English Paper 2 (QP)

This question paper consists of 8 printed pages.

SB (SC) QK11005/4© UCLES 2001 [Turn over

International General Certificate of Secondary EducationUNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE LOCAL EXAMINATIONS SYNDICATE

FIRST LANGUAGE ENGLISH 0500/2PAPER 2 Reading and Directed Writing

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER SESSION 2001 2 hours 15 minutes

Additional materials:Answer paper

TIME 2 hours 15 minutes

INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES

Write your name, Centre number and candidate number in the spaces provided on the answer paper/answer booklet.

Answer all questions.

Write your answers on the separate answer paper provided.

If you use more than one sheet of paper, fasten the sheets together.

INFORMATION FOR CANDIDATES

The number of marks is given in brackets [ ] at the end of each question or part question.

Dictionaries are not permitted.

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Part 1

The following passages describe encounters with rare and amazing animals. Read them carefully andthen answer Questions 1 and 2.

Passage A

Eric, aged seven, his sister and his parents have come to live in a lonely part of Alaska. Eric is caughtin a sudden snowstorm and runs for shelter to a hut made of grass turf. He only just manages to reachit.

He collapsed face down on the threshold, gasping for breath. The first thing henoticed was the smell and for a second he drew back, uncertain. Then the gravel beatstinging against his legs, and he squirmed quickly in.

The hut was small and dark; it had no window or chimney; its door was simply acouple of movable turves which Eric, from the inside, now hauled-to to keep out of thewind. As the turves were pulled in the moan of the storm faded, the last glimmer of lightwas snuffed out, and the smell – strong and piercing – rose pungently out of the dark. Onthe far side of the sod hut something moved.

The little boy peered into the darkness, suddenly afraid. Twin circles of fire swayedup from the floor; twin balls of red aglow like coals in the dark. And Eric shrank back,appalled. Something was in the sod hut: some wild and terrible animal – perhaps a greatKodiak bear with foot-long claws that could rip the guts from a caribou in a single slash.He spun around. He tore at the door turves. Then he remembered the storm.

He stood very still, teeth clenched, eyes screwed tight. Waiting. But the wild andterrible animal didn’t spring at him. Everything was motionless and very quiet –everything except his heart which was pounding in frightened leaps between mouth andstomach, and after a while even the pound of his heart sank to a muffled uncertain throb.Hesitantly he unscrewed his eyes, ready to snap them shut the moment the animalmoved. But the circles of red were motionless. The creature – whatever it was – kept tothe farther side of the hut.

He peered into the blackness. At first he could see only the red of the eyes, butgradually as he became accustomed to the dark he could make out more: a shadowymass, coiled and menacing, stretching almost a third of the way round the wall. Theanimal was large; but – to his unspeakable relief – it wasn’t thickset and solid enough tobe a bear. He began to breathe more easily.

After a while he became conscious of a faint persistent sound: a sound so low that ithad been drowned up to now by the thud of his heart and the background moan of thestorm. It was a sucky, slobbery sound: a sound he had heard before – years and years agowhen he was very small; it wasn’t a sound to be frightened of; he knew that; itsassociations were pleasant. His fear began to go away. Perhaps the creature was friendly;perhaps it would let him stay; perhaps the hut was a refuge they could both, in time ofemergency, share.

His mind seized onto the idea, thankfully. He remembered a picture in one of his storybooks: a picture of a little boy (no older than he was) and all sorts of different animalslying together on a flood-ringed island; and he remembered his father reading thecaption, ‘Then the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down withthe bird, and the young lion and the fatling together’, and he remembered his fatherexplaining that in times of great danger – fire or flood, tempest or drought – all livingthings reverted to their natural state and lived peacefully together until the danger waspassed. This, he told himself, must be such a time.

He stared at the glowing eyes. And quite suddenly his fear was submerged in a greatflood of curiosity. What was this strange red-eyed creature? It was too big for a fox or ahare, and not the right shape for a bear or a caribou. If only he could see it!

He remembered then that somewhere in every hut his father had placed matches andcandles.

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An older boy would have hesitated now. An older boy would have had secondthoughts and a legacy of fear. But to Eric things were uncomplicated. He had beenfrightened, but that was in the past: now he was curious. For a little boy of seven it wasas simple as that.

He felt round the wall till his hand struck a metal box. He prized off the lid. He foundand lit one of the candles. A flickering light leapt round the hut. And the little boy’sbreath stuck in his throat and he could only stare and stare. For never in all his life hadhe seen anything so beautiful.

She lay curled up against the wall: a sinuous seven-foot golden seal, her fur like afield of sun-drenched corn; and clinging to her teats two soft-furred pups, their eyes stillclosed.

Holding the candle high, his fear quite lost in wonder, he walked towards her.

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Passage B

The day I saw a yeti

For years scientists were unsure of what a yeti (or ‘Abominable Snowman’) was. Some thought it was atype of ape, but in this article its true identity is revealed.

Roger Boyes meets the man trackingthe abominable snowman

The midsummer sun was setting and Reinhold Messner felt suddenly cold. Ina gap between wild rhododendron bushes he saw a dark shape. ‘A yak,* Ithought, and I was looking forward to meeting some Tibetans, having a warmevening meal and a roof over my head.’ Messner, one of the world’s best climbers– perhaps the very best – had nothing but a sleeping bag, some hard bread andlard and a cape. No tent. A yak meant civilisation of sorts.

But this was no yak. There were no whistling herdsmen, no grunting animals.Out into the clearing ran a giant animal on two legs. ‘It was as if my ownshadow had been projected ten yards onto the clearing.’ As he moved on,unsettled, he came across a footprint in the mud. He could make out whatseemed to be the traces of toes. Messner tried his weight on the mud. Even withhis climbing boot, his foot made a lesser imprint. The creature was heavy, morethan 100 kilograms.

It was, in fact – or perhaps one should say ‘in myth’ – a yeti, the abominablesnowman on a summer outing. That first encounter, in 1986, sent Messner on a12-year mission to find the yeti: not to hunt it down and bring back its pelt butto find a way of separating the zoological facts from the sherpa legends of theHimalayas.

The climber’s first discovery was that the yeti was almost certainly the samecreature that Tibetan mountain people and monks call the chemo. In onesighting of the yeti, he was terrified by the high whistle that came from itsmouth, a kind of piping noise channelled between its tongue and upper jaw. ‘Andthe stench! It was like frozen garlic, rancid fat and yak dung. The skull was asbig as that of a yak but without horns.’

