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The South-China-Sea Tradition: the Hybrid Hulls of South-East Asia

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The South-China-Sea Tradition: the Hybrid Hulls of South-East Asia

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The Suma oriental of Tomé Pires : an account of the East, from the Red Sea to Japan, written in Malacca and India in 1512-1515 ; and, the book of Francisco Rodrigues, rutter of a voyage in the Red Sea, nautical rules, almanack and maps, written and drawn in the East before 1515 : Pires, Tomé, approximately 1468-approximately 1540 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

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2 volumes (xcvi, 578 pages) : xlii plates (some folded ; including frontispieces, maps, facsimiles), 2 folded maps (in pockets) ; 23 cm.

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Explore Earth's global conveyor belt with MapMaker, National Geographic's classroom interactive mapping tool.

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Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art

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Exhibition Catalogue
Copyright © 2010, Smithsonian Institution. All rights reserved.

Published by the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, the National Heritage Board of Singapore, and the Singapore Tourism Board on the occasion of the exhibition Shipwrecked: Tang Treasures and Monsoon Winds, on view at the ArtScience Museum, Singapore, through July 31, 2011.

Cloth edition distributed by Smithsonian Books through Random House.
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Forewords
Sponsors
Two Empires
The Desert Road
The Maritime Trade
The Empires of Southeast Asia
Discovery and Recovery
Coins
The Crew and Their Possessions
Changsha Wares
Green-splashed Wares
Celadon
White Wares
Blue-and-White Ware
Mirrors
The Gold Cup
Legends of the Sea Trade
Credits

Essays

(PDF, 471KB) Rare and Strange Goods: International Trade in Ninth-Century Asia
John Guy Dating the Belitung Shipwreck (PDF, 340KB)
J. Keith Wilson and Michael Flecker

The Navigational Route of the Belitung Shipwreck and the Late Tang Ceramic Trade (PDF, 324KB)
Hsieh Ming-liang

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Shipwrecked: Tang Treasures and Monsoon Winds - Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art

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Exhibition Catalogue Copyright © 2010, Smithsonian Institution. All rights reserved. Published by the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, the National Heritage Board of Singapore, and the Singapore Tourism Board on the occasion of the exhibition Shipwrecked: Tang Treasures and Monsoon Winds, on view at the ArtScience Museum, Singapore, through July 31, 2011.

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ACM is Singapore's national museum of Asian antiquities and decorative art. ACM's permanent galleries celebrate Asian imagination, craft, and aesthetics through three broad cross-cultural and pan-Asian themes.

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Encouraged by renewed interest in the Silk Road - for cultural exchange, trade and tourism - UNWTO decided to revive the ancient routes as a tourism concept, uniting three continents once more in a project encompassing over 12.000 km

The Silk Road, commonly known as the first global trade route in history, had a scope and importance far greater than the simple exchange of goods. Indeed, the myriad of interconnected routes served as a vehicle for the fruitful exchange of arts, religion, cultures, ideas and technology. Many important developments, in fields ranging from mathematics and philosophy to architecture and gastronomy, were only made possible thanks to the intrepidness of pioneers eager to explore and overcome man-made boundaries and natural determinants.In present time, and building upon a natural and cultural wealth spanning thousands of years, the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) is in a position to revive and give a new significance to a route capable of transforming the way we think about and relate to travel. By collaborating in areas of mutual interest, Silk Road Member States and private sector tourism stakeholders are in a unique position to create new opportunities and tourism initiatives capable of favouring sustained and healthy growth.

The concept of a Silk Road tourism project was first raised at UNWTO's General Assembly in Indonesia in 1993

With initiatives dating back to 1994, UNWTO was an early advocate of the tourism potential of the Silk Road. Today, 33 Silk Road Member States ( Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, China, Croatia, DPR Korea, Rep. Korea, Egypt, Georgia, Greece, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Mongolia, Montenegro, Pakistan, Romania, San Marino, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan (as of February 2018)) from Europe, Africa, Central Asia and Asia & the Pacific, in addition to UNWTO Affiliate Members from around the globe, work together to promote the Silk Road routes as a transnational tourism adventure.

Together we aim to maximize the benefits of tourism development for local communities, stimulate investment and promote the conservation of the route's natural and cultural heritage by focusing on following areas of work:

The transition towards a service based economy poses both challenges and opportunities. A signal of economic maturity, it also implies the need to constantly innovate and excel in the deliverance of services, a feat that can only be accomplished by a highly qualified workforce.

Applied to the tourism industry, service excellence implies personal skills, customer service training, knowledge of the tourism product, and know-how in the field of tourism management - all areas in which we can support our Member States.

With experience in developing trainings in many Silk Road countries together with a strong group of UNWTO Affiliate Members and sister organizations such as UNESCO, the scope of activities developed can range from training of tour operators; skills training for heritage guides; the development of international marketing strategies, and marketing workshops.

In terms of route development activities, two main ideas guide our work:

First of all, globalization, urbanization, the rise of new industries, and the spread of English as a global lingua franca have influenced every sphere of life, including tourism. Indeed, the signal effect of these changes is the ever-increasing salience of aspiration as a motivator of our actions and behaviour. As representatives of the tourism sector sufficiently know, "experiential travel", the search for new experiences and destinations, is a global phenomenon on the rise, from which especially Silk Road destinations, who offer unique and untapped travel opportunities, can benefit from in the years to come.

