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When the Forbidden City tour guide for 22 years, there is only the peak season here, there is no off-season, ten o'clock portraits, 19 minutes
Interview, Writing|Sanjin
Ten Point Character Original
Recently, in order to accompany my parents who rarely come to Beijing, I went to the Forbidden City twice. I met a tour guide who gave an in-depth explanation in the Forbidden City, surnamed Li, 43 years old this year, who has been working as a tour guide for 22 years.
In the past, there were also some eunuchs and palace maids in the Forbidden City who lived outside, and they went to work every day, and Director Li said that he was similar to them, and he had to "enter the palace" more than 200 times a year.
In the eyes of Director Li, there is no clear off-season and peak season in the Forbidden City. "What is the off-season? Tickets are not sold out on the day, this is the off-season. If it can be sold out on the same day, it is considered the peak season. After thinking about it, he added, "There are many parent-child groups and research groups during the summer vacation. At the end of October every year, the Northeast regiment began to increase, because the autumn harvest is coming to an end, and the year's labor has paid off, and everyone wants to earn some money to go out for a trip, so you see that many of them come with their wives. ”
"Everyone who comes to Beijing knows that it is impossible not to visit the Forbidden City. "In the past two years, the popularity of the Forbidden City has been booming. Last summer, Director Li once encountered a situation where tourists were "wiped out" (referring to the fact that tourists failed to grab tickets to the Forbidden City). That was the only time in his 22 years in the industry that he had the idea of quitting, "There is no way, what can you do if you say you can't get in?"
At around 7:40 in the morning, the Forbidden City was still relatively small
Director Li had no choice, he had to change his WeChat nickname from "Stone in the Forbidden City" to "Stone outside the Gate of the Forbidden City", like a faint complaint - he once felt that the Forbidden City was so great that he could be even a stone with a sharp corner, but later found out that being a stone does not necessarily have a ticket.
But Director Li still likes the Forbidden City very much. In 2012, Shan Jixiang, the former director of the Palace Museum, spent five months breaking more than 20 pairs of cloth shoes and visiting 9,371 rooms in the Forbidden City. Prior to this, the answer to the question "how many rooms does the Forbidden City have" varied.
There are two widely circulated: in 1972, experts calculated that there were 8,707 rooms, while according to legend, the figure was 9,999 and a half. In the interview, Director Li respectfully called Shan Jixiang Mr. Shan, and 9371 is a number he often mentions, "I don't know how many rooms the tour guide in the Forbidden City is too embarrassing."
The small beast on the eaves of the Forbidden City photographed by Director Li
Shan Jixiang walked through 9,371 rooms, making the Forbidden City concrete. Director Li's experience is another kind of "concrete", which is about how an ordinary person can continue to maintain enthusiasm for the unchanged work environment, stay excited about similar work content, and find a way to settle his heart and spend spring, summer, autumn and winter in ordinary daily life.
The following is what Director Li said.
Where is the Emperor's bed?
Now we are at the noon gate of the Forbidden City, which is also the beginning of the tour of the Forbidden City. Many people think that the noon gate is the beginning of the Forbidden City, and this concept must be wrong. Theoretically, Tiananmen Square was the beginning of the Forbidden City.
If we compare the Forbidden City to a villa, Tiananmen Square is the gate of this villa, and the Noon Gate is the door of the living room of the emperor's house. Knowing this, let's pay attention to why it is called "Tiananmen"? "Ordered by heaven, the state governs the country in peace", this is the origin of the name of Tiananmen.
Heading north along Tiananmen Square, we will pass through the Duanmen Gate and the Wumen Gate. Tourists often ask me: "Does the emperor love to eat zongzi so much, and use the Dragon Boat Festival as two city gates?"
Of course not. If you are high-ranking officials and the emperor invites you to come to the Forbidden City for a meeting, your means of transportation from various provinces can only stop outside the South Second Ring Road and Yongding Gate, and you have to walk by yourself for nearly five kilometers left.
Because it is to see the emperor, you need to dress very formally, it is already 4 kilometers to Duanmen, the hat will be crooked, the clothes will be messy, and the shoes will be dirty, so when everyone sees "Duanmen", this is telling everyone that they are about to see the emperor, so you must tidy up your clothes and go to see the emperor properly.
Generally, when I first entered the Forbidden City, I would give you an overview of the Forbidden City like the above. This statement is more for children, and if it is for adults, it will be a little deeper.
Director Li is introducing the Forbidden City to the children
One of the adult visitors I host is a particular question to ask. Every time I go to the Qianqing Palace (the emperor's bedroom in the Forbidden City), someone asks, where is the emperor's bed?