He described the animal to mountain nomads, who said immediately: ‘That isthe chemo.’ It lives in woodlands, but in high summer it follows the nomads upto the snowy peaks and crosses glaciers to reach distant valleys. ‘They kill goats,sheep, even yaks,’ the nomads told Messner. The chemo carries its offspring onits back. ‘It is like a cross between a bear and a human. He eats what we eat –meat, fruit, berries, vegetables, roots and he lives where we live. When he staresinto the sun, he blinks like we blink.’

There have been Chinese sightings of the yeti. In 1977 Yang Wanchun cameface to face with a tall creature covered with hair. Only an irrigation ditchseparated them. ‘The hairy being let out 11 or 12 different sounds. He chirrupedlike a sparrow, barked like a dog, whinnied like a pony, growled like a leopardand whimpered like a child.’ Yang pelted it with stones and it scurried for cover.

The description of the creature matches that of the nomads and sherpas. Thefootprints show clearly differentiated claws, like those seen by Messner.

‘Yetis can kill 550-kilo yaks with a blow to the spine. They can cross fiercestreams which would be unpassable for me,’ says Messner, who has written abook about his quest: Yeti – Legend and Reality. The account of his quest isfascinating, but his conclusion is something of a letdown. The yeti is not ahumanoid, not the missing link but merely a big bear, Ursus arctus, albeit acompletely wild, often savage creature. It is still possible, concedes Messner,that there is, somewhere in the world, another yeti-like animal which willcontinue to excite our curiosity about the mysterious world of nature.

(The Times, 3 October 1998)

*yak: a large ox

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1 Eric, Reinhold Messner and Yang Wanchun all have exciting encounters with unusual animals.Summarise the impressions and emotions that go through their minds.

Use your own words as far as possible.

Write 1–1 !" sides, allowing for the size of your handwriting. [20]

2 Both the golden seal and the yeti are rare and remarkable animals adapted to their own wild andlonely habitats. Some people would wish to leave them there, some would want to shoot them andothers would capture them and put them in zoos.

Write the words of a TV discussion in which you make a reasoned case for leaving the goldenseal and the yeti alone in the wild. Also taking part in the discussion are a hunter and a zoo-keeperwho have their points to make.

Write your answer in playscript form. Begin with these words:

Me: I don’t suppose that seeing a golden seal or a yeti in captivity could ever compare withthe amazing experience of meeting one face to face.

Hunter: …


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Part 2

3 A Year Out!

Many people these days take a year out, doing something entirely different from studying, beforethey go on to the next stage in their lives.

You have a choice of one of the three options A, B, or C printed on the opposite page. Which doyou think might suit you the most and which would you be least prepared to do? Give yourreasons.

Make close reference to the material.


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C. Live at home and take responsibility

‘I worked as a helper in a local school,’ says Aftab. ‘Most of the time I shadowed twopupils who were severely disabled. I kept an eye on them during breaks and helped inlessons. It was a great school – the teachers treated me like a proper member of staff.’

Collette was taken on by a computer firm in her own town. ‘I learned so much and they letme have real responsibility after a month or so. I worked on a new, top-secret project.’

Advantages Disadvantages

learn about the world of work work not always worthwhilestart at the bottom and progress a bit living at home limits experiencemeet others and make professional friendships the boss might not like youearn money and spend little you may not last the whole year

B. Join a project abroad

‘I went to the Amazon,’ says Gregor. ‘The expedition was searching for a rare plant withmedicinal properties. The experience was out of this world, but the work was unremitting.It’s taken weeks to recover.’

Thandie worked in a field hospital for sick children in Botswana: ‘It made me guilty when Irealised how well off I am. It was so sad seeing the children suffering, but so good to feel Iplayed a part in helping them. I still dream of their faces.’


do really worthwhile work work physically and emotionally gruellingremarkable experiences pay very small or non-existentbelong to a team living conditions may be hardyour work is valued others may be unsympathetic to you

A. Take risks and explore the world

‘I went with friends,’ says Maria. ‘Luckily we got on really well together, and our old vanhardly ever broke down.’

Stefan says, ‘You can choose where you want to go and when. We climbed mountains,trekked through jungles, swam in warm water and ate the most unusual foods. What alife!’

‘You need to take things sensibly,’ says Olga. ‘I mean you must be fit to walk in theHimalayas. You have to know the local customs and make a real attempt to learn thelanguage of each country you visit.’


meet all sorts of people health hazardsmake lasting friendships finance uncertainlearn to survive/make decisions difficulties in communicationcontrol your own destiny out on your own

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Copyright Acknowledgements:

Passage A. © James Vance Marshall (John Johnson Ltd), A River Ran Out of Eden (1962) (extract)Passage B. © Roger Boyes, The Times 3 October 1998

Cambridge International Examinations has made every effort to trace copyright holders, but if we have inadvertently overlooked any we will be pleased to makethe necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE INTERNATIONAL EXAMINATIONS

International General Certificate of Secondary Education

FIRST LANGUAGE ENGLISH 0500/02

Paper 2 Reading Passages

May/June 2006

2 hours

Additional Materials: Answer Booklet/Paper

READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST

If you have been given an Answer Booklet, follow the instructions on the front cover of the Booklet.

Write your Centre number, candidate number and name on all the work you hand in.

Write in dark blue or black pen.

Do not use staples, paper clips, highlighters, glue or correction fluid.



At the end of the examination, fasten all your work securely together.


This document consists of 5 printed pages and 3 blank pages.

IB06 06_0500_02/3RP

© UCLES 2006

[Turn over

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© UCLES 2006 0500/02/M/J/06

Part 1

Read Passage A carefully, and then answer Questions 1 and 2.

Passage A

This story was written a long time ago. It is about a hotel in the state of Victoria, Australia.

The Shamrock Hotel

Not a day’s tramp from Ballarat, set well back from a dusty track that started nowhere in particular and

had no destination worth mentioning, stood the Shamrock Hotel. It was a low, rambling, disjointed

structure, and bore strong evidence of having been designed by an amateur artist in a moment of

drunken frenzy. It reached out in several well-defined angles, and had a lean-to building stuck on here

and there; numerous outhouses were dropped down about it at random; its walls were propped up in

places with logs, and its moss-coloured shingle roof, bowed down with the weight of years and a great

accumulation of stones, hoop-iron, jam-tins, broken glassware, and dried possum skins, bulged

threateningly on the verge of utter collapse. The Shamrock was built of sun-dried bricks, of an

unhealthy, bilious tint. Its dirty, shattered windows were plugged in places with old hats and discarded

female apparel, and draped with green blinds, many of which had broken their moorings, and hung

despondently by one corner. Groups of ungainly fowl chased succulent grasshoppers before the bar

door; a moody, distempered goat rubbed her ribs against a shattered trough roughly hewn from the

butt of a tree, and a matronly old bitch of spare proportions wallowed complacently in the dust of the

road, surrounded by her yelping brood.

