. Such doings of hers were condemned in the history.
In the long course of Chinese civilization, there appeared in Shanxi many famous people who assisted their emperors in running the country successfully. One of the representatives was Di Renjie who was a loyal minister and a prominent statesman during Wu Zetian's time. He was bright and capable, and was called oriental Sherlock Holmes because he was good at detecting complicated cases. At the same time, he was concerned about people's life and made many great achievements. The second was KouZhun in the Northern Song Dynasty, who had been passed mouth to mouth for thousands of years. He was upright, never stooped to flattery, and dared to remonstrate the emperor and criticize him directly. Sima Guang was another statesman and historian who lived in the Northern Song Dynasty, too. It took him 19 years to compile the past historical records into a book named General Mirror for the Aid of Government, which is the first book on governmental management in the world, covering politics, military affairs, relationships among different nationalities, economy, culture, and comments on historical figures. Many experiences and lessons were summarized in the book for the rulers' reference in order to consolidate their ruling. The book enjoyed a very important position among all the Chinese historical books.
There had been uncountable divine and mighty, intelligent and courageous generals in the history of Shanxi, such as Yuchi Gong, Xue Rengui, Guo Ziyi, generals of Yang's Family, DiQing and so on. The most well-known one is Guan Yu. As one of the main generals of Shu State during the Three Kingdoms Period, he distinguished himself by peerless valor in a11 the battles, fought up and down the country so that his majesty was felt throughout the country. He was honored as the military sage and has been respected by people for thousands of years, which was justified by the fact that wherever there are Chinese people, there are the temples to worship him.
All the figures mentioned here, whether civil officials or military officers, possessed the Chinese traditional virtues. In other words, the Chinese moral spirits, which refer to loyalty, faith, humanity and wisdom, and bravery were incarnated in them. It was those loyal people who formed a great force to push the history forward. Faith is the norm of conducting and dealing with matters, and is regarded as the mainstream of our society. The core of humanity and wisdom is fraternity and being civilized while the basic of bravery is to inspire people to advance, struggle, innovate and pioneer. All these noble spirits are not only the reflection of Chinese traditional culture but also Shanxi people's precious spiritual wealth.

historical literary figures

Shanxi is an important origin of the Yellow River Culture. Shanxi culture contributed its share to the formation and development of Chinese culture, and played an important role in the history of Chinese civilization. That a large number of great literary figures appeared in each dynasty in Shanxi is just one of the manifestations of such a contribution.
Xun Zi was a famous thinker and literary writer in the Warring Period. He was the last representative of Confucianism before the Qin Dynasty. He had naive materialist thoughts, many of which were absorbed by Legalists. Han Feizi was Xun's disciple, who established the legalist doctrine, which provided an important theoretical basis for setting up the first centralism country. Their advanced thoughts were conformable to the trend of the times, and played a leading role in the progress of history.
Ban Jieyu was just one of the concubines of Emperor Cheng in the Han Dynasty, but she was also a woman poet who was good at composing poems and promoted the maturity of poems with seven characters in each line. Guo Pu, Bao Zhao, Xue Daoheng; Wang Tong were also very great poets and scholars in the West Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties and Sui Dynasty respectively. Wang Tong was equally famous with Lao Zi and Confucius. All of them enjoyed high reputation in the literary circles.
The golden time of ancient poems was in the Tang Dynasty. Shanxi poets at that time appeared in large numbers, shining like stars in the sky. It was very interesting that in the poetic circles then, there were several well-known poets whose family names were Wang. Wang Ji was Wang Tong's brother, and Wang Bo was Wang Tong's grandson, who was called one of the four most outstanding poets in the early years of the Tang Dynasty. Wang Chang-ling, Wang Zhihuan, and Wang Han were called frontier poets because their poems were mainly about the scenery of the frontier. But the greatest one among Wang's family was Wang Wei whose poems were mainly about the scenery with hills and waters and pastoral life. They say that pictures are hidden in his poetry and his poetry is hidden in his pictures. Bai Juyi was a good example of realistic poets at that time. He wrote 3 800 poems all his life, which headed the list of poets in the Tang Dynasty, and enjoyed equal popularity to Li Bai and Du Fu. Then we must mention Liu Zongyuan, the literary giant. Although he lived only less than 50 years, he created brilliant achievements in poems, prose, travel notes, fables, novels, essays, and literature theories. In the late Tang Dynasty, there were two great literary men whom we should not forget. One is Wen Tingjun, the other is Situ Kong. The former was the first one who had his own collection of Ci poems while the latter presented his theory on poems in the form of poems, which was the first of its kind in the literary history.
With the passage of time, the history came into the Song Dynasty, which reminds us of an important historian, Sima Guang. His great work, General Mirror for the Aid of Government, showed both his noble cultural ideals and his wise and prescient military strategies for running and stabilizing the country to the later generations.
During the period of Jin and Yuan, nomadic people leaped on horses and flaunt their might owner the whole country. However, the culture in Shanxi still remained flourishing. Yuan Haowen, the first-class poet, lived in this period. Yuan Drama was the beginning of formal Chinese drama. There were four very famous playwrights then, three of whom were from Shanxi, namely, Guan Hanqing, Bai Pu and Zheng Guangzu.
In the late Yuan and early Ming Dynasties, there appeared an unusual person in Shanxi, whose name was Luo Guanzhong. He wrote a great work, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which had stirred so many Chinese people's heart for hundreds of years. It was the earliest historical zhang hui novel in China. The novel appeals to both refined and popular tastes, having very deep influence on national spirit and cultural life, and it is regarded as the revelation of national history. Luo Guanzhong set up his immortal standing in the literary history of China by his work. Meanwhile, he added very rich materials to Chinese drama.
In the last Dynasty of feudal society, the Qing Dynasty, three literary men from Shanxi must be mentioned. The first one is Yan Ruoqu, an outstanding textualist in the early Qing Dynasty. When reading, he neither had blind faith in past scholars nor worshiped the famous writers blindly. He devoted himself to studying classical and historical works and finally became a fruitful scholar. Chen Tingjing was another scholar as well as a minister at that time, He was honest and upright all his life. As a learned scholar, he wrote many books and essays. In 1710, he was commissioned by Emperor Kang Xi to be the chief editor to compile Kang Xi Dictionary, which included the most Chinese characters. The last one is Fu Shan, who was versatile, righteous, thoughtful and ambitious. In addition to being good at poems, essays, calligraphy and paintings, he also made great achievements in medical science, such as internal medicine, gynecology, pediatrics and surgery.
Each person mentioned here can be regarded as a spiritual miracle. Such talented people are uncountable just like stars in the sky. It's very hard to cover all of them here. What we want to do is to list some famous literary people in order to commemorate them.

Reference ：
     英语导游教程纪春裴松青旅游教育出版社 2007
     西安导游技巧与实践姚宝荣西安外语音像教材出版社1997
     英语导游必读朱歧新中国旅游出版社 2006

Homework:
prepare the traits of excellent tour guide(P31-46)