Unit 9　Wheels

Period One　Warm­up & Lesson 1 On Your Bike

Ⅰ.阅读理解

For more than nine days，for more than 60 miles，thousands of Beijing­bound vehicles have come to an almost total stop on highways called the 6 and 110 that run from Inner Mongolia southeast to the nation's capital.

Bai Xiaolong，a 30­year­old truck driver，says it took him five days to make the 350­mile journey from Inner Mongolia to Tianjin.He spent much of that time reading，text­messaging and sleeping rather than speeding up.

"There was one day that I didn't move，not even an inch，" said Bai，an inhabitant of Jining in Inner Mongolia，a city at the western end of the traffic jam.

Chinese officials said that the congestion is mainly because of the maintenance(维护) projects that began in mid­August and are scheduled to be completed in mid­September.Trucks carrying 8 tons or more of coal or fruit have been responsible for damaging the roadway，thus making the work necessary.

Drivers who often use the route know that heavy traffic has long been a fact of life."The problem is really that there're too many cars and trucks and not enough lanes(车道)，" Bai said."We drivers are used to this sort of thing happening."

The two national freeways are heavily used by trucks carrying coal from the recently opened fields of Inner Mongolia to China's coastal cities.

The seemingly endless jam began on the 6 and spread to the 110，which runs parallel(平行的)，when officials sought to ease the traffic on the 6.

The Global Times，an English­language newspaper，said the jam had eased somewhat in the last two days，but inhabitants of the region say the congestion simply spilled out onto other roads.

The congestion has created an economy of its own.Vendors(小贩) sell boxed lunches，noodles and drinking water to the travelers，often at jacked­up prices.And because of the long­standing