A battered sign hung out over the door of the Shamrock, informing people that Michael Doyle was the

licensed owner, and that good accommodation could be afforded to both man and beast at the lowest

current rates. But that sign was unreliable. Bed and board were quite out of the province of the

Shamrock. There was, in fact, only one couch professedly at the disposal of the weary wayfarer, and

this, according to the statement of the few persons who had ever ventured to try it, seemed stuffed

with old boots and stubble; it was located immediately beneath a hen-roost, which was the resting

place of a maternal fowl, addicted on occasion to nursing her chickens on the tired sleeper’s chest.

The turnover at the Shamrock was not at all extensive for, saving the occasional agricultural labourer

who came from ‘beyond’ – which was the versatile host’s way of designating any part within a radius

of five miles – to revel in an occasional spree, the trade was confined to the passing cockatoo farmer,

who invariably arrived on a bony, drooping horse, took a drink, and shuffled away amid clouds of dust.

Landlord Doyle was of Irish extraction; his stock was so old that everyone had forgotten where and

when it originated; but Mickey assumed no unnecessary style, and his personal appearance would

not have led you to infer that there had been a king in his family, and that an ancestor of his had once

killed a landlord. Micky was a small, scraggy man, with a mop of grizzled hair and a little, red,

humorous face, ever bristling with auburn stubble. His trousers were the most striking thing about him;

they were built on the premises, and always contained enough stuff to make him a full suit and a

winter overcoat. Mrs Doyle manufactured those pants after plans and specifications of her own

designing, and was mighty proud when Michael would yank them up into his armpits, and amble

around, peering about discontentedly over the waistband. ‘They were a great saving in waistcoats,’

she said.

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1 You have recently stayed at the Shamrock Hotel and, most surprisingly, you thoroughly enjoyed

your stay.

Write a letter to Mr and Mrs Doyle explaining the reasons why you liked the hotel so much. You

know that the Doyles will use your letter to advertise the hotel in future.

Base all that you write on Passage A.

You should write between 1 ! and 2 sides, allowing for the size of your handwriting.

Up to fifteen marks will be available for the content of your answer, and up to five marks for the

quality of your writing.

[20 marks]

2 Re-read the descriptions of

(a) the animals you might find at the Shamrock, in paragraph 1

(b) Michael Doyle, in paragraph 3.

By referring closely to the language used by the writer, explain how he makes these descriptions

effective.

[10 marks]

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Part 2

Read Passage B carefully, and then answer Question 3, which is based on both Passage A and

Passage B.

Passage B

The Technocrat Hotel

Mr Rapadi was a much-travelled man, a great critic of the hotels he visited around the world. ‘In the

end,’ he would say, ‘they are all much like each other.’ He dreamed of creating a hotel which would

outshine all others in its modernity, would cause all who saw it to gasp and would attract the famous

and the successful. He would call it The Technocrat.

Eventually he built his hotel and it so happened that I was one of his first clients. There was no

mistaking it. It towered menacingly above the surrounding buildings, resplendent in glass and shining

metal. Everything about it was vast, its windows, its entrance and the magnificent red letters that

spelled out Technocrat.

I was humbled by this edifice. If I entered, I would be sure to be lost. But I was attracted like a magnet

and, as I approached, the doors slid noiselessly apart as if, mysteriously, they expected me. I entered

what appeared to be a bronze cavern with coloured lights twinkling from a great height and some

considerable way ahead lay the reception desk.

No one stood behind the desk to make me feel welcome. However, a courteous recorded voice,

perhaps that of Mr Rapadi himself, wished me a very good afternoon and requested my name and my

credit card which a little machine graciously read and returned to me. ‘Your room is on firty fiff floor,’

said the mechanical voice. ‘Please take identity disk from machine on right. Lifts on left side.’

There was a veritable bank of lifts — not the two or three you usually encounter in inferior hotels but a

whole line of them with glass doors, shooting up and down. I stood nervously watching them as feet

and heads came suddenly in and out of view. I never saw anybody get in or out.

As I entered my lift, it recognised my identity disk and whisked me disconcertingly to the thirty-fifth

floor before I had time to press a button. I arrived before I had begun, so to speak, and stepped onto a

metal moving carpet which delivered me to my room.

The door slid open automatically and I stepped into a technological wonderland. How did the subdued

lighting know my favourite colour? How could the TV set scan 150 channels to locate my type of

culture? Email and internet devices burst out at every corner and the bed, ah, the bed was capable of

assuming all angles and of adapting to the size of its most awkward customer.

To be truthful, I did not know where to turn. My stomach was still at reception and the little voices of

gadgets introducing themselves electronically to me set my brain in a whirl. The food delivery system

was too assertive, bullying me to listen to the menu and to make my choice. ‘Vegetable sausage,’ I

gasped to keep the thing quiet. ‘How many times?’ it demanded. ‘Once only,’ I said and was rewarded

by a piping hot plateful that I did not really want but was too afraid to decline.

This cacophony of voices was insistent, destructive. It seemed that they were too scarily human and

that a riot might soon break out. I was too frightened to approach the bathroom, for what contraption

might leap out at me? What if the water sprinklers detected my rising blood pressure and soaked the

entire room?

As I stood near the window, a bottled voice said, ‘Fresh air, sir?’ and indeed I was met by a rush of

artificial wind that nearly knocked me off my feet.

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Then it struck me. In all the time I had been in Mr Rapadi’s hotel, I had not met a single person. Not

one, apart from those strange bodies that went up and down in the glass-fronted lifts.

As I left the room, the door shuddered, the moving carpet shrieked and I almost fell into the lift. I

crossed the lobby furtively and a voice rang out, ‘Your check, sir; your identity disk, sir?’ and I

escaped only just in time through the closing doors.

I spent that night in a comfortable family hotel up the road. A few weeks later I read that the

Technocrat had exploded mysteriously in the middle of the night, a victim perhaps of its own success.

3 Read Passage B and re-read Passage A.

Summarise:

(a) the appearance and the facilities of the Technocrat Hotel that the writer appeared to find

worrying or annoying;

(b) the appearance and facilities, or the lack of them, of the Shamrock Hotel that a visitor might

find worrying or annoying.

You should write about 1 side in total, allowing for the size of your handwriting.

Up to fifteen marks will be given for the content of your answer, and up to five marks for the


[20 marks]

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Passage A A Golden Shanty by Edward Dyson. From an anthology published by Longman Australia Pty Ltd, 1995

Permission to reproduce items where third-party owned material protected by copyright is included has been sought and cleared where possible. Every

reasonable effort has been made by the publisher (UCLES) to trace copyright holders, but if any items requiring clearance have unwittingly been included, the

publisher will be pleased to make amends at the earliest possible opportunity.

