美國第一夫人米歇爾中國旅游日志（四）

　　Today we drove about an hour north of Beijing to a village called Mutianyu to visit a section of the Great Wall of China, which was simply breathtaking. The scenery on the way there was beautiful – a wide vista of mountains and trees – so the car ride alone was a treat. But then, running along the highest ridges of the mountains, you see it: The Great Wall – one of the great marvels of human history.

　　今天我們驅(qū)車一小時來到北京北部的村莊慕田峪，游覽了中國長城的一部分，真是激動人心啊!那里的風(fēng)景非常美，放眼望去滿目青山綠樹，單單在車上看風(fēng)景就已經(jīng)是種享受了。然后登上群山中的最高峰，你就可以看到人類歷史上最偉大的奇跡之一：長城。

　　In its entirety, the Great Wall stretches from east to west across more than 13,000 miles of Chinese countryside (that’s about four times the length of the entire United States from Maine to Oregon!). It is not a single, uninterrupted wall, but rather a series of smaller walls which sometimes overlap and run parallel to each other.

　　長城東西總長度有13000英里(約等于從緬因州到俄勒岡州整個美國東西長度的4倍)，它并不是獨立不間斷的城墻，而是時而迂回重疊、彼此平行的一系列小城墻。

　　Certain sections of the Wall date back as far as the seventh century B.C., but the majority of the Great Wall we know today – including the section at Mutianyu – was built between the 1300s and the 1600s.

　　長城的某些部分要追溯到公元前17世紀(jì)，但我們今天所熟知的長城，包括慕田峪在內(nèi)的大部分都是在14世紀(jì)到17世紀(jì)之間建筑的。

　　To get to the Wall, we rode a cable car up a mountain (and we later rode back down on a long slide!). The section we visited is one of the more popular parts of the Wall for tourists, and it’s easy to see why. At Mutianyu, the Wall is roughly 20 to 25 feet tall and full of stairs, and there’s a watchtower every 100 yards or so. Those watchtowers serve as a reminder of why the Wall was built in the first place – to defend against attacks from armies descending from the north. Throughout its history, the Great Wall has gone through decades, even centuries, of ruin and disrepair. But it has always served as not only a physical barrier, but a psychological one to intimidate potential invaders.

　　我們乘坐纜車到了長城(回來的時候是通過一個長長的滑道!)我們參觀的是長城最受游客歡迎的地方，這里為什么最受歡迎其實一看就知道。在慕田峪，城墻大概有20至25英尺高，上面有很多臺階，同時大約每100碼就有一個瞭望臺。這些瞭望臺是為了紀(jì)念最初建筑長城的意義——防御北方敵人入侵。在長城的整個歷史中，有幾十年甚至幾個世紀(jì)，長城遭到破壞、年久失修。但現(xiàn)在長城不僅僅是一道實體屏障，還對潛在侵犯起著心理威懾作用。

　　During our visit to the Wall, I couldn’t stop thinking about what a massive undertaking it must have been to build it. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and peasants were given the dangerous, painstaking – and often fatal – task of carrying ton after ton of granite, brick, dirt, and wood through the forests, up over the hills, and down through the valleys to create this incredible structure. They did this year after year, decade after decade – and it’s because of their hard work and sacrifice that the Great Wall remains standing today.

　　游覽長城的過程中，我不禁思考這是多么大的工程量啊!成千上萬的士兵和農(nóng)民不辭勞苦、不懼危險，把一噸又一噸的花崗巖、磚塊、泥土及木材從山林運到山上、再運到山谷，才鑄就了如此驚人的杰作。正是勞動人民日復(fù)一日、年復(fù)一年的辛勤汗水，才鑄就了今天屹立不倒的長城。