According to the classic records of the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, there were 27 beds in 9 rooms in the Qianqing Palace, and only the subordinates who served by the emperor's side knew which bed he slept in that night. The Qianqing Palace we see now was built during the Jiaqing period of the Qing Dynasty, and it also followed this regulation, which was to prevent the emperor from being murdered. However, most of the Qing Dynasty emperors lived in the Yangxin Palace.
I like this kind of little knowledge, and I like to share it with others, and being able to do it at the beginning is related to interest. The knowledge of the Forbidden City is always new, and you have to learn from everyone, if it is something that is still being studied, or a joke that is obviously to bluff people, don't mention it, but don't dare to say anything to the outside.
For example, in the story of the Yin and Yang Tao in the Forbidden City, it is said that you can hear the palace maid laughing at night, and there is a shadow of the palace maid walking on the wall. I can understand that people like to listen to it, but I don't talk about things that don't have a score.
If you don't believe it, listen to it, at the gate of the Forbidden City, you can hear any kind of "joke". For example, if you look at the door hole from the outside, there are 3 from the outside, and there are 5 from the back, this kind of building shape is called three bright and five dark. Just because of the appearance of the two numbers three and five, some people introduce it to tourists, which is the "Three Principles and Five Constants". I hear that you can be, but you can't say anything yet.
I've been a tour guide for 22 years, and I'm still learning. One is to read the "Forbidden City Monthly" that comes out every month. Recently, I read an article about the incense burned in the Forbidden City, and for the first time I knew that there was a kind of incense called "Four Waste Incense".
Every New Year's first court, the copper tripod in front of the Taihe Palace is neither pine and cypress branches, nor spices, but the four waste incense made with the yellow mud after drying and crushing the various fruit residues eaten in the palace in the previous year. Everyone should guess that this is the emperor's admonition to be diligent and thrifty in the New Year, and also to tell the common people to be diligent and thrifty.
The small flags in the hands of the tour guide usually have a different appearance
In addition to reading, we often go to the lectures of the Forbidden City. After the archaeological excavation of the tomb of the Marquis of Haiyang in Jiangxi Province was completed, the Forbidden City specially invited the leader of the archaeological team to the Forbidden City to give an explanation, and he gained a lot after listening.
The tomb of the Marquis of Haiyang is the largest and best-preserved settlement site of the Marquis of the Han Dynasty found in the mainland. In fact, the tomb of the Marquis of Haihuang was also patronized by tomb robbers, but why was it not destroyed in the end? The captain said that the Marquis of Haihuang grew up in Shandong and finally died in Jiangxi, using the Qilu burial system. The tomb robbers didn't know, or they used the local burial system to rob the tomb, and they were only two meters away from digging the main burial chamber, and they thought that there was nothing in the tomb, and finally the site was preserved, so we could conduct research.
Isn't that interesting? Outside of the big history, there will be some accidents and branches that will eventually lead to different outcomes.
Because of the long stay, I am quite familiar with the staff in the Forbidden City, and as long as I have time, I will chat a few words. Once in a small talk, the master said to me: "This emperor's throne is not the original, the original is in Shenyang." ”
I only learned about this, and then I went to find information and made up this piece of knowledge. You say, "If someone doesn't tell you, how will you know?" So don't underestimate anyone who works in the Forbidden City, they are all sweeping monks.
However, knowing a little knowledge, I am not very happy when I watch costume dramas, and some of the things talked about in the TV series are really wrong.
For example, let Queen Xiaozhuang call herself "How is my Xiaozhuang", it stands to reason that she can't see this name alive. There is a plaque on the Taihe Hall in "The Legend of Zhen Huan", but in fact, when Zhen Huan was fighting in the palace, there was no plaque, and it was hung by Qianlong later. For another example, the Manchurians did kill pigs for sacrifice, but the pigs used at that time should be dark-skinned, and there were absolutely no white-skinned pigs.
Stills from "The Legend of Zhen Huan".
And so on, if I talk too much, my daughter-in-law doesn't like to watch costume dramas with me.
In fact, I can understand that art creation is still different from history, just like being a tour guide, you have to take into account both fun and storytelling, otherwise wouldn't it be nice for us to sit down and take a class?
"Watching people put on dishes"
When talking about the Forbidden City, a tour guide has 10,000 ways to speak in his heart. This also requires us to learn a little bit more.
The tour guide is to "watch people put on the dishes", which is not derogatory. I need to observe the guest's eyes, movements, and demeanor to know whether he likes to listen at this time and whether he understands it. If he's focused, I can go deeper, and if he's confused, I'll change the subject.
It's not just that the lectures of the research group and the adult group are different, but there will be differences in the explanations given to each group.
