纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 050传丝公主画版（2）

I am listening to the noise of the people and the goods of the whole world on the move, passing through Heathrow Airport... we all spend part of our lives now on highways or airways¹ - some real, some virtual - and as well as travelling them ourselves, we know that they fuel not just the economy but our imagination. In this, surprisingly little has changed since the eighth century. In the world we've been looking at this week, a world of enormous movement of people and of goods, one of the busiest highways of all, then as now, ran from China: the Silk Road - not in fact one single road, but a network of routes that spanned 4,000 miles (6,500 km) and effectively linked the Pacific to the Mediterranean². The goods on that highway were rare and exotic - gold, precious stones, spices, silk. And with the goods came stories, ideas, beliefs, and - key to our story today - technologies.

In this programme we're in the oasis³ kingdom of Khotan in Central Asia, which is where our painting was found. Khotan is now in western China, but it was then a separate kingdom and the beating heart of the Silk Road, vital for water and refreshment⁴, and a major manufacturer of silk. Khotanese story-tellers created a legend to explain how the secrets of silk production - for thousands of years a Chinese monopoly - had came to Khotan. The result was the story of the silk princess, as told in our painting.

The picture is on a wooden board, and it was found in a small abandoned Buddhist⁵ shrine⁶ in Khotan. The shrine was just one in a small city of shrines⁷ and monasteries⁸ which had vanished beneath the sand for over a thousand years. They were rediscovered in about 1900 by the brilliant polymath Sir Aurel Stein, one of the pioneering archaeologists of the Silk Road, and it was Stein who revealed Khotan's importance as a pivotal trading and cultural centre.

1 AIRWAYS   

航空公司

参考例句：

• The giant jets that increasingly dominate the world's airways. 越来越称雄于世界航线的巨型喷气机。
• At one point the company bought from Nippon Airways a 727 jet. 有一次公司从日本航空公司买了一架727型喷气机。

2 Mediterranean   

adj.地中海的；地中海沿岸的

参考例句：

• The houses are Mediterranean in character.这些房子都属地中海风格。
• Gibraltar is the key to the Mediterranean.直布罗陀是地中海的要冲。

3 oasis   

n.（沙漠中的）绿洲，宜人的地方

参考例句：

• They stopped for the night at an oasis.他们在沙漠中的绿洲停下来过夜。
• The town was an oasis of prosperity in a desert of poverty.该镇是贫穷荒漠中的一块繁荣的“绿洲”。

4 refreshment   

n.恢复，精神爽快，提神之事物；（复数）refreshments:点心，茶点

参考例句：

• He needs to stop fairly often for refreshment.他须时不时地停下来喘口气。
• A hot bath is a great refreshment after a day's work.在一天工作之后洗个热水澡真是舒畅。

5 Buddhist   

adj./n.佛教的，佛教徒

参考例句：

• The old lady fell down in adoration before Buddhist images.那老太太在佛像面前顶礼膜拜。
• In the eye of the Buddhist,every worldly affair is vain.在佛教徒的眼里，人世上一切事情都是空的。

6 shrine   

n.圣地，神龛，庙；v.将...置于神龛内，把...奉为神圣

参考例句：

• The shrine was an object of pilgrimage.这处圣地是人们朝圣的目的地。
• They bowed down before the shrine.他们在神龛前鞠躬示敬。

7 shrines   

圣地，圣坛，神圣场所( shrine的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• All three structures dated to the third century and were tentatively identified as shrines. 这3座建筑都建于3 世纪，并且初步鉴定为神庙。
• Their palaces and their shrines are tombs. 它们的宫殿和神殿成了墓穴。

8 monasteries   

修道院( monastery的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• In ancient China, there were lots of monasteries. 在古时候，中国有许多寺院。
• The Negev became a religious center with many monasteries and churches. 内格夫成为许多庙宇和教堂的宗教中心。