Secondly, with rich and authentic experiences already in place, we see UNWTO's role not so much in reinventing available routes from anew, but in boosting best-practice examples already taking place across the Silk Road.

Recently, our route development activities have been focused on developing the Western Silk Road and the Maritime Silk Road.

Primary Silk Road tourism data is scarce or even non-existent, and by collecting information on the interests, needs, expectations, expenditure patterns and satisfaction levels of the international traveller, we aim to gain valuable source information on how to strengthen the Silk Road attributes of participating destinations.

Based on trainings and Visitor Surveys conducted in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan in 2018, Member States gain important know-how on how to attract and improve services aimed at the international traveller, and how to plan associated tourism infrastructure and facilities, an area ranging from the hospitality industry to tourism products and available tours, in a targeted and cost-effective way.

Task Force

The Silk Road Task Force ensures that all Member States are duly represented and have the opportunity to provide input into the Programme.

The Task Force group is also responsible for:

Providing timely feedback on UNWTO Silk Road programme strategies and action plans

Discuss and endorse the Silk Road Action Plan

Ensure the coordinated implementation of the Action Plan, including strategies for immediate and longer-term action

Promote coherent and coordinated messaging and information sharing

Share and exchange know-how and best practices

Following Member States have nominated a Silk Road Task Force Representative (as of February 2017, enlisted Member States are grouped according to UNWTO's organizational structure):

Europe: Armenia, Albania, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Croatia, Georgia, Greece, Israel, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzystan, Montenegro, Romania, San Marino, Spain, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.

Asia & The Pacific: Bangladesh, China, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Indonesia, Japan, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Mongolia and Pakistan

Middle East: Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Syria.

Silk Road Task Force Meetings:

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Encouraged by renewed interest in the Silk Road - for cultural exchange, trade and tourism - UNWTO decided to revive the ancient routes as a tourism concept, uniting three continents once more in a project encompassing over 12.000 km The Silk Road, commonly known as the first global trade route in history, had a scope and importance far greater than the simple exchange of goods.

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Shipwreck ASIA:
Thematic Studies in East Asian Maritime Archaeology
Edited by Jun Kimura | 2010
"Each State Party shall take all practicable measures to disseminate information, including where feasible through appropriate international databases, about underwater cultural heritage excavated or recovered contrary to this Convention or otherwise in violation of international law."
(UNESCO Convention on the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage, Article 19 - Cooperation and information-sharing, Paragraph 4)

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Shipwreck ASIA: Thematic Studies in East Asian Maritime Archaeology Edited by Jun Kimura | 2010 "Each State Party shall take all practicable measures to disseminate information, including where feasible through appropriate international databases, about underwater cultural heritage excavated or recovered contrary to this Convention or otherwise in violation of international law."

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"The most comprehensive technical inventory of East Asian shipbuilding and shipwrecks available to date, this detailed analysis refines our understanding of East Asia ship construction."-Hans Konrad Van Tilburg, author of Chinese Junks on

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Quanzhou Maritime Museum
泉州海外交通史博物馆
Address: 425Donghu Street, Fengze district, Quanzhou, Fujian province
Website: www.qzhjg.com/html/index.html(Cn)
Hours:
Summer: 8:30 - 17:30
Winter: 8:30 - 17: 00
Closed Mondays (except for national holidays)
E-mail: qzhjgbgs@163.com
General admission: free (passport required for entry)

[Photo/qzhjg.com]

Established in 1959, the Quanzhou Maritime Museum is a museum dedicated to China's maritime transportation, the maritime silk road, and the incurring economic and cultural exchange. Through a comprehensive and valuable collection of historical relics, the museum reflects the development history of "Zayton" (another name for the city of Quanzhou), the biggest oriental port during the Middle Ages. It also showcases the important role that Quanzhou played in economic and cultural exchanges with foreign countries.

The museum consists of an old and a new section. The old section, situated in the east of the Buddhist Kaiyuan Temple, is used for exhibiting ancient boats. The new section, completed in 1991 and located near the scenic East Lake Park, resembles a large sailing ship afloat on the sea. The two sections cover a total area of 35,000 square meters with a built-up area of 17,300 sq m and an exhibition area of 11,000 sq m.

There are seven permanent thematic exhibitions in the museum, displaying a variety of precious relics related to the ancient maritime culture of Quanzhou and the city's contributions to the nation's shipbuilding, navigation, defense, and cultural exchanges, as well as major inventions of the nation in shipbuilding and navigation.

Exhibits of particular interest include a sunken ship from Quanzhou that dates back to the Song Dynasty (960-1279) and was unearthed in 1974, dozens of wooden, iron and stone anchors, hundreds of stone stelae and tombstones with Buddhist, Islamic, Christian, and Hindu inscriptions, ceramics from the Dehua county of Fujian, over 200 ship models from different historical periods, as well as folk instruments used for overseas communication.

Last Updated: Nov 30, 2018

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Quanzhou Maritime Museum 泉州海外交通史博物馆 Address: 425Donghu Street, Fengze district, Quanzhou, Fujian province Website: www.qzhjg.com/html/index.html(Cn) Hours: Summer: 8:30 - 17:30 Winter: 8:30 - 17: 00Closed Mondays (except for national holidays) E-mail: qzhjgbgs@163.com General admission: free (passport required for entry) Established in 1959, the Quanzhou Maritime Museum is a museum dedicated to China's maritime transportation, the maritime silk road, and the incurring economic and cultural exchange.

