At ten o'clock in the morning of the next day, Di Lingjun drove to the hotel to pick up Zhao Weidong to visit the beautiful scenery of London, Zhao Weidong learned from Ji Lingjun yesterday that he explained that he had to buy short gold futures at nine o'clock this morning, and he said that he had completed the short buying of small orders in batches. After getting in the car, the two drove away, and Di Lingjun took a tourist map of London to Zhao Weidong and said:

"Brother, just tell me where you want to go, and we'll drive there."

"Sister Lingjun, you just drive forward and I'll look for a map."

Zhao Weidong looked for it, there were many attractions on the map, and he was dazzled, so he didn't look for it, just went to find a few to see, so Zhao Weidong said:

"Sister Lingjun, there are too many attractions, I won't look for them, go to Buckingham Palace, this is the representative of the United Kingdom, just like the Forbidden City in China."

"My brother said to go there."

The car turned around and arrived at Buckingham Palace. Buckingham Palace is the royal palace of the United Kingdom. Built in the city of Westminster, it is a four-story square courtyard building, and the palace has more than 600 rooms such as a ceremony hall, a concert hall, a banquet hall, and a gallery.

In the square in front of the palace, there is a statue of the goddess of victory standing on a high marble platform, glittering with gold. The front gate is magnificent, the golden decoration of the outer fence is majestic and solemn, and the relief of the heavy iron gate creates a very harmonious atmosphere with the palace.

Inside the wall, the famous Guards soldiers could be seen standing motionless. The surrounding area is extensive in the Imperial Garden, which is a typical English style garden.

Buckingham Palace was built in 1703 and was originally called Buckingham House, which means "other people's home". In 1762, the royal family bought it and continued to renovate and add to it, eventually forming this "patch palace" with different colors and styles. When the queen lives in the palace, the royal flag flies high in the center of the palace.

The palace is a four-storey square gray building, the solemn main entrance with the royal coat of arms, the center of the Emperor's power, surrounded by railings, the square in front of the palace has many statues, and the Queen Victoria Memorial Hall expanded by Edward VII, the golden statue of the goddess of victory stands on a high marble platform, the golden light is glittering, as if it is about to fall from the sky, and the golden angel on the statue of Queen Victoria represents the royal family's desire to recreate the glory of the Victorian era.

There are more than 600 halls and rooms in the palace, such as ceremony halls, concert halls, banquet halls, galleries, etc., in addition to the vast imperial garden, which is full of flowers and beautiful. If the flag of the British Emperor is flying directly above the palace, it means that the queen is still in the palace. If not, then it is on behalf of the queen to go out.

Today, the Queen's important state events, such as summoning prime ministers and ministers, receiving and entertaining visiting foreign heads of state or government, and receiving credentials from foreign envoys, are held in the palace. In addition, heads of state who are visiting the UK for state visits also stay in the palace.

The palace is guarded by royal guards dressed in ceremonial dress. The current owner of Buckingham Palace is Elizabeth II, who was born in 1926 and is the eldest daughter of George VI.

The entire Buckingham Palace is enclosed by iron railings, and outside the iron railings facing the main building of Buckingham Palace, there is a square with a monument to the gilded statue of Victoria erected in the center, surrounded by four groups of stone sculptures.

On the west side of the palace are the main rooms of the palace, the largest of which is the "Royal Ballroom", built in 1850 for Queen Victoria.

Giant crystal chandeliers hang in the hall. The Blue Drawing-Room is considered the most elegant room in the palace and houses the "Command Table" made for Napoleon I. After the defeat of Nacht, Louis XVIII of France presented the table to George IV, the regent of England at the time.

The white living room is decorated in white and gold, with exquisite furniture and luxurious carpets, mostly artwork by English and French artisans. Crystal chandeliers hang in the throne room, and the walls around it are topped with scenes from the Wars of the Roses in the 15th century.

The throne in the center was used by the current Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh when she was coronated in 1953, and the coronation seat of Queen Victoria and the four large seats used by King George IV are also preserved in the room. The rounded roof of the palace's music room is decorated with ivory and gold, and Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert, used to host musical evenings here.

The palace gardens cover an area of about 18 hectares and were designed by King George IV. There are lakes, meadows, trails, and a variety of flowers and trees. Every summer, the Queen hosts a garden reception in the garden, which is attended by representatives of the country, eminent personalities and diplomats from all over the world.

Buckingham Palace has three places open to the outside world, Zhao Weidong and Ji Lingjun can only see these places, the changing of the guard ceremony, the royal guard of Buckingham Palace will hold the changing of the guard ceremony from 11:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. from April to September every year, and the other months are held at 11:30 every two days.

It's still early today, Zhao Weidong didn't want to wait, so he looked at the soldiers standing guard in ancient military uniforms, and looked at the Queen's Art Gallery on the south side of the palace, which houses the royal family's art treasures, as well as the royal stables, there is nothing to see, but I finally saw Buckingham Palace.

Leaving Buckingham Palace, Zhao Weidong and Di Lingjun drove away, and Di Lingjun asked:

"Where are you going now?"

"Let's go see Big Ben."

"Okay, just go there."

Apparently familiar with London, she soon found herself at the 98-metre-high Parliament Tower at the northern end of Westminster Abbey in London, where Big Ben was built in 1859.

