旅游英语Unit 5 C.pptVIP

I. Text C II. Exercises III. Chinese version of Text C * * * * Text C The Taj Mahal The Taj Mahal 1 Everyone who has seen the Taj Mahal in India would probably agree that it is indeed a thing of beauty. And it has certainly given joy to millions of people since its completion in the middle of the seventeenth century. It is doubtful that any other structure has ever been modeled, painted, photographed, or described as often as the Taj Mahal. 2 India is a land of architectural magnificence, having many ornate and exquisite temples, monuments, and palaces. The best-known of all these is the beautiful Taj Mahal, a tomb built by an emperor in honor of his beloved wife. It has been called a poem in marble and is said to be the most expensive compliment paid to a woman. Perfect in symmetry, its beauty has never been surpassed. I. Text 3 The history connected with the Taj Mahal is a very poignant one. When the emperor’s wife was about to die, she made two requests of him: first, that he would never marry again; and second, that he would build her a tomb that would make her name remembered forever. These wishes the grief-stricken emperor readily promised to fulfil. And in the palace during the long, lonely nights that followed her death, he considered how he could best express in a monument his tender feelings for his wife. He wanted the monument to be as lovely as she was. At last the idea for the memorial came to him in a dream, and the great work was begun. I. Text 4 Built of white marble that shimmers in both sunlight and moonlight, the Taj Mahal stands on an eighteen-foot-high marble platform which has a delicate minaret on each corner. In the center of the platform stands the tomb itself, octagonal in shape, crowned with a graceful dome rising high above it. There are four smaller domes around the central dome which duplicate it in design, as do the domes on top of the four dainty minarets. In the moonlight, these lovely domes seem to float like clouds in a d