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Youth Eyes on the Silk Roads Photo Contest Silk Roads Youth Research Grant The International Network of Focal Points for the Silk Roads Programme Thematic Collection of the Cultural Exchanges along the Silk Roads

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MarineTraffic: Global Ship Tracking Intelligence | AIS Marine Traffic

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MarineTraffic Live Ships Map. Discover information and vessel positions for vessels around the world. Search the MarineTraffic ships database of more than 550000 active and decommissioned vessels. Search for popular ships globally. Find locations of ports and ships using the near Real Time ships map. View vessel details and ship photos.

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The museum, shaped like a giant sailing ship, was established in 1959, with the relatively new section completed in 1991. [Photo by Hu Zhe/Chinaculture.org]

As part of the cultural discovery tour to the port city Quanzhou in Fujian province, a group of diplomats based in China visited the city's landmark attraction - Quanzhou Maritime Museum.

Quanzhou Maritime Museum, which is located in the Fengze district of Quanzhou city, is the only museum in China featuring overseas communication history.

It consists mainly of four exhibition halls, including Quanzhou Maritime Exhibition Hal，Quanzhou Religious Stone Carving Hall, Quanzhou Folk Culture Exhibition Hall and Ancient Chinese Ship Replica Hall.

Quanzhou was once named by UNESCO as a "World Museum of Religions". The Quanzhou Religious Stone Carving Hall is exactly an exhibition area dedicated to displaying numerous delicate religious stone iInscriptions, including 138 Islamic pieces, 133 Hindu, 44 Christian and one Manichean.

The Quanzhou Maritime Museum doesn't only display the glorious ocean culture of the city, but also signifies Quanzhou's significant role in opening up the maritime Silk Road, and its contributions to enhancing China's economic and cultural exchanges with other countries.

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Quanzhou Maritime Museum, rich in ocean culture

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The museum, shaped like a giant sailing ship, was established in 1959, with the relatively new section completed in 1991. [Photo by Hu Zhe/Chinaculture.org] As part of the cultural discovery tour to the port city Quanzhou in Fujian province, a group of diplomats based in China visited the city's landmark attraction - Quanzhou Maritime Museum.

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Huge collections of well-organized primary texts, including Internet East Asian History Sourcebook

Historical letters and accounts of the Silk Road in Chinese history; includes many significant Silk Road figures; and translated works

Primary sources can often be found (hyperlinked) in the bibliographies or footnotes of these scholarly e-books You can also try a

Google Scholar search with your topic keywords and the word "primary source" in quotations

Significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world

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LibGuides: HIEA 126 The Silk Road in Chinese and Japanese History: Primary Sources

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LibGuides: HIEA 126 The Silk Road in Chinese and Japanese History: Primary Sources

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Download PDF

The Silk Roads, an incurably romantic subject which offers a splendid source for secondary school teachers and students alike, linked the civilizations of Eurasia for much of premodern history, starting as early as the second century, B.C.E., if not earlier. China, Central Asia, West Asia, and, to a lesser extent, Europe, were placed in touch with each other via the Silk Roads. The economic significance of their contacts in pre-1500 history may have been exaggerated, but their cultural impact can hardly be overstated, and the political influences, particularly during the era of the Mongol empire, have only, of late, received much attention.

Major themes of cultural borrowing, interactions of civilizations, and the development of new economic institutions and technologies to facilitate commerce, together with the sheer excitement of travel and adventure, can be conveyed through historical descriptions of the Silk Roads. East and West Asian civilizations that have often received short shrift in the secondary school curriculum can be brought to life through study of the history of the Silk Roads. Even nineteenth and twentieth-century relations between Asia and Europe, when the Silk Roads appear to have lost much of their significance, can be profitably analyzed through examination of clashes of interests along these old East-West caravan routes.

A good pedagogical device in teaching about the Silk Roads is to focus on specific individuals or occasionally composites-travelers, merchants, missionaries, adventurers, entertainers, and others-who embody the central historical themes. Teachers are blessed with a panoply of fascinating figures who played roles in the long history of the Silk Roads. More fortuitous still, quite a number either wrote accounts of their travels or were themselves the leading figures of contemporaneous histories, diaries, or biographies. Primary sources, often laced with excitement, humor, and insights, thus can constitute the core of a unit on the Silk Roads. The teacher naturally may need to select and edit these accounts to eliminate unfamiliar names of persons or places or irrelevant recital of events that might encumber or deflect the students' interest.

Growing scholarly and pedagogical concern for global history has resulted in the writing of secondary studies of great value to teachers seeking to impart educational themes related to the Silk Roads. Jerry Bentley's Old World Encounters, with its emphasis on cultural relations and interactions, offers compact surveys of religious and technological diffusion, while Philip Curtin's Cross-Cultural Trade in World History focuses on commerce, with descriptions of trade in specific commodities. S. M. Adshead's Central Asia in World History demonstrates the significance of that relatively unstudied region, which travelers and caravans needed to traverse, and my own "The 'Decline' of the Central Asian Caravan Trade" analyzes the essential conditions for the proper operation of the Silk Roads. In Plagues and Peoples, William McNeill describes the diffusion of diseases both via the Silk Roads and seaborne commerce. Though Janet Abu-Lughod's Before European Hegemony makes a compelling argument for the importance of the Silk Roads trade, it is marred by factual errors and must be used with care. All these works are available in paperback editions and are thus accessible to teachers who seek additional information.