Guided tour inside the Treasure Gallery
For example, there is a kind of small group, which is usually a group for a family independently. At this time, the tour guide needs to ask clearly, are there any old people here, how old are the old people, how old are the children? If the parents say that we are mainly here for the children, then the explanation will be more focused on the children.
You see that I walk backwards in the Forbidden City, one is that I am too familiar with this to fall, and more importantly, I need to see the eyes of the guests and understand everyone's needs.
Many children are young, this may be the first time in their lives to ask a professional tour guide to explain things to them, if you fool the child at such a young age, when he grows up, he will think, "It turns out that the tour guide is a fool profession, and the tour guide I met at that time was not very good." ”
Maybe he will also think that people in the world are fooling around with work!
I hope that the children I have come into contact with will feel that being a tour guide is a good profession, and that is what I am all about.
Again, if people finally come out to play, if you act like to ignore and talk about things that others don't like to hear, they will quickly get tired. In fact, every spring and autumn season, I have very strong allergies, and I just want to lie at home when I am not working, but as soon as I enter the Forbidden City and enter the working state, everything is immediately better, like a conditioned reflex, which is rare.
Teaching and educating people, I educate people in the Forbidden City, but not in the classroom, but I don't pay a lot. So I'm full of confidence in this profession, let's work hard.
In the past two years, I have been mainly responsible for leading the research group. For the study group, tourism itself is also a kind of learning. In recent years, the concept of "research" has been hyped, and there are all kinds of prices. Some of the children who come to study are too young, only 5 or 6 years old to come out to study, and you can also see the anxiety of parents.
Study group in the Forbidden City
The research group I am taking now, usually no more than 25 adults and children, and no more than 12 children who really charge fees, most of them are mothers with their children.
Many tour guides don't like to lead parent-child study tours, because all parents are supervisors, and he is responsible for supervising "whether the money I spend is worth it". Now there are some study groups that prohibit parents from following, which is called "hooliganism".
This summer, there are many research groups in the Forbidden City that are not followed by parents, and the children hold their mobile phones all the way until the end of the study. This is actually very detrimental to the relationship of trust between parents and tour guides, and I recommend that unless parents are really out of line and can't buy tickets, they should try to accompany their children as much as possible.
Most of the study groups are mothers with children
The same happens in senior groups.
Children spend money to ask their parents to make an appointment with the best tour guide of the Forbidden City for an in-depth tour explanation, but the elders may not have so much knowledge to match. The children spent money, and the old people saved, so they could only follow all the way, but they couldn't understand all the way. When he went back, the child asked, "How did you listen today?" The old man pouted: "It doesn't mean anything at all, I don't understand anything." "It's a shame.
Ride a shared bicycle to the Forbidden City
Why did I work as a tour guide in the Forbidden City? I didn't think about it carefully, and when I looked back, I realized that it was also a coincidence that I embarked on this path.
At that time, I was still a senior at Beijing Normal University. A buddy on the top bunk said that his girlfriend had never taken the tour guide certificate. I said, "Is it so difficult to get a tour guide certificate?" and he said, "Otherwise, you can try it." ”
Try it, I took the textbook back - "Beijing Tour Guide Basics", read it for a few days, this book is quite interesting, I didn't expect to pass the test later. At that time, the attraction that I was asked to explain in the exam was the Forbidden City.
After entering the industry, I didn't explain the Forbidden City right away. At that time, it was 2001, and there was no such thing as an in-depth tour, so I usually took a three- or four-day standard group or a one-day conference group (referring to the opportunity to hold a meeting and organize group tourism activities), and the Forbidden City was just one of the attractions.
At that time, this industry was still in the stage of savage growth, and making money was really profitable. Although I haven't taken a few days off in a year, I have earned more than 200,000 yuan in three years and bought a house in Beijing.
Later, the tourism industry was in chaos, and the tour guides led the group to pull tourists to go shopping, and there were more and more negative news, and the living conditions of our serious tour guides became worse and worse. At that time, I had already taken the senior tour guide certificate, but because I didn't want to take people shopping, I didn't do well, so I relied on leading conference groups to earn money. As you can imagine, the number of such regiments is not large.
Until 2016, the Palace Museum issued an article stating that in order to standardize the tour guides' explanations of the Forbidden City, a professional training should be held for middle and senior tour guides in Beijing, so that everyone can have evidence to speak and not make things up.
Because the Forbidden City at that time was more like a carrier, if a shopping store wanted to sell jade, the tour guide would tell tourists about jade at the entrance of the Forbidden City, and then say that the emperor's jade could be bought in the XX shopping mall. Isn't this nonsense? So the Forbidden City hoped to make the explanation more formal through this training.