University of Cambridge International Examinations is part of the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (UCLES), which is itself a department

of the University of Cambridge.

0500/02/M/J/06

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IB08 11_0500_02/5RP

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*9755120562*

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE INTERNATIONAL EXAMINATIONS

International General Certificate of Secondary Education

FIRST LANGUAGE ENGLISH 0500/02

Paper 2 Reading Passages (Extended) October/November 2008

2 hours

Additional Materials: Answer Booklet/Paper


If you have been given an Answer Booklet, follow the instructions on the front cover of the Booklet.

Write your Centre number, candidate number and name on all the work you hand in.

Write in dark blue or black pen.

Do not use staples, paper clips, highlighters, glue or correction fluid.



At the end of the examination, fasten all your work securely together.


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© UCLES 2008 0500/02/O/N/08

Part 1


Passage A

This is an account of the disastrous eruption of the volcano Vesuvius, and what happened at that time

to an eighteen-year-old student and his uncle.

Vesuvius

Across the Bay of Naples in Italy, the volcano Mount Vesuvius dominates your view from almost every

angle. It stands like a sentinel over the cluster of towns that huddle in its fertile foothills. Behind sheets

of mist it is ghostlike; in the warm sunshine it is magnificent, but it always seems to brood secretively

over the surrounding land and sea, full of silent menace.

The disastrous eruption in the year 79 was one of the world’s most famous natural catastrophes.

Then, of course, there were no rescue teams, no earth-moving apparatus and no emergency

hospitals. Those people who could escape did so, and attributed the explosion to the gods and to the

giants who had recently been seen ranging over the mountains. Anyway, there could have been no

rescue, since the city of Pompeii was covered with 29 metres of small pumice stones and volcanic

ash. Anyone who stayed behind or who revisited the site in the next day or two was either smothered

or killed by a cloud of poisonous gases and dust. It was estimated that 20,000 died there.

Another victim of the explosion was the smaller seaside town of Herculaneum. Unlike Pompeii, this

was buried in a mudslide, which then solidified, preserving a good deal of the town. 1,600 years later,

both towns were discovered and painstakingly excavated, revealing houses with their roofs on,

decorated pavements, wall paintings, theatres and shops. Many bodies were found which had turned

to statues as they died.

We are fortunate in having an account of the eruption of Vesuvius which was written by an eighteen-

year-old student called Pliny. He observed what happened from a comparatively safe distance before

he was forced to escape. His uncle, known as Pliny the Elder, was a famous academic who wrote an

encyclopedia called Natural History and other books on subjects such as a history of all the wars

between the Romans and the Germans (in twenty volumes) and the use of missiles while on

horseback. However, he was also famous for his service to the state. He had experienced military

service in Germany and had held administrative posts in Spain. He was, at that time, in charge of the

Roman navy in the Bay of Naples. He therefore called for a boat so that he could find out more about

the little-known science of volcanoes. He had barely set off when a neighbour found herself trapped at

the water’s edge. He realised the gravity of the situation, called for more boats and made it his priority

to rescue the stranded citizens.

His nephew, the young Pliny, decided to stay in the house and finish the homework that Pliny the

Elder had given him. From there he wrote about the eruption as follows: ‘I cannot give a more exact

description of the shape of the cloud than by comparing it to that of a pine tree, for it shot up to a great

height in the form of a trunk which formed itself at the top into several branches. The cloud was at one

moment white and at another moment spotted, as if it had carried up earth and cinders.’

Later, when the young Pliny realised he must escape, he described how the wheels of the carts could

not hold steady on the piles of small stones. From where they were they could see ‘the sea sucked

back, as if it was driven by the convulsions of the earth. Behind us, a black and dreadful cloud burst

out in gusts of fiery, snakelike vapour. Now and again, the cloud yawned open to reveal long, fantastic

flames, like flashes of lightning, but much larger.’ What a fearful experience for an eighteen-year-old!

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Meanwhile, Pliny’s uncle had reached comparative safety further round the bay, with his friend

Pomponius. He went to bed, exhausted. Pomponius reported that ‘His breathing (as he was pretty fat)

was heavy and sonorous, and was heard by those who attended him outside his bedroom door.’ Later

the next day, Pliny the Elder became unwell, drank copious amounts of water, and requested another

rest. Soon after, he collapsed and died, whether from the weakness of his heart, or the results of

inhaling toxic gas, nobody knew.

The young man must have missed his uncle, whom he admired for his never-ending quest for

knowledge as much as for his executive powers. He had also lost his teacher. At least the younger

Pliny survived the volcano and became a politician, serving his country well.

1 Imagine you are a reporter, writing from the area.

Write the newspaper report which would have appeared a week after the eruption of

Vesuvius.

Use the following headline:

Tragic death of respected Naval Commander:

Eruption causes terror and destruction in Bay of Naples

Base your report on what you have read in Passage A.

Write your report in modern English. Do not use columns.

Write between 1 ! and 2 sides, allowing for the size of your handwriting.

Up to 15 marks will be available for the content of your answer, and up to 5 marks for the


[Total: 20]

2 Re-read the descriptions of:

(a) Vesuvius in paragraph 1;

(b) the clouds in paragraphs 5 and 6.

Selecting words and phrases from these paragraphs to support your answer, explain the effects

the writer creates in using these descriptions.

[Total: 10]

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Part 2

Question 3 is based on both Passage A and Passage B.

Read Passage B and re-read Passage A.

Passage B

In this passage the writer describes a journey to the Kamchatka Peninsula, one of the most

volcanically active regions on Earth.

Russia’s Frozen Inferno

Late last summer I spent a month studying volcanic eruptions with an international team that included

French explorers, a German photographer called Carsten Peter, and a Russian guide named Feodor

Farberov.

Carsten has spent his life documenting volcanoes with a camera. The closer he gets to the volcano,

the happier he is. Not so Feodor, a 39-year-old, stolid, muscular, bearded mountaineer. He was born

in a village at the foot of Klyuchevskoy and grew up with the dangers and discomforts of volcano

research. ‘Volcanic ash covered everything,’ he recalled. ‘Our water, our air, even our food tasted of

sulphur.’ Having seen ‘enough eruptions for a lifetime,’ Feodor now likes his mountains cold, quiet

and covered with snow for skiing.

Bezymianny, one of the dozen volcanoes that make up the peninsula’s group, was thought to be

dormant until 1955, when it suddenly began to shake and swell and spew. On March 30th 1956, it

exploded, enveloping the area in a shroud of ash. Within two days the ash reached Alaska, and two

days later it was detected over the British Isles. The explosion flattened trees 15 miles away. Like the

eruption of Mount St. Helens, it started with a giant avalanche, then blew out sideways, leaving a

huge horseshoe-shaped crater.