Silk Roads history may be conveniently, if somewhat artificially, divided into four periods. Teachers may not wish to be bound to this scheme, but it offers a useful means of describing the ebbs and flows of this link between the East and the West. The first period lasted from around the second century, B.C.E. to the second century, C.E., the era of the initial development of the various Silk Roads and the establishment of the oases and towns which connected the Han dynasty (206 B.C.E.-C.E. 220) of China with Central Asia and West Asia. The collapse of the Han and of the Parthian Empire of Persia diminished commerce and travel along the East-West trade routes. The second period stretched from the seventh to the late ninth century, the time of the cosmopolitan Tang dynasty of China and of the expansion of Islam from the Arab world through Persia to Central Asia. The gradual decline and downfall of the Tang in the late ninth and early tenth centuries and the growing turbulence in Central Asia resulted in virtual cessation or at least dramatic reduction of commerce on the Silk Roads.

The third period, which encompassed the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, coincided with the rise and expansion of the Mongol empire, whose leaders favored trade and whose conquests led to a Pax Mongolica over much of the traditional Silk Roads, facilitating trade and travel along many of these routes. The disintegration of the Mongol Khanates, together with the discovery of the sea routes from Europe to Asia in the late fifteenth century, disrupted the Silk Roads trade and led to decline in parts of Central Asia. Ocean-borne commerce superseded overland trade on the Silk Roads.

The fourth period, which spans the late nineteenth century to the present, started with the Tsarist Russian expansion into Central Asia in the 1850s and 1860s and with the explorations and other activities of Western and Japanese scientists, adventurers, and scholars in the region in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It then continued into Nationalist Chinese, Tsarist Russian, Japanese, USSR, and Chinese Communist rivalry and domination in Central Asia, the indigenous ethnic and religious revival in response to such foreign control, and the establishment of independent countries in the area in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Silk Roads may at present witness a resurgence, but they must now be referred to as the Oil and Gas Roads, as Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and perhaps Mongolia gush forth with the new gold of petroleum, a resource which offers the region greater significance in the modern world.

Study of the Silk Roads offers opportunities to consider major themes in Asian history-the significance of trade, the spread of religions, the diffusion of technologies and artistic motifs, and the development of powerful military forces and empires. Yet perhaps even more appealing for students is the cast of characters directly involved in Silk Roads history. Teachers will certainly wish to select their own casts, but a brief description of figures in each of the four periods designated earlier may prove useful. One caveat: four of the following eight are real figures, and the rest are composites, though the latter reflect the activities and times of attested individuals who traveled along the Silk Roads but who did not leave written accounts.
BEGINNINGS OF THE SILK ROADS
Setting the stage for the first period is a Princess of the Han dynasty (206 B.C.E.-C.E. 220) sent to marry the Shanyu or ruler of a pastoral nomadic people known in the Chinese sources as the Xiongnu who tended their animals in the area of modern Mongolia and southern Siberia. This group, which needed trade with China, became increasingly bellicose when denied such commerce. Ecological crises also could have prompted them to raid Chinese settlements to obtain the goods they required. The Han, which professed to be economically self-sufficient, tried to limit commercial and diplomatic relations with these peoples, whom they perceived as "barbarians." Yet awareness of the threat posed by the Xiongnu cavalry and armies compelled the Chinese dynasty to seek peace. One of their tactics was marital alliances, and thus the dispatch of the Princess.

The story of the Princess may be used to illustrate Chinese attitudes towards foreigners as well as the differences between sedentary agricultural civilizations and nomadic pastoral societies, differences that would have a dramatic impact on the Silk Roads trade. The elaborate philosophical systems, the well-planned capital cities, the carefully devised hierarchical and social structures, the luxury products (jade, silks, etc.), and the sophisticated cuisines of the sedentary civilizations can be contrasted to the animal-centered economy, the more independent and mobile lifestyle, and the less luxurious and more precarious existence of the pastoral nomadic societies. The Princess' initial distaste for her new, rougher surroundings and her eventual accommodation and even admiration for the tribal society into which she was adopted offer useful illustrations of tolerance for and adjustment toward other styles of life.

Marital alliances aside, the Han-Xiongnu relationship remained fraught with conflict, partly because the Chinese denied badly needed trade to the pastoral nomads. Simultaneously, economic difficulties, on occasion, compelled the Xiongnu to raid Chinese border settlements. Deciding to seek assistance against its bellicose neighbors, around 139 B.C.E. the Han sent Zhang Qian, the second of our Silk Roads figures, to Central Asia to forge such an alliance. Zhang traveled through the oases and towns that would eventually constitute the Silk Roads and reached Central Asia but was rebuffed in his efforts to secure allies. Nonetheless, his mission promoted trade because he described the coveted "bloodsweating" horses of Central Asia to the Han court and brought silk to the wider attention of the peoples residing west of China. Thus demand for Chinese silk increased in Central and West Asia, leading to the development of the first epoch in the Silk Roads trade.

