frames generation silk famous centuries combination visited handicrafts THE 36 STREETS OF HANOI Anyone who has ever (1) Hanoi will probably tell you that it may be the most beautiful city in all of Asia - people have settled here along the Red River for a thousand years. Hanoi is very (2) for the 36 streets. Some of the 36 streets that make up the Ancient Quarter still offer only a single commodity. One of the best is Hang Quat, where shops sell an incredible array of lacquered wood candle sticks, bowls, picture (3) , religious shrines, and decorative pieces. Practically every single item is painted in some (4) of red, white and gold. Many of the things are elaborate to the point of being garish. Since prices are staggeringly low, buy what you can. Like folk art in other developing nations, these uniquely Northern Vietnamese (5) ......................... will begin to die out along with the present (6) ......................... of artisans creating them. The shelves of shops in Ho Chi Minh city are already filled with factory made schlock. Sadly, this will happen in Hanoi soon enough. Vietnamese silk is among the world’s finest. Hang Gai (thread street) has for (7) ......................... been home to some of Hanoi’s best (8) ......................... shops. Exercise 4: Read the passage and answer the questions. NEW YORK CITY The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2016 population of 8,537,673 distributed over a land area of about 302.6 square miles (784 km2). New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the United States. Located at the southern tip of the state of New York, the city is the center of the New York metropolitan area, one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world. A global power city, New York City exerts a significant impact upon commerce, finance, media and entertainment, art, fashion, research, technology, education, politics, and sports, its fast pace defining the term New York minute. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has been described as the cultural, financial, and media capital of the world. New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, the Duke of York. New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the country’s largest city since 1790. The Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21th century, New York has emerged as a global node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance, and environmental sustainability, and as a world symbol of freedom and cultural diversity. 1. Which city is the most densely populated in the US? .............................................................................................................................. 2. Which field does New York exerts a significant impact upon? .............................................................................................................................. 3. Who colonised the trading post in Lower Manhattan? .............................................................................................................................. 4. When did New York serve as the capital of the US? .............................................................................................................................. 5. Which symbolizes the US and its democracy? ................................................................................................................