We hiked through soft ash, sinking knee-deep at times, climbed heaps of shattered rock, and

scrambled in and out of rocky gorges. Through wind and whipping clouds we climbed to the crater’s

broken rim and looked over. The inner cliffs dropped hundreds of feet to a circular channel, ringing a

new mountain rising from the ruins of the old – a huge dome of smoking rock with its summit towering

over us. On the floor of the channel sprawled a field of ice and snow, blackened by cinders and split

by crevasses that gaped white in the enveloping mists. As we clung to the sharp edge, the dome

threw down showers of rock from its steep sides. When large boulders hit the ice below, they left

white wounds in the dark surface.

Another of Kamchatka’s volcanoes is Mutnovsky. It is a complex structure with multiple active craters.

In March 2000, steam blasts rocked one of the craters, and, within it, a glacier began to collapse. A

large section of the glacier vanished, and a green acidic lake appeared in the middle of the broken

ice. This kind of activity indicates that Mutnovsky is heating up and signals the possibility of even

greater eruptions.

We set out just after dawn to follow a river up into that crater. Our path led across slopes of wet,

slippery ash, past narrow openings in the rocks belching steam. Scrambling across the glacier, its

surface a mass of dirty ice and cinders, we skirted the lake and climbed to a narrow divide. Standing

on ice, we felt the hot breath of volcanic gases. Around us rose the steep crater walls lined with red

and yellow deposits of sulphur. Slabs of glacier peeled off and crashed into the sour, pea-green

water.

Carsten was ecstatic. When he and one of the other explorers decided to crawl under the glacier into

a dark ice cave formed by a river of warm water, I followed. Feodor just shook his head.

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We crab-walked under huge blocks of ice that had fallen around the entrance, then waded through

shallow water to the edge of darkness. Pale light fell from crevasses in the roof, barely illuminating a

world of grey: grey shadows, grey ice, grey ash, grey river. The inner walls were hung with icicles.

The ice groaned above and around us – the internal workings of the glacier as it melted and moved.

The hairs on my neck rose and, with them, dreadful imaginings. Not only could the tunnel implode at

any moment but also the lake, held back by only a wall of ice, could drain in a flash. It looked as if part

of the cave had collapsed a few weeks earlier. What if another eruption occurred while we were down

there?

3 Summarise:

(a) the dangers and discomforts of exploring volcanic areas, as described in Passage B;

(b) what made the eruption of Vesuvius such a terrible event for the people in the area, as

described in Passage A.



Up to 15 marks will be available for the content of your answer, and up to 5 marks for the


[Total: 20]

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Passage B © Jeremy Schmidt; National Geographic Magazine, August 2001.

Permission to reproduce items where third-party owned material protected by copyright is included has been sought and cleared where possible. Every

reasonable effort has been made by the publisher (UCLES) to trace copyright holders, but if any items requiring clearance have unwittingly been included, the

publisher will be pleased to make amends at the earliest possible opportunity.

University of Cambridge International Examinations is part of the Cambridge Assessment Group. Cambridge Assessment is the brand name of University of

Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (UCLES), which is itself a department of the University of Cambridge.

0500/02/O/N/08

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DC (CB (NB)) 30700/4© UCLES 2011 [Turn over

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE INTERNATIONAL EXAMINATIONSInternational General Certificate of Secondary Education

*0635833277*

FIRST LANGUAGE ENGLISH 0500/21Paper 2 Reading Passages (Extended) May/June 2011 2 hoursAdditional Materials: Answer Booklet/Paper


If you have been given an Answer Booklet, follow the instructions on the front cover of the Booklet.Write your Centre number, candidate number and name on all the work you hand in.Write in dark blue or black pen.Do not use staples, paper clips, highlighters, glue or correction fluid.

Answer all questions.Dictionaries are not permitted.

At the end of the examination, fasten all your work securely together.The number of marks is given in brackets [ ] at the end of each question or part question.

www.XtremePapers.net

http://www.xtremepapers.com

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Part 1


Passage A

Climbing the Nose of El Capitan

Dean Potter is a famous rock climber whose speciality is speed. He often refuses to use any climbing equipment, relying only on his agility and lack of fear. This is Rob Buchanan’s account of watching Dean and his partner O’Neill climb one of the most difficult mountain faces in America.

“Three, two, one, go!” Dean Potter punches a button on a plastic wristwatch looped around his climbing harness. His partner leaps at the rock before him, jamming freshly taped fingers into a slender crack. Above them, soaring into an azure sky, is the great, granite, curved wall of the most famous climb in Yosemite Valley (or indeed the world): the Nose of El Capitan. Climbers either fear or loathe it, but all of them respect anyone who has the ability to negotiate its incredibly difficult layout. After a gruelling vertical climb of over 2,000 feet, the rock face begins to curve out above the climbers – indeed like the underside of a large nose – and they must attempt to overcome this overhanging shelf in order to get to the top.

Potter often climbs without the benefit of ropes or protection, but on this late autumn day their goal is speed, so the two are carrying hardware. Still, by any sane standard, they’re ridiculously under-equipped: no packs, no shirts, no food and no water. A single 200-foot length of rope between them, plus a handful of spring-loaded devices to be placed in cracks for protection, are their only concessions to safety. Even Potter’s climbing harness is minimalistic: a homemade thing fashioned from 11/16 inch webbing and stitched together with dental floss.

Potter doesn’t wait for his partner to reach the safety of the permanent metal peg at the top of the first stage, but instead starts climbing straight away. This is a risky procedure, but it’s the fastest way to climb. Five minutes later, the two are already 200 feet up, and my neck is sore just from watching them. As I back away from the Nose to get a better view, I hear it – a horrible scrabbling of hands and feet on rock, followed by a desperate yell: “Falling!” Looking up, I see O’Neill dropping through space, arms flailing, legs splaying like a manic puppet out of control. Suddenly, he jerks to a stop. This puppet now looks as though someone, out of pity, has cut all of his strings except one, and he hangs there, stunned, after plunging more than 25 feet. I can’t believe he hasn’t hit the bottom.

There’s a moment’s silence. Potter has arrested his partner’s fall by holding on to the rope from his position 70 feet below. The bass boom of his voice echoes off the great sounding board of El Capitan. “Go!” he yells. “Get back on it! Go! Go! Go!”

