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Celebrating a historical landmark
故宮：東西方文化交流的橋梁
This year, the Forbidden City turns 600 years old. This is not only a big event for Chinese people, but also a cultural milestone for the entire world.
今年是紫禁城建成600年。這不僅是中國人民的大事，也是全世界的文化里程碑。
Over the last six centuries, many cultural exchanges have taken place inside the high walls of the world's largest palace complex.
過去的600年間，在這個全球最大的宮殿群的高墻之內，發生了許多文化交流的故事。
In the 13th century, when the West got its first glimpse of ancient China through Italian merchant Marco Polo's writing, the country had little contact with the outside world. But Italian priest Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), the first Westerner to make his way to the imperial court, changed this during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).
13世紀時，西方通過意大利商人馬可·波羅之筆，得以首次一窺古代中國的面貌，當時的中國與外界鮮有交流。但明朝（1368-1644）時，作為首位叩開宮廷大門的西方人，意大利傳教士利瑪竇（1552-1610）改變了這一局面。
Ricci made contributions to the fields of science and astronomy in China. He worked together with Chinese scientist Xu Guangqi to translate the first six books of Euclid's Elements into Chinese and taught it to Chinese scholars.
利瑪竇在中國為科學及天文學領域做出了貢獻。他與中國科學家徐光啟合作，將《幾何原本》的前六本譯成中文，傳授給中國學者。
He also brought new knowledge about map-making and taught people that the world was round with the first European-style world map in Chinese.
他還帶來了地圖繪制的新知識，并通過首張中文的歐式世界地圖告訴人們地球是圓的。
Numerous foreigners followed in Ricci's footsteps. Giuseppe Castiglione, also known as Lang Shining (1688-1766), was one of them.
無數外國人追隨利瑪竇的腳步來到中國。郎世寧（1688-1766）便是其中之一。
Castiglione, a talented painter, was sent to China to work for a church in 1715 and was later invited to the imperial court to produce paintings for Qing Dynasty's Emperor Kangxi.
1715年，才華橫溢的畫家郎世寧來到中國的一個教堂工作，后來他受邀入宮為清朝康熙帝作畫。
When Castiglione served in the imperial court, he designed many murals in the Forbidden City using techniques that were popular in European cathedrals and theaters.
入宮任職期間，郎世寧在紫禁城中設計了不少壁畫，這些壁畫都使用了當時歐洲大教堂與劇院的流行畫法。
Ever since, "a new ... style that combined Western realism with traditional Chinese conventions of composition and brushwork has emerged in China", wrote the Metropolitan Museum of Art, US.
此后，“中國出現了一種結合了西方現實主義與中國傳統構圖和畫法的全新風格”，美國大都會藝術博物館如此寫道。
The first Westerners to the imperial court also provided firsthand reports to Europe through their letters, notes and books about China. "It makes the West recognize a country with an advanced civilization evolving outside of the Biblical history of God's interaction with man," Zhu Yong, director of the Palace Museum Cultural Communication Institute, told China Daily.
這些首批入宮的西方人還通過他們的信件、筆記以及關于中國的著作向歐洲提供了第一手資料。“這讓西方意識到，在《圣經》人神互動的歷史之外，還有一個擁有先進文明的國家在不斷發展，”故宮文化傳播研究所所長祝勇在接受《中國日報》采訪時如此表示。
Their stories are just a small piece of the puzzle of cross cultural communication between China and the outside world. But it demonstrates "the Forbidden City had provided a bridge for communication between China and the rest of world", noted China Daily.
他們的故事不過是中國與外界跨文化交流中的冰山一角。但這體現了“故宮為中國提供了與外界溝通的橋梁，”《中國日報》報道指出。