Installed on the 95-metre-high clock tower on the east side of the North Houses of Parliament at Westminster Bridge, the circular clock dial on all four sides of the clock tower, with a diameter of 6.7 metres, is a traditional landmark of London. Whenever the parliament is in session, the lamp above the bell is lit.

At night, the bell floats quietly in the night sky under the illumination of the lights, and it is even more spectacular to look at from the other side.

Big Ben has four faces, each of which is inlaid with 312 pieces of opalescent glass. Through the glass, the hour and minute hands are clearly visible.

Big Ben is a cute nickname given to Big Ben by the Chinese, called "Big Ben". Big Ben represents British classical culture, is an icon of London and the pride of the British.

In films set in London, Big Ben almost invariably appears. In the movie "The Thirty-Ninth Steps", the male protagonist hangs from the hour hand of Big Ben with both hands, fighting to the death with the gangsters who caused the explosion, and every second of the minute hand is terrifying. The man in charge of the Big Ben tower was called Benjamin Hall, and people called it "Big Ben" by his endearment. Originally the name was given to the 13-ton bell in the tower, but now it is the name of the entire tower.

At the beginning of its construction, the Royal Planetarium required the first ring of each hour of the clock to be accurate to the nearest second, which seemed too harsh for a giant clock with a cumbersome mechanical percussion mechanism and hands exposed to the wind and rain.

In the end, however, Big Ben was built according to the requirements and in good condition. Modeled after the Great St. Mary's Church in Cambridge, each bell rings on time with the following phrases:

"May God guide me every hour and every second of the hour, and bless my people with the power of the Lord."

As a symbol of the City of London and a symbol of the United Kingdom, Big Ben is huge and ornate, weighing 13.5 tons, with four clock faces about two square meters in size. Big Ben has been striking the city of London since 1859 and has been striking every hour according to GMT for almost a century and a half, although Big Ben has been cracked and recast twice during this time.

The bells of Big Ben are still clear and beautiful. Since its opening in 1859, the British government has carried out maintenance on Big Ben every five years, including cleaning the clock, replacing the striking wheel train of Big Ben and running wheel train.

Zhao Weidong and Di Lingjun walked around the "Big Ben" in a circle, carefully watched from a distance, and then because they were hungry, they would eat first and then continue the tour.

Zhao Weidong decided to go to the British Museum, this place is more worth seeing, I wanted to come at noon to see that it would not be open, but I didn't expect it to be closed at noon, and it was free, which is really rare. The British Museum is the largest museum in the United Kingdom, also known as the British Museum.

The British Museum is also the oldest and largest comprehensive museum in the world, with a collection of many cultural relics and books from all over the world, and the richness and variety of collections are rare in museums around the world. The British Museum, along with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Louvre in Paris, is one of the top three museums in the world.

The museum was founded in 1753 and opened to the public in 1759, with the current building built in the mid-19th century. The main entrance of the museum is lined with eight thick and tall Romanesque columns that support the triangular lintel, in which a large relief is carved. The whole building is majestic and magnificent. There are more than 100 showrooms with more than 4 million exhibits. The British Museum is mainly divided into Egyptian Antiquities, Greco-Roman Antiquities, West Asian Antiquities, European Medieval Antiquities and Oriental Art Antiquities.

Egyptian Antiquities: One of the largest in the museum, it features large stone sculptures of man and beast, temple buildings, numerous mummies, inscriptions and murals, engraved stone vessels and gold jewelry, dating back more than 5,000 years, and a collection of more than 70,000 pieces, including ancient Egyptian art captured by British naval commander Nelson from King Napoleon of France in the 19th century.

Oriental Art Museum: The museum has more than 100,000 cultural relics from China, Japan, India and other Southeast Asian countries.

Among them, the China Gallery (China Pavilion) occupies several halls, and Chinese cultural relics are regarded as one of the most important collections by the British Museum, with a total of more than 23,000 pieces.

The British Museum claims that the Ancient Chinese Collection, along with the Ancient Greece and Egyptian Collections, is the most important and precious cultural heritage of humanity in the British Museum's collection.

On display in the Chinese cultural relics exhibition room are Neolithic stone tools, jade cong, jade knives, jade axes, painted pottery in the Yangshao culture period, bronzes in the Shang and Zhou dynasties, bronze mirrors in the Qin and Han dynasties, lacquerware in the Han Dynasty, statues in the Northern Dynasties, celadon in the Southern Dynasties, Tang Sancai and scriptures, silk and paintings, official kilns, Ge kilns, Ding kilns and Jun kilns in the Song Dynasty, blue and white vases and red porcelain in the glaze in the Yuan Dynasty, cloisonné enamel in the Ming Dynasty, etc. Many cultural relics are peerless treasures, such as Dunhuang murals, Tang Dynasty facsimile of Gu Kaizhi's "Female History Atlas" of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, and so on.

Seeing all this, Zhao Weidong felt extremely sad, China's history has proved the truth that backwardness is to be beaten, and countless of the most precious cultural relics cannot be seen in their own country, but should be seen in other people's national museums. Really, China can no longer lag behind, and if it is backward, it may be beaten, and if it is backward, it may lose the country!

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