Beautiful places list of world
Travel books
There are
many reasons why individuals have travelled beyond their knowledge own
societies. Some travellers may have simply desired to satisfy curiosity about
the larger world. Until recent times, however, travellers did start their
journey for reasons other than mere curiosity. While the travellers accounts
give much valuable information on these foreign lands and provide a window for
the understanding of the local cultures and histories, they are also a mirror
to the travellers themselves, for these accounts help them to have a better
understanding of themselves.
Records of
foreign travel appeared soon after the invention of writing, and fragmentary
travel accounts appeared in both Mesopotamia and Egypt in ancient times. After
the formation of large, imperial states in the classical world, travel accounts
emerged as a prominent literary genre in many lands, and they held especially
strong appeal for rulers desiring useful knowledge about their realms. The
Greek historian Herodotus reported on his travels in Egypt and Anatolia in
researching the history of the Persian wars. The Chinese envoy Zhang Qian
describes much of central Asia as far west as Bactria (modern day Afghanistan)
on the basis of travels undertaken in the first century BCE while searching for
allies for the Han dynasty. Hellenistic and Roman geographers such as Ptolemy,
Strabo, and Pliny the Elder relied on their own travels through much of the
Mediterranean world as well as reports of other travellers to compile vast
compendia of geographical knowledge.
During the
post-classical era (about 500 to 1500 CE), trade and pilgrimage emerged as
major incentives for travel to foreign lands. Muslim merchants sought trading
opportunities throughout much of the eastern hemisphere. They described lands,
peoples and commercial products of the Indian Ocean basin from East Africa to
Indonesia and they supplied the first written accounts of societies in
sub-Saharan West Africa. While merchants set out in search of trade and profit,
devout Muslim travelled as pilgrims to Mecca to make their hajj and visit the
holy sites of Islam. Since the prophet Muhammad’s original pilgrimage to Mecca,
untold millions of Muslims have followed his example, and thousands of hajj
accounts have related their experiences. East Asian travellers were not quite
so prominent as Muslim during the post-classical era, but they too followed
many of the highways and sea lanes of the eastern hemisphere. Chinese merchants
frequently visited South-East Asia and India, occasionally venturing even to
East Africa, and devout East Asian Buddhists undertook distant pilgrimages.
Between the 5th and 9th centuries CE, hundreds and
possibly even thousands of Chinese Buddhists travelled to India to study with
Buddhist teachers, collect sacred texts, and visit holy sites. Written accounts
recorded the experiences of many pilgrims, such as Faxian, Xuanzang, and
Yijing. Though not so numerous as the Chinese pilgrims, Buddhists from Japan,
Korea, and other lands also ventured abroad in the interests of spiritual
enlightenment.
Medieval Europeans
did not hit the roads in such large numbers as their Muslim and East Asian
counterparts during the early part of the post- classical era, although
gradually increasing crowds of Christian pilgrims flowed to Jerusalem, Rome,
Santiago de Compostela (in northern Spain), and other sites. After the 12th
century, however, merchants, pilgrims, adn missionaries from medieval Europe
travelled widely and left numerous travel accounts, of which Marco Polo’s
description of his travels and sojourn in China is the best known. As they
became familiar with the larger world of the eastern hemisphere –and the
profitable commercial opportunities that it offered- European peoples worked to
find new and more direct routes to Asian and African markets. Their efforts
took them not only to all parts of the eastern hemisphere, but eventually to
the Americas and Oceania as well.
If Muslim
and Chinese people dominated travel and travel writing in post-classical times,
Europeans explorers, conquerors, merchants, and missionaries took centre stage
during the early modern era (about 1500 to 1800 CE). By no means did Muslim and
Chinese travel come to a halt in early modern times. But European people
ventured to the distant corners of the globe, and European printing presses
churned out thousands of travel accounts that described foreign lands and
people for a reading public with an apparently insatiable appetite for news
about the larger world. The volume of travel literature was so great that several
editors, including Giambattista Ramusio, Richard Hakluyt, Theodore de Bry, and
Samuel Purchas, assembled numerous travel accounts and made them available in enormous
published collections.
During the
19th century, European travellers made their way to the interior
regions of Africa and the Americas, generating a fresh round of travel writing
as they did so. Meanwhile, European colonial administrators devoted numerous
writings to the societies of their colonial subjects, particularly in Asian and
African colonies they established. By mid-century, attention was flowing also
in the other direction. Painfully aware of the military and technological
prowess of European and Euro-American societies, Asian travellers in particular
visited Europe and the United States in hopes of discovering principles useful
for the organisation of their own societies. Among the most prominent of these
travellers whose made extensive use of their overseas observations and
experiences in their own writings were the Japanese reformer Fukuzawa Yukichi
and the Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen.
With the development
of inexpensive and reliable means of mass transport, the 20th
century witnessed explosions both in the frequency of long-distance travel and in
the volume of travel writing. While a great deal of travel took place for
reasons of business, administration, diplomacy, pilgrimage, and missionary
work, as in ages past, increasingly effective modes of mass transport made it
possible for new kind of travel to flourish. The most distinctive of them was
mass tourism, which emerged as a major form of consumption for individuals
living in the world’s wealthy societies. Tourism enabled consumers to get away
from home to see the sights in Rome, take a cruise through the Caribbean, walk
the Greate wall of China, visit some wineries in Bordeaux, or go on safari in
Kenya. A peculiar variant of the travel account arose to meet the needs of
these tourists the guidebook, which offered advice on food, lodging, shopping,
local customers and all the sights that visitors should not miss seeing. Tourism
has had a massive economic impact throughout the world, but other new forms of
travel have also had considerable influence in contemporary times.
Question 1-6
Choose the correct
letter A, B, C or D
1. What were most people travelling for
in the early days?
A. Studying their own cultures
B. Business
C. Knowing other people and places
better
D. Writing travel books
2. Why did the author say writing
travel books is also “a mirror” for travellers themselves?
A. Because travellers record their own
experiences.
B. Because travellers reflect upon
their own society and life.
C. Because it increase knowledge of foreign
cultures.
D. Because it is related to the development
of human society
3. Why were the imperial rulers
especially interested in these travel stories?
A. Reading travel stories was a popular
pastime
B. The accounts are often truthful
rather than fictional
C. Travel books played an important role
in literature.
D. They desired knowledge of their
empire.
4. Who were the largest group to record
their spiritual trips during the past classical era?
A. Muslim traders
B. Muslim pilgrims
C. Chinese Buddhists
D. Indian Buddhist teachers
5. During the early modern era, a large
number of travel books were published to
A. Meet the public’s interest
B. Explore new business opportunities
C. Encourage trips to the new world
D. Record the larger world
6. What is the main theme of the
passage?
A. The production of travel books
B. The literary status of travel books
C. The historical significant of travel
books
D. The development of travel books
Question 7-
14
Complete the
table
Choose NO
MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer
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