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填空题

SECTION A
In this section you will hear a mini-lecture. You will hear the lecture ONCE ONLY. While listening, take notes on the important points. Your notes will not be marked, but you will need them to complete a gap-filling task after the mini-lecture. When the lecture is over, you will be given two minutes to check your notes, and another ten minutes to complete the gap-filling task on ANSWER SHEET ONE. Use the blank sheet for note-taking.
Now listen to the mini-lecture.
Complete the gap-filling task. Some of the gaps below require a maximum of THREE
words. Make sure the word(s) you fill in is(are) both grammatically and semantically acceptable.
You may refer to your notes.
Did Marco Polo Tell the Truth
There is a controversy about Marco Polo’s trip to China. Did Marco
Polo tell the truth If you ask his 13%century contemporaries, the answer
would be a resounding no. As Polo’s 1298 book, The Travels of
Marco Polo, told Europeans something they (1)______ to believe, 1.______
Westerners just regard Polo’s account as a romantic fantasy.
According to some critics, Polo never even (2)______foot in 2.______
China. Had he been there, he would have reported important aspects of
13th-century Chinese life that were (3) ______ such as tea drinking, 3.______
calligraphy, the binding of women’s feet to keep them small, and, most
glaring, the Great Wall of China.
Frances Wood, head of the British Library’s Chinese department, in
her 1995 book Did Marco Polo Go to China, argues that Polo probably
never got beyond (4)______. His China stay was 4.______
(5) ______ with the help of Arabs and Persians who had visited China 5.______
. But a century after he was ridiculed as "the man of a million lies",
a Renaissance geographer hailed him as "the most diligent investigator of
(6) ______ shores". 6.______
Today, reference books state flatly that Polo went to China, even
though flaws in his story have been known for centuries. Polo’s supporters
explain Polo’s omissions like this: Tea drinking was popular in
(7)______China in Polo’s time, Lamer says, but was not yet so 7.______
popular in the north and central regions, where Polo resided. Foot binding
was limited to (8) ______ ladies confined to their houses. Only 8.______
rarely would anyone see them except kin. While Polo said nothing about
calligraphy, he did tell the West about (9) ______ money, which 9.______
China had used for centuries. Anyhow, from Polo, the West learned
many things about China.
Polo probably told quite a few lies. But even Polo’s No. 1 critic,
Wood, deems him a useful "(10) ______ of information". Whether 10.______
he told only half of what he saw, or saw merely half of what he told, the
fact remains: He made history happen.

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