Part 1
THE STORY OF SILK
One account of the story goes that as she was taking a walk in her husband’s gardens, she discovered that silkworms were responsible for the destruction of several mulberry trees. She collected a number of cocoons and sat down to have a rest. It just so happened that while she was sipping some tea, one of the cocoons that she had collected landed in the hot tea and started to unravel into a fine thread. Lei Tzu found that she could wind this thread around her fingers. Subsequently, she persuaded her husband to allow her to rear silkworms on a grove of mulberry trees. She also devised a special reel to draw the fibres from the cocoon into a single thread so that they would be strong enough to be woven into fabric.
Demand for this exotic fabric eventually created the lucrative trade route now known as the Silk Road, taking silk westward and bringing gold, silver and wool to the East. It was named the Silk Road after its most precious commodity, which was considered to be worth more than gold. The Silk Road stretched over 6,000 kilometres from Eastern China to the Mediterranean Sea, following the Great Wall of China, climbing the Pamir mountain range, crossing modern-day Afghanistan and going on to the Middle East, with a major trading market in Damascus. From there, the merchandise was shipped across the Mediterranean Sea. Few merchants travelled the entire route; goods were handled mostly by a series of middlemen.
According to another legend, monks working for the Byzantine emperor Justinian smuggled silkworm eggs to Constantinople (Istanbul in modern-day Turkey) in 550 AD, concealed inside hollow bamboo walking canes. The Byzantines were as secretive as the Chinese, however, and for many centuries the weaving and trading of silk fabric was a strict imperial monopoly.
Question 1 - 4
Question 1-4
Write ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
THE STORY OF SILK
Early silk production in China
• Around 3000 BC, according to legend:
– silkworm cocoon fell into emperor’s wife’s 1………………
– emperor’s wife invented a 2……………. to pull out silk fibres
Silk reaches rest of world
• Merchants use Silk Road to take silk westward and bring back 3…………….. and precious metals
• 550 AD: 4……………… hide silkworm eggs in canes and take them to Constantinople
Question 5 - 7
Question 5-7
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
Gold was the most valuable material transported along the Silk Road.
Most tradesmen only went along certain sections of the Silk Road.
The Byzantines spread the practice of silk production across the West.