There were many famous explorers（探险家）in ancient China. Let’s have a look.

Xu Fu

Xu Fu was an explorer during the Qin Dynasty. Emperor Qin Shihuang asked（A）________ to look for the medicine that could make a person live for ever. Xu Fu went on two trips. In his second trip, he took more people with different skills to go with him. Finally, they arrived on a big island. They taught the people there many skills, for example, to（B）grow rice.

Zhang Qian

Zhang Qian was a Chinese explorer in the Han Dynasty and he was also a pioneer in setting up the Silk Road. The emperor sent Zhang Qian to explore and open routes（路线）to the outside world. （C）他去了许多国家. His journeys were difficult. After he came back, he made useful reports（D）on the people and cultures there.

Zheng He

Zheng He was a famous Chinese explorer in the Ming Dynasty. （E）He was also an officer of the Yongle Emperor. He took seven great voyages（航行）. He built a group of ships,（F）________ biggest in the world at that time. The ships were known as treasure ships. His travels were so important that they are still studied today.

Lu Yu had an unusual life. He lived in the Tang Dynasty. As a homeless child, he lived in Longgai Temple and studied there including boiling tea. Jingling Prefect (太守) Li Qiwu liked the smart boy when Lu Yu was thirteen. He not only gave Lu Yu books as gifts but also introduced him to a famous teacher. Lu Yu learned from his teacher until he was nineteen. He also made good friends with some famous people. They often traveled, tasted tea and talked about poems together.

At the age of twenty-one, Lu Yu started to study on different kinds of tea. He left Jingling and traveled around the country to search for famous tea. To study on tea picking and tea making skills well, Lu Yu lived a long life of reclusion (隐居) in Tiaoxi. After that, he lived in Miaoxi Temple, collecting, checking, studying and reading documents (资料) about tea. Over years, he finally wrote the first book on the study of tea. That was the book Cha Jing, which was also the first book in the world on tea studies. This book has over seven thousand Chinese words, including the production place, the morphology (形态) and the growing environment of tea trees as well as tea picking, tea drinking and tea production tools and methods.

Cha Jing has a great influence on Chinese tea culture. Lu Yu is still called “the saint of tea” today.

This is a story about two wise (聪明的) men—Zhu Geliang and Zhou Yu. The Chinese people have told it for many, many years.

One day, Zhou Yu gave Zhu Geliang an impossible task. He asked him to make 100,000 arrows (箭) within ten days. “No problem,” Zhu Geliang said. “I’ll bring you 100,000 arrows in three days.”

Zhu Geliang asked his soldiers (士兵) to fill 20 large boats with many straw (稻草) men. In the early morning of the third day, Zhu Geliang’s soldiers sailed (驾驶) the boats towards the camps of Cao Cao’s army on the other side of the river. The soldiers shouted and beat their drums loudly.

When Cao Cao’s soldiers heard the sounds, they thought they were under attack. However, they could not see through the thick fog on the river. Cao Cao ordered his soldiers to shoot arrows towards the sounds of the drums and the shouting. Zhu Geliang’s boats were soon full of arrows. There were more than   100,000 arrows.

Zhu Geliang’s soldiers then turned the boats around and shouted. “Thank you for your arrows, Cao Cao.” Zhu Geliang took all those arrows to Zhou Yu.