丝绸之路是什么?
What was the Silk Road?
Name: ________________ Date: ________
Key words
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 一路 | yílù | all the way; throughout the journey |
| 说服 | shuōfú | to persuade; to convince |
| 期间 | qījiān | period; time; during |
| 始终 | shǐzhōng | from beginning to end; all along; always |
| 土地 | tǔdì | land; soil; territory |
| 彻底 | chèdǐ | thoroughly; thorough; complete |
| 批 | pī | to approve (as in 批准) |
| 商人 | shāngrén | merchant; businessman |
| 连接 | liánjiē | to connect; to link; to join; connection; link |
| 渐渐 | jiànjiàn | gradually; little by little |
| 官员 | guānyuán | official; officer |
| 跟随 | gēnsuí | to follow |
English (for the teacher)
More than twenty-one centuries ago, a young official named Zhang Qian set out from Chang'an and headed west. More than a hundred people went with him, carrying a mission from Emperor Wu of Han: to find the Yuezhi, far away in the west, and persuade them to join forces with the Han against the Xiongnu in the north. But soon after they set out they ran into Xiongnu horsemen and were all taken prisoner, and they stayed among the Xiongnu for about ten years. During that time Zhang Qian married and even had a child, but he never forgot his mission. In the end he found a chance to escape, kept going west through great hardship, and really did reach the Yuezhi. But the Yuezhi had settled into a peaceful life on rich new land and no longer wanted any war.
On the way back, Zhang Qian fell into Xiongnu hands once more. Thirteen years later he finally made it back to Chang'an, and of the hundred-odd people who had set out, only two were left. Judged by its result, the mission was a complete failure. Yet the news he brought back let the people of the Central Plains learn clearly, for the first time, that in the distant west there were so many more countries and cities, and how the people there lived, what they produced and what they liked. Hearing it, the emperor saw the world anew. From then on, group after group of Han envoys and merchants set out west, and a passage linking East and West was gradually opened up.
What came and went along this road was far more than silk. China's silk, and later the art of making paper, passed from stop to stop to Central Asia, West Asia and even Europe. In the other direction, grapes, fine horses and glass came into China from the west. What left a deeper mark than any goods were religions and ideas: Buddhism came into China along this very road. In fact it was not one road at all, but a web made of many roads, some crossing vast deserts and some climbing over high plateaus and snowy mountains. Almost no merchant went all the way from start to finish; a bolt of silk usually passed through many hands, growing more and more expensive, before it finally reached faraway Rome.
The interesting thing is that none of the people who walked this road in ancient times ever heard the name “Silk Road”. Only in 1877, when the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen first used the term in a book, did it slowly begin to spread. In 2014, a stretch of the network from Chang'an to the Tianshan mountains was added to the World Heritage List. Zhang Qian never finished the mission the emperor gave him, yet without meaning to, he opened a road for the world.