The entrance of the Forbidden City|Image source Visual China
For this training, the Forbidden City is equipped with a strong teaching force, and teachers who have been studying in the museum for more than ten years were invited to break up and crumple the details of the Forbidden City's cultural relics, architecture, calligraphy and painting, jade and other details. They will take a picture of a corner of the Forbidden City and let us recognize it as a place. I talked about it for 7 days, and I also gave out a very thick textbook.
That book is a bit superficial now, and the research on the Forbidden City is deepening, but we were like a treasure at the time. I've been a tour guide for many years, but it's the first time I've known that there are so many amazing things in the Forbidden City. In fact, we hope that every attraction can give us such a training, but only the Forbidden City has done this.
I have had a fascination with knowledge since I was a child, and I feel envious when I see people with a lot of knowledge. My friend who used to rent a house with me was also a tour guide, and he talked about the attractions and wanted to be like that. The Forbidden City, which is the culmination of the essence of all ancient Chinese cultures, is to a certain extent the root of our culture. The more I learned about it over the years, the more I liked it.
When we are looking for a job, it is often said that it is best to "have more money and less things to do, close to home". Although I can't get rich and expensive in this job now, I can support my family enough. It's also close to home. It turns out that I live on the edge of the Second Ring Road, and I can go to the Forbidden City by scanning a shared bicycle, and I can pick up my children after work. The salary is paid daily, and I can still take care of my family, and people always have to ask for something, and this is what I want.
I can do this until I'm old
You can't have a job without flaws, you can see how tanned I am.
Because the ticket to the Forbidden City is valid once, if we talk twice a day, we can't go out at noon, and we can't eat properly, so many tour guides have stomach problems. Every day, I carry the manual for the children, hike in it, and go up with a few steps on WeChat, not to mention the sun in the summer.
In the eleventh days of this year, I looked calm on my face, and my heart rose to my throat every day. Because like the Treasure Hall, when the "big army" comes, you can't get in, sometimes there are too many people to enter, and the children can't see what is in front of them, and they feel really guilty. That's why I told my guests all the way that you must be on time, and that the shortened rest time is also so that everyone can enter the Treasure Hall with fewer people. Most of them can understand, and there will be a few who are reluctant, but when they see the crowds of people lining up outside, they will understand.
After all, tour guides are a service industry, and they have to serve everyone well. Sometimes in the middle of the story, guests who are not my will come around and listen together, pushing and shoving twice, and everyone will lose their temper. Earlier, if you say a few words, the other guests will say, "Why can't you stand here, is the Forbidden City your home?"
I regret that the Forbidden City is opening less and less. Before the main hall there will be some cold light sources, under the premise of protecting cultural relics, so that everyone can see the whole picture of the hall, now these have also been canceled, looking into the black and dark, how much will affect the tourist's tour experience.
Director Li's circle of friends
In the past 22 years, the only time I really had the idea of "not wanting to do it" was because I couldn't grab tickets to the Forbidden City this summer. It's not a problem to explain in the 40-degree heat and the surging crowd, the problem is that after grabbing for several hours, the ticket grabbing page can't be refreshed.
My previous WeChat nickname was "The Stone in the Forbidden City", because every time I stood at the gate of the Forbidden City, I felt that this place was too great, and I was willing to become a stone in the corner inside. After I couldn't get a ticket, I changed my name to "Stone Outside the Gate of the Forbidden City". If people can't get in, what else can be done?
Sometimes a few colleagues sit together and complain, saying, "I can't really do this job." That is, complain a few words, and when I think about it, I am still reluctant.
Jumping out of the role of a tour guide, I also love to stay in the Forbidden City.
If it's spring and autumn, I like to sit under the begonia tree at Mandarin Gate. When the begonia flowers are in full bloom, clusters are crowded on the branches, and tourists take pictures there. When the flowers are gone, the Mandarin Gate becomes much quieter, but you remember the way the flowers bloomed, and you know that they will bloom again, and it feels very nice to sit down there.
If I take a break in the middle of the group, I will sit by myself for a while near the arrow pavilion, which is well ventilated and cool in summer.
Now that it's almost winter, I recommend everyone to sit under the red wall opposite the Arrow Pavilion. When the sun came, I put my hand in my sleeve, and I could really fall asleep, and the old cat next to me didn't want to move as soon as he lay down.
I thought that when the children were a little older, I might take the group less often, but I wouldn't leave completely. I've been doing this for the rest of my life, and I'm quite happy. Spring, summer, autumn and winter, cold and summer, the Forbidden City has not changed, but it has enough depth to accommodate the changes of the times and people.
(Excerpted from the WeChat public account Ten Point Character Chronicles)