Travel Books

There are many reasons why individuals have traveled beyond their own socie-ties. Some travelers may have simply desired to satisfy curiosity about the larger world. Not until recent times, however, did travelers start their journey for reasons other than mere curiosity. While the travelers’ 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 travelers themselves, for these accounts help them to have a better understand-ing of themselves.

Records of foreign travel appeared soon after the invention of writing, and frag-mentary 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 described much of Central Asia as far west as Bactria (modern-day Afghanistan) on the basis of travels undertaken in the first century BC 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 travelers to compile vast compendia of geographical knowledge.

During the postclassical 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 Muslims traveled as pilgrims to Mecca to make their hajj and visit the holy sites of Islam. Since the prophet Muhammad’s original pilgrim-age to Mecca, untold millions of Muslims have followed his example, and thou-sands of hajj accounts have related their experiences. East Asian travelers were not quite so prominent as Muslims during the postclassical era, but they too fol-lowed many of the highways and sea lanes of the eastern hemisphere. Chinese merchants frequently visited Southeast Asia and India, occasionally venturing even to East Africa, and devout East Asian Buddhists undertook distant pilgrim-ages. Between the 5th and 9th centuries CE, hundreds and possibly even thou-sands of Chinese Buddhists traveled to India to study with Buddhist teachers, collect sacred texts, and visit holy sites. Written accounts recorded the experi-ences 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 interest 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 postclassical era, although gradually increasing crowds of Christian pilgrims flowed to Jeru-salem, Rome, Santiago de Compostela (in northern Spain), and other sites. After the 12th century, however, merchants, pilgrims, and missionaries from medi-eval Europe traveled 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 peoples dominated travel and travel writing in postclas-sical times, European explorers, conquerors, merchants, and missionaries took center 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 Euro-pean peoples ventured to the distant corners of the globe, and European print-ing presses churned out thousands of travel accounts that described foreign lands and peoples 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 travelers 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 numer-ous writings to the societies of their colonial subjects, particularly in Asian and African colonies they established. By midcentury, attention was flowing also in the other direction. Painfully aware of the military and technological prowess of European and Euro-American societies, Asian travelers in particular visited Europe and the United States in hopes of discovering principles useful for the reorganisation of their own societies. Among the most prominent of these trav-elers who 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 kinds 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 Great 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 customs, 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.

Questions 27 – 28

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

Write your answers in boxes 27-28 on your answer sheet.

27.What were most people traveling for in the early days?

A Studying their own cultures

B Business

C Knowing other people and places better

D Writing travel books

28.Why did the author say writing travel books is also “a mirror” for travelers themselves?

A Because travelers record their own experiences.

B Because travelers reflect upon their own society and life.

C Because it increases knowledge of foreign cultures.

D Because it is related to the development of human society.

Questions 29 – 36

Complete the table below.

Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from Reading Passage 3 for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 29-36 on your answer sheet.

TIME	TRAVELER	DESTINATION	PURPOSE OF TRAVEL
Classical Greece	Herodotus	Egypt and Anatolia	To gather information for the study of 29——————
Han Dynasty	Zhang Qian	Central Asia	To seek 30 ________
Roman Empire	Ptolemy, Strabo, Pliny the Elder	Mediterranean	To acquire 31 ________
Post-classical Era (about 500 to 1500 CE)	Muslims	From east Africa to Indonesia Mecca	Trading and 32 ________
5th to 9th centu-ries CE	Chinese Buddhists	33 ________	To collect Buddhist texts and for spiritual enlightenment
Early modern era (about 1500 to 1800 CE)	European explorers	New World	To satisfy public curiosity for the New World
During 19th century	Colonial administrator	Asia, Africa	To provide informa-tion for the 34 ________ they set up
By the mid-cen-tury of the 1900s	Sun Yat-sen Fukuzawa Yukichi	Europe and United States	To study the 35 ________ for the reorgan-isation of their societies
20th century	People from 36 ________ countries	Mass tourism	Entertainment and pleasure