The intensity is startling. Potter is normally a very calm person, slow talking and sometimes painfully shy. One man who knows him well, his promotions manager, calls him ‘a gentle giant’. In Patagonia, he has a different nickname: Tarzan. Potter says that’s because of the monosyllabic way he speaks Spanish when he’s on an expedition in Argentina. Maybe, but the name seems to capture a lot of Potter’s other qualities too. With his wide-set brown eyes, prominent and slightly battered-looking nose, tumbling mane and barrel chest, he could be the original Tarzan come back to life: a brooding inhabitant of the wild who is occasionally roused to fantastic bouts of action and daring stunts.

Whether propelled by Potter’s war cry or his own desire to get back on solid ground, O’Neill surges his way upward, simultaneously pulling himself hand over hand and ‘walking’ up the cliff.



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Tiny, distant figures now, Potter and O’Neill swarm up the face. Sometimes they almost seem to be running, gaining speed with each step, springing past obstacles that every rock climber knows by heart. A little before noon they reach the final wall, rhythmically snapping their metal clips to the last string of metal pegs placed by Warren Harding on his laborious 45-day first ascent completed in 1958. A minute later they disappear over the top.

“Three hours and twenty four minutes,” I mutter to myself as I look at my watch in disbelief. “Incredible!”

1 Imagine that you are the reporter, Rob Buchanan. You interview Dean Potter after the climb and ask the following questions:

Write the words of the interview.

Base your interview on what you have read in Passage A and be careful to use your own words.

Write between 1½ and 2 sides, allowing for the size of your handwriting.

Up to fifteen marks are available for the content of your answer, and up to five marks for the quality of your writing.

[Total: 20]


(a) O’Neill’s fall in paragraph 3;

(b) Dean Potter in paragraph 5.

Select words and phrases from these descriptions, and explain how the writer has created effects by using this language.

[Total: 10]

[Turn over for Part 2]



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Part 2

Read Passage B carefully and re-read Passage A.Then answer Question 3, which is based on both passages.

Passage B

Paintballing – a birthday treat?

Recently, for my birthday, my teenage children ceremoniously handed me an ordinary envelope and urged, “Open it quick!” A postcard-sized coupon dropped out, and on it was an invitation to ‘Come Along and Blast Your Cares Away!’, accompanied by a cartoon drawing of a person in combat uniform, armed with a large

their laughing faces as the eldest declared, “It’s a morning’s paintball session, Mum! Don’t worry. Dad will explain everything on the way to the venue this afternoon.” I was soon to discover what this birthday ‘treat’ was all about, and pretended to play along enthusiastically with everyone else’s excitement.

“Don’t worry, I’ve already checked this place out,” my husband said, once we were in the car. “Paintball is good fun, but it’s also a game of action and skill. Families, friends and even work colleagues are organised into teams. Each team has a different colour paint to fire at their opponents, and the object of the game is a make-believe battle where everyone tries to ‘hit’ the other side whilst avoiding getting hit themselves. The winner is the last person standing.”

Arriving at the paintball site, a sprawling area of woodland with a log cabin used as an office, we were ushered in and had to fill out medical forms which checked we were fit and healthy. Then we were given our protective clothing and headgear, which included an eye mask. Our guide told us, “Every manufactured paintball mask must be made to withstand a paintball travelling at least 300 feet per second – that’s about 205 miles per hour – so you don’t have to worry.” I was already wondering how much a paintball travelling at that speed would hurt the rest of my body and began to regret my earlier bravado. Reading my thoughts, my husband started quoting details of the sport that were pinned to the wall.

“Listen to this, Zena. The paintballs aren’t like bullets, they are gel capsules – made of gelatine and food colouring – and they are completely edible. There are paintball eating contests all the time at tournaments and events.”

“Great, if we get hungry we can lunch on a yellow one,” I replied, still unconvinced.

Once we were ready, we were quickly introduced to our instructor, Ravi, who was an enthusiastic mine of information. “It is my job to guarantee that you have an enjoyable and safe experience,” he began. “Paintball has regulated itself. We have developed rules and guidelines, and all paintball facilities in the world adhere to them strictly. You must keep your masks on at all times, including the introductory session inside. You must make sure that your marker, which is what we call the rifle, is shooting under the legal speed limit, as we shall demonstrate later. Our company and players also ensure that the equipment is in good shape and well maintained.” I must have looked worried because he turned and said, “Some people associate this sport with ‘war games’ but, believe me, it’s really enjoyable out there and the only danger you might encounter is falling over a tree root! There are more injuries reported from basketball and baseball than from paintball in any given year. Once you get out there you will become totally immersed in a ‘friendly fight’. Go on and enjoy yourself – you’ll be surprised!” With that he led us to the indoor demonstration area.

Two hours later, I emerged smiling, my overalls spattered in bright crimson and my face a healthy glow. I felt like a child who had been out playing in the countryside and was now, reluctantly, being called in for supper.



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3 Summarise:

(a) the ways in which paintballing is a safe sport, as described in Passage B;

(b) the reasons why climbing the Nose of El Capitan and the way Dean Potter makes this climb are dangerous, as described in Passage A.




[Total: 20]



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Question 1 © adapted http://www.outside.away.com/features/200212/200212; 1/10/2009.

Permission to reproduce items where third-party owned material protected by copyright is included has been sought and cleared where possible. Every reasonable effort has been made by the publisher (UCLES) to trace copyright holders, but if any items requiring clearance have unwittingly been included, the publisher will be pleased to make amends at the earliest possible opportunity.

University of Cambridge International Examinations is part of the Cambridge Assessment Group. Cambridge Assessment is the brand name of University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (UCLES), which is itself a department of the University of Cambridge.

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DC (CB (NB)) 35205/5© UCLES 2011 [Turn over


*1817298672*








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Part 1


Passage AThe Beast of Bodmin Moor

I was lost. It was easy to lose one’s way on the moor, especially on a November afternoon when the light was thickening and the landscape stretched the same unvariegated grey in all directions. I drove along a narrow, empty road, looking for a road sign or any building which might contain an inhabitant to give me directions. A fleeting, shadowy movement by the roadside reminded me of the tales of the Beast of Bodmin Moor which had fascinated me as a local child.

It was allegedly a vicious predator which carried out sheep killings on a grand scale. An investigation by the Ministry of Agriculture in 1995 had found ‘no verifiable evidence’ of foreign big cats in the area (although admitting that this did not prove that they were not present), and had concluded that the sheep could have been attacked by native wild animals. About four years later, an attempt to locate the beast from the air, using night vision goggles, had also failed. The Bodmin Natural History Museum determined that a skull found in the area was of a leopard, but it turned out to belong to an animal which had died outside Britain, and was probably part of a leopard-skin rug which had been dropped into the river as a hoax.

However, the sightings and attacks had continued, and the local farmers were still convinced that the injuries to their livestock proved it was a type of cat, and that its appearance was not consistent with it being a pony, wild boar or large dog. In 1997, officials from a nearby zoo identified pawprints left in mud on the moor as the tracks of a puma. A year later, a 20-second video was released which seemed to show big cats roaming nearby.

