A road is a bridge between two places. The Silk Road has been a bridge between the East and the West for more than 2,000 years.

But do you know the Silk Road is not a single route(路线)?

It is a series of trade and cultural transmission(传送) routes. It began during the Western Han Dynasty. The trade route starts from the city of Xi’an in Shaanxi Province and ends in Eastern Europe, near today’s Turkey and the Mediterranean Sea(地中海). The Silk Road was about 6, 500 kilometers long. It went across 25% of the planet.

The Silk Road got its name because Chinese silk used to be carried along this road. Besides silk, jade and iron went West to Rome. From the West came glass, jewels, and food like carrots and sesame.

The Silk Road was very important to both China and the rest of the world. Besides trade, knowledge about science, arts and technologies was shared across the Silk Road. In this way, languages and cultures developed and influenced each other.

Today, people around the world travel in the places along the Silk Road, such as the Terracotta Warriors in Xi’an and Mogao Grottoes(莫高窟) in Dunhuang, Gansu. Now, beginning in August, a new train line, the New Orient Express, runs from Beijing across the Silk Road.

Sydney Fredette has a lot of things to deal with. Not only is she a high school student, but she has also set up her own organization, Beary Merry Christmas. She volunteers（自愿）to serve poor kids and families in Orange Country in California, US.

To remember her best friend who died of cancer nearly 10 years ago, Fredette decided to serve those in Orange Country who are less lucky than she is.

She began with the simple idea of collecting donated(捐赠的) Build-A-Bears, the popular toy animal that is made by children themselves in the stores’ workshops. Fredette then gave them as gifts to the homeless children in California during the holiday season.

With donations at more than 100 bears a year, Fredette and volunteers host activities every year, where volunteers not only give out the bears, but also clothing, meals, and other things.

Not wanting to limit（限制）the giving to just the holiday months, Fredette now hosts other activities for Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and Halloween, providing the chance for her volunteer team to make a difference through the year.

＂I love making relationships with the people I serve,＂ Fredette said. ＂The thanks they have, hearing their stories and seeing how happy they are, it’s so cool.＂

Future plans for Fredette include building a public food bank and providing a self-development class for students in her school who will soon attend college.

Heading to college herself in the fall, Fredette is looking to stay local and continue to help out in her hometown. In fact, she was regarded as a ＂Dreamer & Doer＂ not long ago for her work in improving her community, along with 32 other high school students.

What can we learn from the special and very successful people in the world who make the impossible possible?

Lesson 1: Ways of creative thinking are needed

Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg both dropped out of college. They prefer to teach themselves, because they like to develop their own ways of thinking. They think ordinary ways of teaching might stop people from being creative and having new ideas.

Lesson 2: The answer might not be what you expect

Find your answers from facts—don’t start with an expectation of what you will find. Stephen Jacobsen from Northwestern University believed what he was taught: water on the Earth came from icy comets (彗星) or planets which hit into the Earth.

However, by studying a special rock, he discovered that it acts like a sponge (海绵). This shows that the Earth’s water may come from inside and is pushed to the surface to form the oceans by geological activities.

“I had a pretty hard time making others believe it,” he said, “but think about the fact that you may be the first person to see something for the first time. That doesn’t happen very often. When it does, it’s amazing.”

Lesson 3: A little luck goes a long way

Years of planning went into an achievement in space travel. The European Space Agency’s Philae, a robot landing craft, met up with Comet 67P, which is 480 million kilometers away. The trip from the Earth by “Philae” had taken ten years!

The scientists were pretty worried when they found that Philae was in danger. If the landing failed, it would be impossible to get information from the spacecraft.

When “Philae” tried to land, it bounced (弹起) away from the comets icy surface twice. Luckily, however, “Philae” landed successfully and began sending information back to the Earth.

Which do you prefer to use when you are studying, iPads or books? Here is     46     survey about it.

Some students think that it’s better     47     (use) iPads, because iPads can give them more choices. They can search for information in an iPad easily instead of     48     (look) everything up in different books. At the same time, students can send pictures     49     (direct) to a printer to photocopy them. With an iPad, they can keep all     50     (they) work in it. And homework will not     51     (forget) easily because teachers can send all the homework to their iPads.

But others think that books are     52     (help) for learning. There are many advantages.     53    , reading books won’t hurt their eyes. Second, what they read in books can leave a deeper     54     (impress) on them. What’s more, some students usually use iPads to play games at school, which sounds     55     (terrible) for their study. So they prefer to use books.

56. 假如你是李华，你的美国网友Peter想了解现今中国家庭情况，请你以自己为例给他回复邮件，向他介绍你的家庭信息，要点如下：

I’m glad to hear from you. In your email, you asked me for some information about Chinese families. I’d like to tell you something about my family._____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Yours,

Li Hua