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Source: Silk Road on the Sea

Why did it get the name 'Silk Road on the Sea'?
In 1967, a Japanese scholar gave the route linking the East and the West the name "to distinguish it from the traditional Silk Road".

It was compromised of two favored courses: East China and South China sea routes.

East China Sea Route
It has a history of about 3,000 years. During the Zhou Dynasty, Ji Zi, "a court official, was sent on a journey east... across the Yellow Sea, which led to the introduction of sericulture, filature, and silk spinning into Korea".

"When Emperor Qin Shi Huang united China, many Chinese fled to Korea." This allowed the spread of the idea of silk spinning, which reached Japan during the Han Dynasty. Many Japanese were able to travel along this sea route.

South China Sea Route
This route stretched from Guangzhou "across the Indian Ocean and then on to various countries situated around the Persian Gulf". It was sometimes also called the sea's 'Flavor Road' and 'China Road' because silk, china, tea, and spices were the main items being traded.

"The route was first used in the Qin and Han Dynasties, and increased in popularity from the Three Kingdoms Period (220-280) to the Sui Dynasty (581-618)." In the latter half of the eighth century, trade increased along the Maritime Silk Road as it decreased in the silk road on land due to various wars.

Maritime Silk Road Peak
"Advances in shipbuilding and navigation led to new sea-lanes to the Southeast Asia, Malacca, areas in the Indian Ocean, and the Persian Gulf." Guangzhou was the main harbor in China, later replaced by Quanzhou. "The Naval Expedition to the West by Zheng He in the early part of the Ming Dynasty demonstrated the  great importance of the Silk road and [was the] peak of its popularity."

Maritime Silk Road Decline
"The governments of the Ming and Qing Dynasties issued a ban on maritime trade, contributing to massive decline in its use. As the Opium War broke out in 1840, the Silk Road on the Sea totally disappeared."

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Silk Road Research
Supporting Question 1 Source A: Marco Polo, description of Polo’s travels, The Travels of Marco Polo (excerpts), 2004

City: Tabriz
- "Tabriz live by trade and industry”
-Favourably situated…
-Market for merchandise
-Merchants [came] by ship from India
-Center of commerce
-Seven days to the east reach towns.
-Of followers of Muhammad and Christians
-Commerce and industry.
-Ho-kien-fu towards the south
-“Live by trade, for they have silk in plenty”
-River allows great quantities of merchandise to be transported

Supporting Question 1
Source B: American Museum of Natural History, exhibition description, “Traveling the Silk Road” (excerpts), 2009

Xi'an
Largest city as of 750CE. Million people inside, with another million outside the walls. This urban center is filled with people and goods from distant lands.

The Secret of Silk
Wealth and Prestige to Chinese empires. Empress Xi Ling supposedly was enchanted by the thread from a cocoon she found, and wove the world's first silk cloth.

The Sound of Music
Music was a large part of Xi'an.

Turfan
Lush oasis from the harsh desert of Central Asia. They had ingenious irrigation systems which allowed for rich produce. This produce was later traded along the Silk Road.

Market Place
There were many luxury goods such as hats, coats, etc, which were traded along the Silk Road. Flavors from the distant foreign lands were also mainly traded.

Samarkand
It was a city of merchants. Sogdian merchants made fortunes buying and selling in faraway countries. Samarkand was famous for their paper.

Baghdad
Thousands of miles from Xi'an, you reach the capital of the Islamic world.It is situated on Iraq's Tigris river. Baghdad was a "remarkable center of learning".

House of Wisdom
"Center of learning [in]... the Islamic Golden Age." They made advances that are still relevant today, such as in the field of astronomy. They also succeeded in the field of mathematics. In the ancient times, many "switched to the 'Arabic' numerals we use today."

Muhammad ibn Zakaryia al-Razi "wrote some 200 books, from a
pamphlet on toothaches to a medical handbook that was used in Europe for hundreds of years."

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Silk Road on the Sea, Maritime Silk Route

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The Silk Road on the Sea (Maritime Silk Route)consisted of the East China and South China Sea Routes, both of which contributed greatly to the trade between China and the West for centuries.

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The Geographical Setting of the Silk Road
The silk road is made up of many trails and trading posts, stretching from the eastern end of the ancient Chinese capital city of Chang’an to westward endpoints at middle eastern cities like Constantinople and Damascus. There were many routes that branched out from the main road, with one of the more important branch routes leading to Northwestern India.