As I rounded the next bend, I saw a startlingly large, black feline cross the road with an unhurried, sinuous, fluid movement. Its thick, sinewy shoulders suggested massive strength and speed, like that of engine pistons. As it passed, it turned to stare at me and its great, yellow, black-slitted orbs were caught in the headlights. I noticed its pricked, tufted ears and its short, coarse, raven-black coat before it turned, raising and waving its curved snake of a tail as if making a victory salute. The spectral vision dissolved into the bushes, leaving me with a thumping heart and the feeling that I had witnessed a supernatural manifestation.

A little further along I took a turning with a handwritten sign pointing to ‘Gables Farm’. I had to leave the car and cross a rickety, rotting footbridge over a rushing stream. Another battered sign, nailed to a tree, bore the ominous words, ambiguously addressed: ‘Wild Big Cats – Keep Out’. A shiny, weather-beaten man with tremendous whiskers and a crusty hat the colour of an over-cooked pie appeared at the farm gate, carrying a rifle. When I explained I was lost and had just had an unnerving experience, he took me into his kitchen and sat me down at a stained oak table while he made me tea and talked about the beast.

‘You always know when it’s about. Rabbits and foxes disappear and birds stop singing. If the ministry people knew anything about country life they’d know it couldn’t be a dog. If it’s a dog there’s noise, and wool and mess everywhere. But a cat goes in to the kill quickly, eats its fill, and slinks off.’ He told me that the beast owed him a thousand pounds for dead livestock, and that other farmers had sold their flocks after losing so many sheep. His neighbour had captured the beast on video, along with the tell-tale signs of four long scratch marks on the mauled sheep. She had also found hairs which she’d sent off for analysis, but had received no result.

He continued: ‘The only reason to suppress the result would be to avoid panic. Another neighbour got hold of a recording of a puma mating call, and we recognised the scream we hear at night. Everyone round here believes in the beast, even though we’re sceptical about most things and haven’t got time to waste concocting fantasies. We don’t want the beast shot, but we do want it acknowledged and kept under control so it doesn’t continue to destroy our livelihoods.’



3


1 Imagine you work for the Ministry of Agriculture. You have been sent to conduct a second investigation as to whether there is large foreign cat activity on Bodmin Moor.

Write a formal report on your findings.

In your report, you should comment on:

what local people believe about the presence of a beast;

the lack of conclusive proof and the alternative theories;

your recommendations with reasons.

Base your answer on what you have read in Passage A and be careful to use your own words.

Begin the report as follows: Since the inconclusive investigation by the Ministry of Agriculture in 1995, reported sightings of ‘big cats’ have continued.



[Total: 20]


(a) the appearance of the beast in paragraph 4;

(b) the appearance of the farmer and his farm in paragraph 5.


[Total: 10]




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Part 2


Passage B

Unicorns and Yetis

This passage describes the history of two creatures generally believed to be mythical.

The historical existence of the unicorn is an idea which is easy to accept. Its resemblance to actual animals, such as horses and antelopes, gives its reality an almost common-sense appeal, and the creature still exerts a powerful attraction in numerous popular cultures. The first written reports of the unicorn were found in works of ancient Greek history from 2,400 years ago, while eastern cultures record details of one-horned animals during the era of Genghis Khan.

Thorough research into contemporary wildlife reveals the possibility of genuine sightings of creatures with the characteristics of a unicorn. To the present day, sightings of unicorns are being reported from Mount Kilimanjaro in Kenya. In 1987, Robert Vavra took an expedition there to find the mythical beast and he published his diary, complete with photographs, claiming that with the help of Masai warriors he had tracked it down.

The other mythical creature which has exercised the imagination for many years is the yeti. For fifty years the snowy wastes of the Himalayas have beckoned intrepid explorers in search of the mysterious animal also known as ‘the abominable snowman’. Occasional sightings of large hairy creatures walking on two legs across the snows or in the forested valleys of Nepal and Tibet have kept the legend alive. Photographic evidence of the creature’s existence has proved elusive, however. The most famous picture is that taken by Sir Edmund Hillary in 1951 of a large, wide footprint said by some to be that of a yeti.

Since that time a number of yeti ‘relics’ have turned up. In 1960, western visitors to a Nepalese monastery were astonished to find monks using a ‘yeti scalp’ in some of their rituals. Analysis of the red hairs, however, showed that they had originated from a mountain goat. A different monastery presented a severed hand, obviously from a primate, as evidence that some kind of ape man was still wandering the mountain fortresses of the Himalayas. The hand could, of course, have come from anywhere – and it vanished in 1991. Finally, there have been rumours, started by travellers, of huge mummified bodies of yeti preserved in even more remote monasteries. These turned out to be fakes, or were no longer where they were supposed to be. However, belief in the existence of the ‘wild man of the snows’ is still real enough among the locals. What could account for this?

A popular theory among zoologists is that the idea of the yeti is based upon handed-down memories of apes, possibly orang-utans, which may have lived in the mountain forests of this region in the distant past. Some argue that a few of these apes still survive in small numbers, just occasionally spotted crossing a snowfield from one valley to another. Reinhold Messner, one of the world’s foremost mountaineers, believes that the legend is based upon a real but little-known animal that inhabited the forests of eastern Tibet. This was the area the Sherpas once lived in before migrating to present-day Nepal, so they may have taken with them their traditional stories.

Messner decided to investigate the yeti for himself, so in 1986 he retraced the Sherpas’ migratory route in eastern Tibet. In his book he describes a terrifying night hiking through the forest, haunted by the strange whistling cries of a creature he was later to see. Several times a tall biped with long arms ran across his path. Eventually the creature stood in front of him, raising itself to full height before running off on all fours at incredible speed into the woods. When Messner reached a settlement, he was told by the villagers that he had seen a ‘chemo’, a Tibetan name for a yeti. This encounter took place in the heart of the area from which the Sherpas had brought their yeti stories, so the large, hairy, ape-like man may just be a Tibetan bear, transformed by Sherpa legend into something more.



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3 Summarise:

(a) the reasons for not believing in the existence of unicorns and yetis, according to Passage B;

(b) the actual evidence for the existence of the beast of Bodmin Moor, according to Passage A.




[Total: 20]



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Part 1


Passage A

A Town Struck by Tragedy

For some days my wife and I had intended to make an excursion along the south bank of the river, past the colourful fields of grapevines, sweetcorn and sunflowers, as far as a little market town that was the centre of a well-known wine-growing district. The day before our visit, we read in the newspaper about the tragedy that had hit the town and felt that, as tourists, we would be intruding and that perhaps we should not go. However, we agreed that if we kept a low profile and dressed soberly, no one would take exception.