Not only would the story of Zhang Qian be absorbing to students, but they could also, through reading accounts about Zhang and other early travelers, recognize the complexities entailed in the proper operation of the Silk Roads trade, which required (1) a string of oases and towns offering shelter, food, and water to travelers; (2) guard stations to warn merchants of dangers en route; (3) interpreters and translators; (4) guides and camel grooms; (5) capital to fund the caravans; (6) written or oral descriptions of the routes; and (7) stable governments in at least China and Persia to keep the caravans free of bandit harassment. These conditions persisted for several centuries or until the collapse of the Han. Without a central government in China, commerce along the Silk Roads steadily diminished.
HEIGHT OF THE SILK ROADS TRADE
However, cultural contacts among civilizations, via the Silk Roads, endured, and Xuanzang, the third of our figures, reflects such continued relations. Facing a fragmented and politically unstable world, the post-Han Chinese sought solace in Buddhism, a religion that reached China from India along the Silk Roads oases and towns. Seeking greater understanding of Buddhism, Chinese monks traveled to India. Xuanzang, the most renowned of these Chinese Buddhist monks, journeyed to India in the seventh century to study with Buddhist masters, visit important religious sites, and gather Buddhist texts and artifacts. His travel account and his adventures provide teachers with a lively means of explaining Buddhist principles as well as showing Buddhist art and ritual objects.

Xuanzang's voyage ushered in a flourishing era in the history of the Silk Roads. The Tang dynasty (618-907) of China welcomed foreigners and foreign trade. A Persian merchant and a Central Asian dancer, the next two of our figures, represent the travelers of this time. The Persian merchant, a Muslim, can be used to indicate the rapid spread of such religions as Islam, Zoroastrianism, and Nestorianism throughout Asia along the Silk Roads. Accounts based on the travels of such traders yield descriptions of the lively bazaars in the Central Asian towns and in the great Chinese capital of Changan, of the products exchanged, and of the conditions of commerce. The instructor can use the Central Asian dancer, who can be visualized through the Tang tricolored ceramic figurines of foreign entertainers (examples of which may be found in almost any U.S. museum with a significant collection of Chinese art), to reveal cultural diffusion-in this case, of music and dance-and to show activities at the court.

After the fall of the Tang, trade along the Silk Roads declined, and it revived only with the rise of the Mongols. During this time, China was a "lesser empire" and could neither dominate the nearby oases and towns nor protect caravans heading westward. In the thirteenth century, the Mongols erupted from Mongolia and created the largest contiguous land empire in world history. They conquered and ruled much of the territory through which the Silk Roads traversed and encouraged the greatest flow of merchants, craftsmen, and missionaries across Eurasia until that time.

Marco Polo, the next of our figures and arguably the most renowned traveler ever, was one of these merchants, and his account, which was actually written by the storyteller Rusticello, provides
teachers with lively and colorful anecdotes with which to describe and address such themes as: (1) the organization of empires; (2) Mongol military structure and strategy; (3) the status of women in nomadic pastoral societies; (4) technological diffusion; (5) toleration of the religions of subjugated peoples as a tactic for governance; and (6) the Mongol invasions as a possible source of the Black Death. Errors of commission and omission in Marco Polo's work have spurred some to question whether he actually reached China, a subject that could also stimulate lively discussion in the classroom.

The collapse of the Mongol empire and the late fifteenth-century discovery of the sea route from Europe to Asia led to a precipitous decline of the Silk Roads trade in Central Asia, the crossroads for this commerce, until the late nineteenth century. The flourishing oases and towns sank into poverty, and nomadic empires, such as the Xiongnu and the Mongol, could no longer match the advanced military technology (guns, rifles, cannons, etc.) and the growing populations of the neighboring civilizations. In fact, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Qing China and Tsarist Russia gained control over these regions and ruled what was by then a mostly Turkic Muslim population. Central Asia and the Silk Roads seemed to disappear from the historical stage.
SILK ROADS IN MODERN TIMES
The late nineteenth-century scramble for colonies in Asia revived interest in Central Asia and the Silk Roads region. Great Britain and Russia were the first to compete for influence in the zone in a struggle referred to as the Great Game. Later, Japan joined in the competition. Diplomats and soldiers were not the only participants; scientists, geographers, adventurers, and archeologists were lured by the treasures of the Silk Roads.

Albert Von Le Coq (1860-1930), our next protagonist, was an amateur explorer and archaeologist who was drawn to the art and artifacts of the region. He gathered precious manuscripts and chipped out Buddhist and Manichaean cave paintings in Bezeklik and Kharakhojo and sent them to the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, justifying what appeared to be theft by asserting that he was saving these works from defacement and vandalism. Ironically, the Allied bombing of Berlin in World War II destroyed much of his collection. Von Le Coq's story lends itself to provocative classroom discussion of the ethics of the late nineteenth-century archaeologists and, for that matter, twentieth-century museum curators from the so-called developed world who have either spirited out or purchased works of art, regarded by some native peoples as part of the national patrimony, from so-called underdeveloped countries.

One twentieth-century reaction to such foreign cultural hegemony and political domination has been an explosive rise of nationalism among the previously subjugated peoples who resided along the Silk Roads. The five Central Asian states of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kirghizstan, which had been ruled by Russia and later by the USSR, each declared independence in the early 1990s. Simultaneously, Mongolia broke away from Soviet overlordship. Stirrings of discontent have appeared in the Chinese-dominated lands of Xinjiang (with its largely Turkic population), Tibet, and Inner Mongolia, but the People's Republic of China has managed, by alternate use of force and persuasion, to retain control.

Our final protagonist, an Uyghur nationalist from Xinjiang, could embody the recent transformations in the region. Born in 1960, this man's early education was disrupted by the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-early 1970s) when his school was closed and by the government's mandating use of the Chinese language in Xinjiang. Repressive measures against Islam during this period prevented him from observing his faith. However, the liberalization after the Cultural Revolution benefited the young Uyghur because the government wished to portray itself as a protector of the ethnic minorities within China. It reopened mosques and permitted the reprinting of The Koran.