The silk road was spread all throughout Eurasia, therefore, trade in the silk road was effected by each country's conflicts.
"Trade along the Silk Road waxed or waned according to conditions in China, Byzantium, Persia, and other regions and countries along the way."

Features
The zone of the silk road itself is surrounded by mountains at the North and South, but can be traversed with crossing only a few mountain ranged along the way. The high, dry terrain, infrequent water supplies, an inadequate supply of caravan animals, and other difficulties made this zone passable only to adept Silk caravaneers.

How Different Regions Viewed the Silk Road
In China, people usually looked inland, toward Central Asia for trade. Some trade routes in China fed into the Silk Road and distrubuted goods from it. On the other hand, some trade routes competed with the Silk Road, like the maritime trade routes from South eastern ports over the South China Sea.
The Mediterranean conducted widespread distribution of Silk Road commodities throughout western Eurasia. This is similar to how Northeast Asian sea routes distributed Silk Road goods towards Korea and the rest of East Asia.
Source:
The Middle East was sort of an end-point for the Silk Road, but it was also shipment zone. Along with that, "the Middle East also marked the western terminus of the maritime trans-Eurasian trade, as Arab and Indian ships carried goods in both directions across the Arabian Sea." Goods that were Westbound either passed through the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf to Baghdad and Damascus, or went to Aden for shipment along the western edge of the Arabian Peninsula towards Mediterranean ports.

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Supporting Question Research:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Silk-Road-trade-route
1. What were the pros and cons of the Silk road?
- The Silk road connected China with the West
- carried goods and ideas between the two great civilizations of Rome and China
- "Silk went westward, and wools, gold, and silver went east. China also received Nestorian Christianity and Bhuddism (from India) via the Silk Road."
With the gradual loss of Roman territory in Asia and the rise of Arabian power in the Levant, the Silk Road became increasingly unsafe and untraveled
- In the 13th and 14th cent. the Silk road was recieved by the Mongols
--> the Venetian Marco Polo used it to travel to Cathay (China).
"It is now widely thought that the route was one of the main ways that plague bacteria responsible for the Black Death pandemic in Europe in the mid-14th century moved westward from Asia."

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_DyFgqCtXoC7VJX8s4lv51PxzGTr_TtB6IwAF6jSmYM/edit
2. What was the silk road?
- Is a system of caravan routes crossing in ancient and middle age time Eurasian continent from Mediterranean Sea to China and influencing the emergence and development of trade and cultural ties between people and statehood along the way.
Transported many commodities:
- frankincense and myrrh
-  jasmine and amber
- cardamom and nutmeg
- ginseng and bile of python
- carpets and fabrics
-dyes and minerals
- diamonds, jade, amber
-fur, bows and arrows
- horses, camels, elephants
-rhinos, lions, cheetahs, and gazelles
- hawks, falcons, parrots
- grapes, peaches, melon, and vegetables
Besides trading commodities, the silk route also served as a channel for the spread of fashion and artistic styles
Summary: Not only did the silk route transport useful items such as spices and animals, it also transported non-tactile items such as ideas (fashion and trends).

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The geo-political settings of one of the greatest trade and exchange conduits in human history.

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How did it all start?
Paper being one of the most useful inventions to this date, helped transform the world. Far superior to wood or rolls of silk, paper soon became the writing material of choice throughout China and east Asia.

Trading
Paper, their most useful invention  quickly spread by trade and imitation, and paper soon supplanted other writing materials in most of western Eurasia. Another invention that spread entirely across Eurasia was the noria, or irrigation waterwheel. This useful invention was obviously a good idea, and rapidly spread along the Silk Road and its tributaries. Along with all these materials, common foods like apples, oranges and grapes were often traded to the Mediterranean world. "In the process the Silk Road enriched not just the merchants who carried and exchanged goods, but the people of countries and cultures all across Eurasia."

Development
In China, the invention of paper stimulated the invention of printing, sometime during the 6th century CE. "The re-invention of printing in Europe centuries later did not employ East Asian-style printing technology, but it may have been stimulated by accounts of Chinese printing that could have circulated in the Middle East."

