Read the article and select the best answer. Article: Tourism probably started in Roman times. Rich Romans visited friends and family who were working in another part of the Roman Empire. But when the empire broke down,this kind of tourism stopped. In the early 17th century, the idea of the "Grand Tour" was born. Rich young English people sailed across the English Channel .They visited the most beautiful and important European cities of the time, including Paris in France, and Rome and Venice in Italy. Their tours lasted for two to four years, and the tourists stayed a few weeks or months in each city. The "Grand Tour" was an important part of young people's education--but only for the rich. In the 18th century, tourism began to change. For example, people in the UK started to visit some towns, such as Bath to" take the waters". They believed that the water there was good for their health. So large and expensive hotels were built in these towns. In the 19th century, travel became much more popular and faster. When the first railways were built in the 1820s, it was easier for people to travel between towns, so they started to go for holidays by the sea. And some started to have holidays in the countryside as cities became larger, noisier and dirtier. Traveling by sea also became faster and safer when the first steamships were built. People began to travel more to far away countries. The 20th century saw cars become more and more popular among ordinary people. Planes were made larger, so ticket prices dropped and more people used them. Thus tourism grew. In 1949, Russian journalist Vladimir Raitz started a company called Horizon Holidays. The company organizes everything--plane tickets, hotel rooms, even food--and tourists pay for it all before they leave home. The package tour and modern tourist industry was born. The first travel agency in China was set up as early as 1949.But tourism did not take off until 1978.In 2002,the industry was worth 500 billion yuan and became an important part of China's social development. Question: In the early times, the travelers _ . Options: A: all came from Roman B: were very young and strong C: had lots of money D: traveled by boat
C

Read the article and select the best answer. Article: One advantage of the Internet is shopping conveniently online for clothes; one disadvantage of the Internet is also shopping conveniently online for clothes. "Nothing fits," said Lam Yuk Wong, a senior in electrical and computer engineering at Rice University. "Everyone says this. They order clothes and they don't fit. People get very unhappy." Wong and her design partner, Xuaner "Cecilia" Zhang, are Team White Mirror, creators of what they call a "virtual fitting room". Their goal is simple and consumer-friendly: to let online clothing shoppers have a perfect fit and a perfect look when shopping every time. Both women are from China, Wong from Hong Kong and Zhang from Beijing. They both order most of their clothing online. They got the idea from their own experience as consumers and from listening to the complaints of friends and relatives. "They say, 'The color is wrong' or 'I got the right size but it still does not fit.' We want to make it like you're in the store trying on the clothes," Zhang said. Using a Kinect developed by Microsoft for use with its Xbox 360 video game player, Zhang scans Wong and turns her image into, in effect, a virtual model, keeping Wong's dimensions , and even her skin and hair color. "We put the clothes on the shopper's 3-D body models and show how they look when they are dressed," Wong said. So far, Wong and Zhang have adapted the software to show dresses and shirts, and they are now working on shorts. Asked if she thought men as well as women might be interested in using their virtual fitting room, Wong said, "I think their wives will care about this, so it will also be important to men." Question: Wong and Zhang got the idea to design a virtual fitting room from _ . Options: A: their shopping experiences B: a program at their university C: some shop-owners' complaints D: the Xbox 360 video game player
A

Read the article and select the best answer. Article: Hippos have always attracted people's interest. Modern hippos in Walt Disney movies can dance lightly. A stone hippo in a 13th-century church in France has wings. And in ancient Egyptian fairy tales, the hippo was a goddess that guided the dead to the afterworld. Despite their popular appeal, hippos, as well as other animals, have difficulty when their needs conflict with those of humans. The early Egyptians liked to hunt hippos for their teeth and because they were dangerous animals. Amulets to protect babies from demons were made from hippo bones. About 4,000 years ago, there were so many hippos in Egypt that they caused serious crop damage. Egyptian farmers killed them routinely, and by the beginning of the 19th century, all the hippos in Africa had been killed. People used to see hippos fight in the arenas of ancient Rome. After the fall of the Roman Empire, hippos weren't seen in Europe again until a few zoos began to exhibit them in the mid 1800s. All the various uses and abuses of hippos through the centuries have made their population fall greatly. Where they do occur, mostly in national parks, they live in such high density that they make the grasslands bare. This causes other grass-eating animals to go farther for food, and hippos, which can't live far from water, destroy their own feeding grounds. Question: In Africa, hippos became extinct _ . Options: A: around the 1850s B: in the 13th century C: about 4,000 years ago D: in the early 19th century
D