When we arrived, market day had just ended. We parked the car at the far end of the stalls that were laid out along the quayside and walked quietly towards the centre of the town. We had almost reached the first buildings when a coach full of tourists drew up and some forty or fifty elderly people tumbled out. They were making a great deal of noisy chatter and all of them seemed to be competing to try to attract each other’s attention. It was most distasteful. Cameras at the ready, they started their assault on the unsuspecting little town, scattering in all directions, shattering the midday peace. They were like an excited gang of young children.

We realised that they could not have known what had happened two days previously. They had not read that the great, concrete grain silo that stood on the waterfront and was the centre and symbol of the trade of the town had blown up without warning. Fortunately, the directors of the company, all well known and respected in the locality, had just finished their meeting in the building when the accident occurred. An elderly man walking past, reminiscing over his many years of work for the company, was thrown to the ground by the blast.

We had learned that the explosion was like a thunderbolt. The dry grain inside the silo had ignited and, for one ironic moment, had created a firework display of golden rain in the night sky. The building imploded so that there were just jagged shapes of concrete now lying haphazardly along the quayside. When we looked upwards, we saw that the edges of the silo were serrated and spiky.

Walking back through the town, we were aware of a thin coating of dust that lay over everything, making our progress hazardous. Otherwise, it seemed like other attractive places of its type. There were several shady squares and tree-lined walks that were havens of peace. Pretty stone buildings reflected the taste of at least three centuries. A fine church, full of historic monuments, looked out on a neat parking area and a promising restaurant that was empty today. The town, with its museum and public gardens, stretched upwards into the gentle hills that guarded the river. One neat cottage took our fancy. It was so small that we could hardly imagine anyone living there, but the garden was full of bright flowers and a line of ripe tomatoes, and there was not a weed to be seen. There was a strangely quiet atmosphere, as if some Pied Piper had played his flute and led the people away to a safer place.

When we returned to the market area, the elderly interlopers were back in their coach, waving aimlessly as the engine burst into life. An old man was gazing blankly at the ruins beyond the coach. He was expressionless, and we could only guess at the emotions of the past, present and future that were passing through his mind.

Aware of us, he said in his own dialect, ‘I was born in this town. For thirty-five years I worked there.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, wondering whether he might be the owner of the neat cottage where we had paused on our walk.



3


‘Now everything is gone. Only the beauty of our town remains, and that is tarnished for ever. There is nothing else.’

However, as we returned to the car, we saw a notice dated a week previously. It announced a public meeting to be chaired by the mayor to debate a major tourist plan for the town. There would be a small marina, two ten-storey hotels, a casino, amusement arcades and millions of euros to be spent. The plan seemed a strange idea to us and we wondered how the townspeople would react. And the old man who spoke to us? His blank stare remained with us for days after our visit.

1 Imagine that you are the old man in the final paragraphs (When we returned…after our visit).

Write a letter to your sister, who lives in a different part of the country.

In your letter, you should:

Begin your letter, ‘Dear Sister…’.

Base your letter on what you have read in Passage A and be careful to use your own words.



[Total: 20]


(a)

(b) the explosion and its effects on the area in paragraph 4.


[Total: 10]




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Part 2


Passage B

Jiuzhaigou – Bus Ride to Paradise

This passage describes some beautiful lakes in China that have been opened to mass tourism.

This is the other China. High in the mountains of Sichuan Province, in Jiuzhaigou Nature Reserve, rare plants and animals find sanctuary, and millions of visitors have discovered cool, clear, sapphire-and-emerald-tinted waters, far removed from the sooty industrial sprawl that consumes lands and lives below.

Jiuzhaigou means ‘valley of nine villages’ because it once harboured nine, but other numbers are more significant now. Some 80 hotels are clustered at the mouth of a Y-shaped, 35 km long valley in the Min mountains of central China. 280 buses wait to shuttle 18,000 visitors each day up the very pretty route, past a chain of flower-coloured, ribbony lakes and fingery waterfalls, underneath escarpments covered with maple, spruce or bamboo forests. The air rings with water music as snow-melt and spring rains pour down the valley, tumbling in broad waterfalls from one brimful lake to another. Some are eight metres high, and the Arrow Bamboo Falls span nearly 170 metres. Boardwalks circuit the little lakes and reedy creeks, and the buses stop to let parties of trippers stroll at their own pace. Then they queue to catch another bus and continue along the valley.

Glaciers carved the two valleys that join the Shuzheng Valley – the Zechawa and the Rize, which climb to around 3,000 metres – into the classic U shapes one knows from Yosemite, Jiuzhaigou’s ‘sister’ park in the United States. The geology of this part of the Tibetan Plateau is not granite but seabed like the US Rockies, so its limestones as they dissolve colour the waters emerald or turquoise in a certain light, or enhance the mirroring of an azure sky. The lakes were formed when avalanches blocked the creeks and sculpted the lakes but, according to legend, sky goddesses dropped their cosmetics into several and mermaids swam in others. Calcium carbonate deposits on the bottom sometimes assumed fanciful shapes – sleeping dragons, for example.

The road ascends from about 2,000 metres at the valley entrance and splits at Nuorilang, where a tourist centre and cafeteria are set up. The left fork ends at a wilderness lake, wiggly and long. The right fork ends in a ‘primeval forest’ (in the language of the brochures), which translates as groves that were not levelled by loggers before the area’s tourism possibilities were recognised. Jiuzhaigou Nature Reserve, China’s flagship of its type, was designated a World Heritage site in 1992 by UNESCO, after logging threatened to degrade it.

Costumed Tibetans sell trinkets and postcards at the end of each fork, and the boardwalks loop more ambitiously than usual. Along the bus route there are lakes with names like Golden Bell, Sparkling, Double-Dragon and Five-Flower Lake. Mirror Lake, like the others, reflects the clouds, the birches and the willows and pines, the different tinctures and hues of sunrise and sunset on rock faces and cliffs. Although the names sound promotional, Buddhist mysticism animated these lakes and rivers with spirits that the mineralised waters might characterise, whether mermaid or monster.

Morning stillness reflects heaven and earth, tinted by mineral deposits and aquatic plant life in Five-Flower Lake. The Chinese call this landscape magical. ‘Nowhere else under the sky,’ they say, ‘can match Jiuzhaigou.’



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3 Summarise:

(a) what makes the Jiuzhaigou valley and lakes attractive to tourists, as described in Passage B

(b) what made the town attractive to the writer and his wife, as described in Passage A.




[Total: 20]



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Passage B China’s Mystic Waters, Visitors are enthralled by the Jiuzhaigou reserve March 2009.





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