It's negative effects
Although the silk road and trading was viewed as a good idea, it had it's flaws as well as certain direct beneficial effects. For example: The Black Death plague that terrorized and devastated Europe in the 14th century was believed to come through the Silk Road from central Asia. "One theory holds that a load of marmot pelts (destined to be used on fur-trimmed garments), contaminated with plague-bearing flea eggs, was brought from somewhere in Central Asia to a Middle Eastern port." There the plague spread, via fleas, to other rats, and then to people; and a disaster was in the making.

“The Great Silk Road”
The Silk Road is a system of using routes in ancient and the middle age time Eurasian continent from the Mediterranean sea to China and influencing the development of trade and cultural ties.
Connecting eastern and western margins of Eurasian continents extended routes of the silk road crossed China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgistan and several others.

Source E:
"Since the concept of Seidenstrassen or "Silk Roads" was first invented by the German geologist and explorer Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen in 1877, the "Silk Road" has been used as a metaphor of European and Asian cultural interchange." The growth of silk as a trade item both simulated and characterized other types of exchanges during the era. Silk soon became both a component and a symbol of this cultural diffusion.

Pros and Cons:

- PROS: One of the advantages of the Silk Road is that it connected the world. It created a heavily used trade route that connected Central Asia, the Mediterranean, China, and Japan. This connectedness allowed for the exchange of ideas and technologies.

-CONS: The biggest disadvantage to the Silk Road is the spread of diseases. Measles, small pox, and, most importantly, the bubonic plague spread because of the Silk Road. The bubonic plague became known as the Black Death because of how many people died because of it.

History:
The east-west trade routes between Greece and China began to open during the first and second centuries B.C. The Roman Empire and the Kushan Empire (which ruled territory in what is now northern India) also benefitted from the commerce created by the route along the Silk Road.
However, despite this obvious link to the name, the term “Silk Road” wasn’t coined until 1877, when German geographer and historian Ferdinand von Richthofen first used it to describe the trade routes.

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by John Major

Good ideas and innovation travel easily-and far. Historically, these ideas spread along trade routes. This essay looks at the great Eurasian Silk Roads as a transmitter of people, goods, ideas, beliefs and inventions.

Good ideas travel easilyand far along trade routes, and the Silk Road was no exception to that rule. A famous example of a Chinese invention that helped to transform the world is paper. Paper was invented during the Han dynasty, probably just at the time the Silk Road trade was beginning to flourish. (Many accounts ascribe the invention of paper to a Latter Han official at the beginning of the 2nd century CE, but actual paper at least two centuries older than that has been archaeologically excavated from Han tombs.) Far superior to the narrow wooden strips or hard-to-handle rolls of silk that the Chinese had previously used for writing, paper soon became the writing material of choice throughout China and East Asia. It was found also in the Buddhist temples of China's northwest, but seemed not to make inroads beyond that for a long time, perhaps in part because the Chinese tried to protect the secret of its manufacture, and perhaps in part also because other writing materials, such as parchment and papyrus, were well established in the west.

But under the Mongols in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a group of Chinese workmen set up a papermaking establishment in Samarkand. Their product quickly spread by trade and imitation, and paper soon supplanted other writing materials in most of western Eurasia.

In China, the invention of paper stimulated the invention of printing, sometime during the 6th century CE-a development energetically supported by Buddhism, according to which the duplication of sacred texts was an act of religious merit. The re-invention of printing in Europe centuries later did not employ East Asian-style printing technology, but it may have been stimulated by accounts of Chinese printing that could have circulated in the Middle East.

Another invention that spread entirely across Eurasia was the noria, or irrigation waterwheel. This simple, ingenious device, invented in Roman Syria, consists of a vertical waterwheel to the rim of which are attached a series of pots or tubes. As the current of a river rotates the wheel, the pots fill with water at the bottom of the cycle and empty into a chute at the top; a large noria can lift water as much as forty feet with no input of human or animal energy. This inspired invention was obviously a good idea, and rapidly spread along the Silk Road and its tributaries. There is a famous example in Toledo, Spain, others along the upper reaches of the Yellow River in China, and many more in between.

Foodstuffs also count in this category of the travel of ideas and techniques Apples spread, in prehistoric times via the steppe belt, in both directions from the region of modern-day Kazakhstan; oranges went (via the maritime route) from China to the Mediterranean world; grapes went from the western reaches of the Silk Road to China.