Our protagonist capitalized on the new policies to gain admission to university to study the history and archaeology of Xinjiang and eventually, after graduation, to take part in several excavations in his native region. Paradoxically, with success came his awareness that the Chinese occupied the leading positions in government and the economy in Xinjiang. He joined an underground nationalist movement which sought greater autonomy or independence from China and participated in demonstrations in Urumchi, the capital of Xinjiang, during the Tiananmen protest movement in 1989. Despite the government's suppression of the movement in Tiananmen and other locations throughout China, he persists to the present in his efforts to achieve greater independence for the Uyghurs.

The growing economic significance of the old Silk Roads gives him confidence for the future. The oil and gas discovered in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Mongolia have inspired visions of a revival of the Silk Roads in the form of oil pipelines and of a resurgence of trade throughout the region, potentially offering great economic leverage to him and his people.

The Silk Roads, from their inception to the present, provide the teacher with an ideal vehicle to introduce students to Asian cultures. Political history, economic institutions, art, religions, technology, and geography all can be discussed courtesy of the Silk Roads, and many Asian civilizations can be interrelated through this glorious and colorful vehicle.

SOURCES FOR TEACHERS
I. GENERAL
Good maps, bibliographies, and photographs and descriptions of the art and artifacts produced or traded along the Silk Roads may be found in the catalogs for three Silk Roads exhibitions:
Anne Wardwell and James Watt, with an essay by Morris Rossabi, When Silk Was Gold (New York: Abrams, 1997); John Vollmer, et al., Silk Roads, China Ships (Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1983); and Along the Ancient Silk Routes (New York: Berlin State Museum and Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1982). NHK, Japan Broadcasting Corporation (1177 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10036) has produced 12 fifty-minute videos entitled "The Silk Road: An Ancient World of Adventure." The Department of Education at The Asia Society (725 Park Avenue, New York, New York 10021) is currently producing a prototype for a CD-ROM on the Silk Roads (available in spring of 1999). The American Forum for Global Education (120 Wall Street, New York, New York 10005) is developing curriculum materials for Central/Inner Asia: Connections and Cultures (available in summer of 1999), which will incorporate a lengthy section on the Silk Roads. A useful Web site with links to numerous other sites is www.silkroad.com.
II. SPECIFIC ERAS
On Xiongnu-Chinese interactions, see Sechin Jagchid and Van Jay Symons, Peace, War, and Trade Along the Great Wall (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989); Yu Ying-shih, Trade and Expansion in Han China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967); and Thomas Barfield, The Perilous Frontier (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1989). On nomads in general, see Anatoly Khazanov, Nomads and the Outside World (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994, 2nd ed.). A primary source for Zhang Qian has been translated in Burton Watson, Records of the Grand Historian of China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961) vol. 2, 264-274. One useful secondary account is Jeannette Mirsky, The Great Chinese Travelers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 13-25.

Sally Wriggins has written a readable book on Xuanzang entitled Xuanzang: A Buddhist Pilgrim on the Silk Road (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996). The great Chinese novel translated as Journey to the West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977-1983, 4 vols.) by Anthony Yu offers a fictional portrait (along with much else) of the Buddhist pilgrim. Art Treasures of Dunhuang (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing Company, 1981) is one among many works with splendid plates of the Buddhist art that Xuanzang might have seen on his travels. Also useful is Liu Xinju, Silk and Religion (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996).

For visual representations of the Persian merchant and the Central Asian dancer, see Ezekiel Schloss, Foreigners in Ancient Chinese Art (New York: China Institute, 1969) and Jane G. Mahler, The Westerners Among the Figurines of the T'ang Dynasty of China (Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1959). Morris Rossabi, "China and the Islamic World" in Bernard Lewis and Edmund Leites, eds., As Others See Us: Mutual Perceptions, East and West (New York: International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations, 1985) provides background for the role of Islam on the Silk Roads, and Edward Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963) offers a wealth of information on the products, the people, and the cultures of the Silk Roads during Tang times.

For sources (including translations of his work, novels, films, and plays) on Marco Polo, see Morris Rossabi, Khubilai Khan: His Life and Times (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 261-262, footnote 170. Frances Wood, Did Marco Polo Go to China? (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996) argues that Marco Polo never reached China. On the Mongols, see David Morgan, The Mongols (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1986). The A & E television network (235 East 45 Street, New York, New York 10017) has produced Marco Polo and Genghis Khan, two 50-minute videos, for its Biography series.

Peter Hopkirk, Foreign Devils on the Silk Road (London: John Murray, 1980) is a highly readable account of the works of Von Le Coq and other adventurers on the Silk Roads in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A personal view of developments among the Uyghurs at present is Justin Rudelson, Oasis Identities: Uyghur Nationalism Along China's Silk Road (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). Latest developments along the contemporary Silk Roads can be followed in the www.soros.org Web site; its Central Eurasia Project provides information on the latest news, international involvement, and cultures of Georgia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Mongolia, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan.
SECONDARY SOURCES
Abu-Lughod, Janet. Before European Hegemony. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Adshead, S. M. Central Asia in World History. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993.
Bentley, Jerry. Old World Encounters. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Curtin, Philip. Cross-Cultural Trade in World History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
McNeill, William. Plagues and Peoples. New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1977.
Rossabi, Morris. "The 'Decline' of the Central Asian Caravan Trade" in James Tracy, ed., The Rise of Merchant Empires. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

MORRIS ROSSABI is Professor of Chinese and Inner Asian History at the City University of New York and author of Khubilai Khan (1988), Voyager from Xanadu (1992), and China and Inner Asia (1975). He is currently writing a study of post-communist Mongolia and collaborating on an exhibition of Ilkhanid Persian art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

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The Silk Roads: An Educational Resource - Association for Asian Studies

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The Silk Roads, an incurably romantic subject which offers a splendid source for secondary school teachers and students alike, linked the civilizations of Eurasia for much of premodern history, starting as early as the second century, B.C.E., if not earlier. China, Central Asia, West Asia, and, to a lesser extent, Europe, were placed in touch [...]

