Exam tip

Throughout the exam, you need to make sure you rely on the information in the passages, not on your own ideas. This is especially important with this type of question: never be tempted to reflect your own opinion, always con sider only what is in the text.

Questions 1-12
Read the following passage. Do the statements agree with the views of the writer? Write:

YES  if the statement agree s with the views of the writer NO if the statement contradicts what the writer thinks NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to know what the writer's point of view is

1. Another name for the East-West trading route is 'silk road'.
(popularly known as the silk road)

2. Zhang Qian is admired by Chinese schoolchildren.
(this is likely, but not stated in the text)

3. Zhang Qian was a Chinese adventurer.
(Zhang Qian, the Chinese ambassador adventurer)

4. At least one German used the silk road in the 19th century.
(this is likely, but we do not know that the person who used the name first also used the road)

5. Silk was the main material to be traded on this route .
(this is likely because of its name, but the text does not say it is the main material)

6. The silk road was used for trade in natural materials, man-made materials and animals.
(examples are given of natural materials, e.g. gems; man-made materials, e.g. glass, and animals: livestock is mentioned)

7. We know that Zhang Qian was the first person to use the silk road.
(the text says that he was the first Chinese person to do so, but that it is not certain that others did not go hundreds of years earlier, e.g. the Romans)

8. The Romans may well have use d the silk road.
(may well expresses a probability, but not absolute certainty)

9. The reports about a 'stone tower' provide evidence that the Romans used the silk road.
(the writer suggests that this is not evidence as its exact location remains uncertain and that the truth about the tower is unknown: Whatever the truth about the Stone Tower may be . . .)

10. Kashgar is a welcoming city.
(The city would have been a welcome sight for travellers, and they would probably have been welcome because they were doing trade, but none of this is said in the text)

11. People who go in the Taklaman desert never come back out.
(this is what the name suggests, but this is just a name, and not necessarily a fact)

12. The journey fromWest to East was so long and difficult that the travellers probably did not go all the way to China.
(It is unlikely that in these earlier times traders or travellers would have continued further eastwards from Kashgar, . . . there still would have remained eight hundred miles of a dangerous journey before they would have found the first true signs of Chinese civilization.)

Schoolchildren in China learn that the opening of the East-West trading route popularly known as the silk road occurred in 139 B.C. when Zhang Qian, the Chinese ambassador-adventurer, travelled westward across the Pamirs, a mountain range in Central Asia. He was the first known Chinese person to do so. The term 'silk road' was actually first used late in the nineteenth century by a German geographer, Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen (1833-1905). Silk was not the only material that passed along these routes. Other goods are known to have included ceramics, glass, precious gems and livestock.

However, there are reasons to think that these roads were being used centuries, probably even millennia, earlier than Zhang's expedition. In Roman times, Pliny the Elder reported a 'stone tower' which he said existed on the Pamir Plateau where goods had been traditionally exchanged between traders from the East and the West. In the early second century, MaesTitianus, an ancient RomanMacedonian traveller, actually reported reaching this famous StoneTower, but its exact location remains uncertain. According to one theory, it was atTashkurgan in the Pamirs. (The word 'Tashkurgan' actually means 'stone tower' or 'stone fortress' in the Uyghur language.) Scholars today, however, believe that its location was probably somewhere in the AlayValley. Whatever the truth about the StoneTower may be, it seems likely that that some form trade was taking place in this region millennia before more formal recorded trade took place.

On the other hand, it is difficult to believe that people in those times were able to travel such huge distances. Travelling from West to East, the trader first had to cross the Pamir Plateau, through the 20,000-foot-high mountains. If the weather in the mountains had been kind and the journey undertaken in the right season, the eastward bound traveller would then finally arrive at the Kashgar, a logical place for trade and rest, where they could exchange horses or camels and then start on the return journey back over the mountains before the winter snows started.

It is unlikely that in these earlier times traders or travellers would have continued further eastwards from Kashgar, as they would have had to go round theTaklamakan Desert. Going through it was not an option as its name suggests: it literally means 'Go in and you won't come out'. Beyond this desert, there still would have remained eight hundred miles of a dangerous journey before they would have found the first true signs of Chinese civilization.

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