These examples and dozens more that could be mentioned make the point clear: ideas, inventions, devices and techniques spread readily and far along the Silk Road, and the traffic was very much a two way, or perhaps one should say a multi-way, street. In the process the Silk Road enriched not just the merchants who carried and exchanged goods, but the people of countries and cultures all across Eurasia.

It is perhaps worth noting, however, that long-distance trade can have unexpectedly bad side effects as well as direct beneficial effects. For example, the Black Death plague that devastated Europe in the 14th century is believed to have come via the Silk Road from Central Asia, where plague is endemic among local rodents. One theory holds that a load of marmot pelts (destined to be used on fur-trimmed garments), contaminated with plague-bearing flea eggs, was brought from somewhere in Central Asia to a Middle Eastern port. There the eggs hatched into fleas that infested some local rats; some of the rats eventually went on shipboard and were carried to port cities in Italy. There the plague spread, via fleas, to other rats, and then to people; and a disaster was in the making.

Additional Background Reading on Asia

Why were there so many Chinese fans in the bleachers at this year's FIFA World Cup, when the Chinese team wasn't even on the field? Student Jerry Tian gives us his perspective.

by John Major
Good ideas and innovation travel easily-and far. Historically, these ideas spread along trade routes. This essay looks at the great Eurasian Silk Roads as a transmitter of people, goods, ideas, beliefs and inventions.

Good ideas travel easilyand far along trade routes, and the Silk Road was no exception to that rule. A famous example of a Chinese invention that helped to transform the world is paper. Paper was invented during the Han dynasty, probably just at the time the Silk Road trade was beginning to flourish. (Many accounts ascribe the invention of paper to a Latter Han official at the beginning of the 2nd century CE, but actual paper at least two centuries older than that has been archaeologically excavated from Han tombs.) Far superior to the narrow wooden strips or hard-to-handle rolls of silk that the Chinese had previously used for writing, paper soon became the writing material of choice throughout China and East Asia. It was found also in the Buddhist temples of China's northwest, but seemed not to make inroads beyond that for a long time, perhaps in part because the Chinese tried to protect the secret of its manufacture, and perhaps in part also because other writing materials, such as parchment and papyrus, were well established in the west.

But under the Mongols in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a group of Chinese workmen set up a papermaking establishment in Samarkand. Their product quickly spread by trade and imitation, and paper soon supplanted other writing materials in most of western Eurasia.

In China, the invention of paper stimulated the invention of printing, sometime during the 6th century CE-a development energetically supported by Buddhism, according to which the duplication of sacred texts was an act of religious merit. The re-invention of printing in Europe centuries later did not employ East Asian-style printing technology, but it may have been stimulated by accounts of Chinese printing that could have circulated in the Middle East.

Another invention that spread entirely across Eurasia was the noria, or irrigation waterwheel. This simple, ingenious device, invented in Roman Syria, consists of a vertical waterwheel to the rim of which are attached a series of pots or tubes. As the current of a river rotates the wheel, the pots fill with water at the bottom of the cycle and empty into a chute at the top; a large noria can lift water as much as forty feet with no input of human or animal energy. This inspired invention was obviously a good idea, and rapidly spread along the Silk Road and its tributaries. There is a famous example in Toledo, Spain, others along the upper reaches of the Yellow River in China, and many more in between.

Foodstuffs also count in this category of the travel of ideas and techniques Apples spread, in prehistoric times via the steppe belt, in both directions from the region of modern-day Kazakhstan; oranges went (via the maritime route) from China to the Mediterranean world; grapes went from the western reaches of the Silk Road to China.

These examples and dozens more that could be mentioned make the point clear: ideas, inventions, devices and techniques spread readily and far along the Silk Road, and the traffic was very much a two way, or perhaps one should say a multi-way, street. In the process the Silk Road enriched not just the merchants who carried and exchanged goods, but the people of countries and cultures all across Eurasia.

It is perhaps worth noting, however, that long-distance trade can have unexpectedly bad side effects as well as direct beneficial effects. For example, the Black Death plague that devastated Europe in the 14th century is believed to have come via the Silk Road from Central Asia, where plague is endemic among local rodents. One theory holds that a load of marmot pelts (destined to be used on fur-trimmed garments), contaminated with plague-bearing flea eggs, was brought from somewhere in Central Asia to a Middle Eastern port. There the eggs hatched into fleas that infested some local rats; some of the rats eventually went on shipboard and were carried to port cities in Italy. There the plague spread, via fleas, to other rats, and then to people; and a disaster was in the making.