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Photograph by Mekdet

The Silk Road is neither an actual road nor a single route. The term instead refers to a network of routes used by traders for more than 1,500 years, from when the Han dynasty of China opened trade in 130 B.C.E. until 1453 C.E., when the Ottoman Empire closed off trade with the West. German geographer and traveler Ferdinand von Richthofen first used the term "silk road" in 1877 C.E. to describe the well-traveled pathway of goods between Europe and East Asia. The term also serves as a metaphor for the exchange of goods and ideas between diverse cultures. Although the trade network is commonly referred to as the Silk Road, some historians favor the term Silk Routes because it better reflects the many paths taken by traders.

The Silk Road extended approximately 6,437 kilometers (4,000 miles) across some of the world's most formidable landscapes, including the Gobi Desert and the Pamir Mountains. With no one government to provide upkeep, the roads were typically in poor condition. Robbers were common. To protect themselves, traders joined together in caravans with camels or other pack animals. Over time, large inns called caravanseraiscropped up to house travelling merchants. Few people traveled the entire route, giving rise to a host of middlemen and trading posts along the way.

An abundance of goods traveled along the Silk Road. Merchants carried silk from China to Europe, where it dressed royalty and wealthy patrons. Other favorite commodities from Asia included jade and other precious stones, porcelain, tea, and spices. In exchange, horses, glassware, textiles, and manufactured goods traveled eastward.

One of the most famous travelers of the Silk Road was Marco Polo (1254 C.E. -1324 C.E.). Born into a family of wealthy merchants in Venice, Italy, Marco traveled with his father to China (then Cathay) when he was just 17 years of age. They traveled for over three years before arriving at Kublai Khan's palace at Xanadu in 1275 C.E. Marco stayed on at Khan's court and was sent on missions to parts of Asia never before visited by Europeans. Upon his return, Marco Polo wrote about his adventures, making him-and the routes he traveled-famous.

It is hard to overstate the importance of the Silk Road on history. Religion and ideas spread along the Silk Road just as fluidly as goods. Towns along the route grew into multicultural cities. The exchange of information gave rise to new technologies and innovations that would change the world. The horses introduced to China contributed to the might of the Mongol Empire, while gunpowder from China changed the very nature of war in Europe and beyond. Diseases also traveled along the Silk Road. Some research suggests that the Black Death, which devastated Europe in the late 1340s C.E., likely spread from Asia along the Silk Road. The Age of Exploration gave rise to faster routes between the East and West, but parts of the Silk Road continued to be critical pathways among varied cultures. Today, parts of the Silk Road are listed on UNESCO's World Heritage List.

National Geographic Society

October 19, 2023

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For more than 1,500 years, the network of routes known as the Silk Road contributed to the exchange of goods and ideas among diverse cultures.

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Doug Halsey, Chief Digital Officer

Lisa Ortiz, Director of Product and Design

Katherine Vidal, Deputy Director of Design

Donnie Bolen , Web Support Associate

Victoria Brooks, Senior UX | UI Designer

Will Merrow, Data Visualization Designer

Sabine Baumgartner, Photo Editor

Eric Spector, Deputy Director, Digital Development

Karen Mandel, Associate Director of Quality Assurance

Rob Osoria, Lead Developer

Aaron Potter, DevOps Engineer

Gabriel Gonzalez, Developer

Mariano Giagante, Quality Assurance Analyst

Doug Halsey

Chief Digital Officer

Lisa Ortiz

Director of Product and Design

Katherine Vidal

Deputy Director of Design

Donnie Bolen

Web Support Associate

Victoria Brooks

Senior UX | UI Designer

Will Merrow

Data Visualization Designer

Sabine Baumgartner

Photo Editor

Eric Spector

Deputy Director, Digital Development

Karen Mandel

Associate Director of Quality Assurance

Rob Osoria

Lead Developer

Aaron Potter

DevOps Engineer

Gabriel Gonzalez

Developer

Mariano Giagante

Quality Assurance Analyst

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China's Digital Aid: The Risks and Rewards

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Doug Halsey, Chief Digital Officer Lisa Ortiz, Director of Product and Design Katherine Vidal, Deputy Director of Design Donnie Bolen , Web Support Associate Victoria Brooks, Senior UX | UI Designer Will Merrow, Data Visualization Designer Sabine Baumgartner, Photo Editor Eric Spector, Deputy Director, Digital Development Karen Mandel, Associate Director

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In late 2013, China launched the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)-a sweeping plan to promote infrastructure development across Africa, Asia, and Europe with Chinese financing. From 2014 through 2017, loans totaling over $120 billion have backed projects ranging from highways to railroads to power plants. China hopes these funds will spur growth in its near abroad, expand its exports and access to land-based and maritime transport facilities, boost its manufacturing and construction firms, and strengthen its economic, political, and military influence abroad. Yet if the new investments fail to generate sufficient returns, they may also boost debt levels unsustainably and create political frictions with China.

