A road is just like a bridge between two places. The Silk Road has been a bridge between East and West. But the Silk Road is not a single route! It is a series of trade and cultural transmission routes. From the time Zhang Qian opened up the world-famous Silk Road during the Han Dynasty, until the Yuan Dynasty, it enjoyed a history of about 1,600 years.

 This ancient road begins at Chang'an (now Xi'an), and it reaches Dunhuang, where it divides into three, the Southern Route, Central Route and Northern Route. And then it ends in Eastern Europe, near the Mediterranean Sea(地中海). The Silk Road is about 6,500 kilometers long. It goes across one-fourth of the planet. (3)In fact, there is another trade road which is called the “Silk Road on the Sea” in the southwest of China.

 The Silk Road was very important to both China and the rest of the world. Besides trade, knowledge about science, arts and technologies were shared across the Silk Road. The Four Great Inventions of China was introduced to the West and Chinese also knew about the religions of the West. (4)In this way, languages and cultures developed and influenced each other. Today, places along the Silk Road are great places of interest, such as the Terracotta Warriors in Xi'an and Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, Gansu.

阅读下面短文，根据短文内容，从所给的六个选项中选出可以填入空白处的最佳选项，使短文意思完整、连贯。（有两项为多余选项）

                                                                                                          Car pool（拼车）

“Beep, Beep,” goes the car horn（喇叭）. You've got dressed, but you've not had time to eat breakfast. You run out of the front door with your schoolbag, and jump into the waiting car. Inside, your friends say “hey” as one of their parents drives you to school. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Car pools are a common way of transport for many students in the US. You, along with many of your friends, can sit in one car. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} And your parents many take turns to drive you all to school.

  {#blank#}3{#/blank#}   If you're late, you can eat that breakfast you don't have time for at home. If you're behind on your homework, this is your last chance to finish it before class. Some simply add to their sleep time before classes begin.

Besides walking or cycling to class, car pools are green if you can't take the school bus. Instead of four cars taking four students to school each day, they can all squeeze into one. {#blank#}4{#/blank#}

More importantly, car pooling teaches students valuable life lessons not taught in class. It can teach students about being on time. It can also teach them the bad influence of being late. If you're late, then all of your friends will be late too.

    In the deserts(沙漠)of North Africa and Saudi Arabia lives the smallest fox with the largest ears. This animal is the fennec fox.

Fennec foxes have ears that are 5 to 6 inches long. That's big for an animal that weighs less than four pounds. Their ears help shed (去除) body heat. And, as you may have guessed, they also provide great hearing.

    It's also interesting to think about the hair of fennec foxes. Why would a fox that lives in the desert need a thick, fur coat? Actually, the desert isn't always warm. During the nighttime, a desert can be terribly cold! A fennec fox's fur keeps them warm during those desert nights. They also have long bushy tails that they use as a blanket. And the hair on their feet protects them from the hot sand in the daytime.

    Fennec foxes live in small communities of dens (兽穴).They spend most of the day sleeping in their dens, out of the hot sun. Then, when night comes, they come out in search of food. In addition to(除……之外) their great hearing, fennecs also use their great sense of smell and big eyes to track down dinner.

    Fennecs eat both meat and plants. They like eating birds, eggs, insects, snails, fruit and leaves best. Fennec fox mothers have one to five babies at a time. Sometimes they are in danger. They have to be careful with predators (捕食性动物), such as caracals (a type of wild cat) , jackals, eagle owls, hyenas and humans. Humans catch them for their fur and to sell as pets.

C

    A very important world problem is the growth of population on the earth. The population of the world today is more than 6,500,000,000. That is a great number and we know it quite well. ①The important thing is not how large the population of the world is now, but is the rate(速度) of the growth. It is about 1.63% every year after the number of dead people has been taken away.

    To give you some ideas of the birth rate, look at the ②second hand of your watch. Every second, four babies are born in the world. Another baby! Another baby! Another baby! Another baby! ③You can not speak quickly enough to keep up with the rate of the growth of the population. It is growing faster and faster. So it goes on, hour after hour. In one day, people have to find food for about 350,000 mouths more.

    This great growth of population will make a big problem by the year 2050 — there will be as many as 7,500,000,000 people on the earth! So this is one of the biggest problems that you are going to meet in your life.

    Tokyo may be one of those places that you love and hate at the same time. In Tokyo, there are always too many people in the places where you want to go. There are also too many cars. Tokyo drivers often spend a long time in the busy street, just like drivers in London, Paris and New York.

    Tokyo also has a lot of people on foot, and sometimes it is really difficult to walk in the street. The worst time in the street is at 11：30 at night. That is because the nightclubs are closing at that time and everybody wants to go home then. There are more than 30,000 nightclubs in Tokyo, and usually none of them is empty at night.

    During the day, most people go to work by train. Six million train tickets are sold, every year in Tokyo. At most stations, trains arrive every two or three minutes, but at certain hours they are not enough at all. Although trains are always crowded, they are very good in many ways. They always leave and arrive on time. In London trains, you may see everybody reading a newspaper. But in Tokyo trains, everybody seems to be sleepy, no matter whether his journey is long or short. If you stand outside the station for five minutes, there will be three fire engineer going past you. They are on the way to one of the fires that Tokyo has every day. Tokyo has so many surprises that none of them can really surprise me now.