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by John Major Good ideas and innovation travel easily-and far. Historically, these ideas spread along trade routes. This essay looks at the great Eurasian Silk Roads as a transmitter of people, goods, ideas, beliefs and inventions. Good ideas travel easilyand far along trade routes, and the Silk Road was no exception to that rule.

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My Source:https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9ZwXu_bvk-oeU92STg4SzlzVEU/view
- "The first major period of Silk Roads trade occurred between about 50 BCE and 250CE."

My Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Silk-Road-trade-route
- Cons:
*Became unsafe and untraveled.
*The mongols took over silk road
*The plague bacteria spread(responsible for the Black Death pandemic in Europe.

My Source: http://www.absolutechinatours.com/specialtopic/silkroad/Silk-Road-Cultural-Exchanges-Food-Spice-and-Drugs.html
THE SILK ROAD
"The Chinese civilization used to lead the world for a fairly long period in history, with influential contributions in the areas of science and technology to other cultures on the Silk Road. "
Handicraft
A rich diversity of handicrafts were exchanged on the Silk Road
- A few of China's major exports were: silk, porcelain, lacquer ware, ironware, and gold/silver war
- Silk: By 4th Century AD, it was fashionable for European aristocratic men to wear clothing made out of silk.
- Porcelain:"Became a major commodity to the West with the rise of Maritime Silk Road," which was convenient and efficient for transport of fragile porcelain.
- Lacquer: "Chinese lacquer ware, along with Chinese paintings, furniture and chinaware, was a hot sought-after during the Sinomania in Europe from late 17th to early 18th century."
*Louis XIV(The French King) was a loved Oriental arts.
*His court rooms were full of Chinese furniture, vases, china ware and lacquer ware.
"In return, the Silk Road transmitted back to China a wider range of handicrafts."
-Emporer Lingdi of Han Dynasty loved clothes, tents, stools, beds, konghou, flutes and dancing
- "Lifestyle of the Han people was influenced by these imports via the Silk Road."
-From the beginning of somewhere during the southern & Northern Dynasties, Chinese people started sitting on stools/chairs.
*Before they kneeled on their heel on the ground.
-Glass: This was introduced to China from the Middle East during Tang Dynasty.
- For the upper class, tobacco bottles, satin and western clocks were popular items.
- Russian and North American Furs, pearls and sandal wood from the Southeast Asian found a great market in China, in the 18th & 19th century

Science & Technology
-  The Chinese greatest inventions: dynamite, printing/paper- making, water well drilling, compass, cast iron technologies, sericulture, alchemy, Chinese medicine.
- "Many of these exported inventions had profound impact on Western civilizations. "
* Compasses: made oceanic navigation easier
* Paper-making/Printing: This technique spread through Europe to Middle East. Also promoted the spread and development culture and knowledge.
* Water Drilling: Central Asian people learned how to drill well and develop irrigation systems of wells. These were connected by underground channels from Chinese migrants/troops via Silk road. "Which boosted the economy of the desert region states."
*Cast Iron: This caused the transition of people in Central Asian from the Neolithic Age to Iron.
*Dynamite: This was used more and more in European wars, "triggering a revolution in weapons and warfare and giving the European powers an edge over the Orient."
*Alchemy: A technology made by Chinese Taoist religion.This spread to the Arabic world. Which then influenced Europe, "and formed the basis on which modern chemistry had grown."

-"While spreading its knowledge overseas, China drew from the pool of knowledge of the whole world as well."
-Emporer Gaozong of Tang Dynasty and Jian Zhen both recieved special treatment from Indian doctors because in India opthamology was advanced.
*Canons were imported from the Portuguese and later tried to replicate models by governments during the Ming & Qing dynasties
*Chinese rulers and intellectuals were interested in mathematics, shipbuilding technologies & astronomy.
-"Jean Adam Shall von Bell made various instruments or weapons for the Ming & Qing empires, including sundial (made of tusk), compass, planetarium projector, piano, steel cannon, etc."
*Astronomical instruments of Beijing Ancient Observatory were made, ruled by Ferdinand Verbiest.
*In the Area of architecture, Giuseppe Castiglione(Italian painter), was a part of designing Yuanmingyuan Palace.

Food, Spice and Drug
-"China boasts a cuisine culture that is paralleled perhaps by no other country than France."
- new vegetables were transplanted in inland China and became available for them due to the Silk Road
- Lamb kababs, grape wine, backed sesame seed cakes and ardent liquor were all of northwestern origin.
- "China’s contribution to world’s food culture is tea."
*The Dutch East India Company made tea for the Europeans in 1610
*Nowadays Europe is the most important tea market
- "Spice was another import that came to China via the Silk Road."
*In China, spice was used as medicines, scent and cosmetics.
* Commonly, to scent clothes, the Chinese burned spices.
*"Emperor Wudi of Han Dynasty was so addicted to spice that he ordered his ministers to hold a piece of spice when reporting to him at the daily morning meeting."
- The main spice sources in the world are India, east Africa and Middle East.
- The Chinese only developed the habit of burning incense after the Silk Road made it available to them.
- "The maritime foreign trade of ancient China also had important impact on Chinese medicines."
* Imported medicines increased ever since Tang Dynasty.
*More than 100 imported drugs were recorded in medicine made of herbal.

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source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Silk-Road-trade-route

Pros and cons of the silk road:
The silk road was mostly known as beneficial to the greater good however it came with cons as well.
Cons:
Main cause of the spread of diseases.
-the black death
- started in Europe and spread         all throughout Asia.
The black death is known to have killed fifty million people.
Pros:
- Connected many locations to others, especially China.
- "China also received Nestorian Christianity and Buddhism (from India) via the Silk Road." Since the silk road connected all these places, religion spread very easily."
-Silk road allowed religions to spread faster then they would have without this connection.
- " Silk went westward, and wools, gold, and silver went east." Not only did silk travel along the route, but so did many other valuable goods. Since there was more than one item to trade it led to bartering and more expansion.

source no. 2: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9ZwXu_bvk-oeU92STg4SzlzVEU/view

What was silk?
"The major Chinese export in demand in Rome was silk, an elegant, sensual
material formed by silkworms and highly coveted by wealthy women.The
Chinese carefully protected the secret of silk. Guards at Chinese borders
searched merchants to make sure they weren’t carrying live silkworms out of the country."

-valued greatly amongst the Chinese.
-guarded the same as jewels or gold or my other precious items.
-The Chinese were also smart to check that nobody was stealing the silk worms and not just the silk itself.

What were other items that were traded?
"The Romans also prized Han iron for its exceptional hard-
ness. From Arabia and India, the Romans purchased spices such as nutmeg, cloves, cardamom, and pepper."
- not only silk was traded on the Silk Road
- However, since silk may have been the start of the trade it could have had a huge impact.
-Spices also played a huge role within the trading.
-These valuable items came from more Southern parts of Asia.

"They especially prized
agricultural products (such as grapes), glassware, art objects, and horses."
- Horses were valued because, for trading, merchants at the time used double humped camels to move instead of horses.
- Glassware and art objects became especially popular because they were desired by the Romans.
Last source:
Origins of the silk road:
-The term was created by a German explorer named Ferdinand von Richtofen.
- He created this term around the late 19th century.
- He used it to refer to a loose network of pre-modern trade routes.

Buddhism and its effects:
- Most of the silk road economy was in the hands of Buddhist believers and followers.
- Many supported monasteries along the route.
-This made them the biggest competitors of Muslim traders from the 7th century onwards.
- The area of Afghanistan spoke the Qur'anic language which provided more idealogical support to Muslims.

Islam and its effects:
- Muslim traders are mainly credited with the spread of Islamic religion across the sill road.
- These merchants operated under the favoritism and protection of the local Muslim leaders.
- Sufi preachers also competed for  authority by doing missionary activities.
- The authority that they competed fro was traditionally held by Shamans.

"The movement seems largely to have been that of Westerners towards the East. Even such Chinese travelers as Xuanzang traveled for the purpose of bringing back foreign influences to China, and not the reverse. Obviously, non-Chinese traditions such as Buddhism and Islam were in some respects profoundly altered and reshaped to meet Chinese."

Cultural exchange examples:
- historians have found archaeological evidence of the spread of then modern technology to China

my source:

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An Interview with author Richard C. Foltz.