The CFR Belt and Road Tracker aids analysis of BRI by showing how it has changed countries' bilateral economic relationships with China over time. The tracker focuses on three Belt and Road indicators- imports from China, foreign direct investment (FDI) from China, and external debt to China-for sixty-seven participant countries. Select the indicator you wish the map to display using the drop-down menu above the map. For each indicator, the darker the shade of red the stronger a country's economic ties to China. To view changes over time, adjust the date using the slider above the map.

For each country, the latest data for all indicators can be seen by hovering over the country on the map. This information is also displayed on each country's profile, which can be found below the map. Each profile displays the selected indicator's value since 2000. The drop-down menu above the profiles lets you select groups of countries for display. You can create a custom list of countries to view or select any of the seven corridors into which China has grouped Belt and Road countries.

The definitions of each Belt and Road indicator, and major trends that each highlights, are as follows:

The imports indicator uses data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to measure countries' goods imports from China as a percentage of their gross domestic product (GDP). This indicator can be used to gauge China's success in using BRI to raise demand for its exports. Since 2013, goods purchases from China have spiked particularly in Middle Eastern and African countries.

The foreign direct investment indicator uses IMF data to measure the proportion of countries' total inward FDI that comes from China. A greater Chinese share of FDI implies greater Chinese influence over domestic economic activity. For many countries, Chinese FDI remains low; yet some, such as Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan, now receive over a quarter of their inward FDI from China.

The CFR Index of Debt to China is our estimate of countries' stocks of external debt to China as a percentage of their GDP. Index values are based on our analysis of government announcements and media reports about Chinese development loans to Belt and Road countries. (More information about the index calculations is in the methodology section below.) The index can be used to gauge a country's vulnerability to defaulting on Chinese debt, an eventuality which may result in China taking ownership of infrastructure. Debt to China has soared for many countries since 2013: in some, such as Cambodia and Laos, it now surpasses 20 percent of GDP.

Please also visit our Global Monetary Policy Tracker, Sovereign Risk Tracker, Global Imbalances Tracker, and Central Bank Currency Swaps Tracker. To learn more about the Belt and Road Initiative, you can visit CFR's Belt and Road backgrounder.
Methodology for the CFR Index of Debt to China
The CFR Index of Debt to China uses publicly available sources to construct a conservative, lower-bound estimate of countries' stocks of external debt to Chinese creditors. The index includes debts from three different types of Chinese investment: foreign direct investment, portfolio investment, and development loans. These debts are calculated as follows:

Foreign direct and portfolio investment: The index includes countries' stocks of these debts to China if the IMF Coordinated Direct Investment Survey, the IMF Coordinated Portfolio Investment Survey, or official country sources report them. Otherwise, the index includes no FDI or portfolio debts.

Development loans: The index uses government announcements, media reporting, or other third-party sources to identify Chinese development loans issued to BRI countries since 2000. To capture only loans that are being disbursed, and not merely promised, the index includes loans only when sources report that a final loan agreement has been signed, or when circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that this is the case. A loan is not included if it has only been pledged or agreed upon in a memorandum of understanding. Lines of credit from China to other nations are not included unless there is evidence that borrowers have drawn upon such lines.

In some cases, the index makes estimates about the principal values, disbursal schedules, and repayment schedules of confirmed development loans. Estimates are based on factors including the total cost of the development project, other loans for similar development projects, or other loans to the same country. When the financial close date of the loan is ambiguous, the index assumes that the loan begins in the year that construction begins. The index also assumes that loan repayment occurs uniformly across the loan's tenor and on schedule unless otherwise reported.

Data sources: The index draws upon documentation by AidData at the College of William and Mary, the Export-Import Bank of the United States, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Export-Import Bank of China, the China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, country governments, multilateral development banks, and third-party media sources to identify Chinese development loans. GDP data comes from the IMF. Index data for Indonesia after 2007 comes from Indonesian government statistical releases.

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Trace China's Growing Economic Influence

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In late 2013, China launched the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)-a sweeping plan to promote infrastructure development across Africa, Asia, and Europe with Chinese financing. From 2014 through 2017, loans totaling over $120 billion have backed projects ranging from highways to railroads to power plants.

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Introduction

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), sometimes referred to as the New Silk Road, is one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects ever conceived. Launched in 2013 by President Xi Jinping, the vast collection of development and investment initiatives was originally devised to link East Asia and Europe through physical infrastructure. In the decade since, the project has expanded to Africa, Oceania, and Latin America, significantly broadening China's economic and political influence.

Some analysts see the project as an unsettling extension of China's rising power, and as the costs of many of the projects have skyrocketed, opposition has grown in some countries. Meanwhile, the United States shares the concern of some in Asia that the BRI could be a Trojan horse for China-led regional development and military expansion. President Joe Biden has maintained his predecessors' skeptical stance towards Beijing's actions, but Washington has struggled to offer participating governments a more appealing economic vision.

What was the original Silk Road?

The original Silk Road arose during the westward expansion of China's Han Dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE), which forged trade networks throughout what are today the Central Asian countries of Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, as well as modern-day India and Pakistan to the south. Those routes extended more than four thousand miles to Europe.

Central Asia was thus the epicenter of one of the first waves of globalization, connecting eastern and western markets, spurring immense wealth, and intermixing cultural and religious traditions. Valuable Chinese silk, spices, jade, and other goods moved west while China received gold and other precious metals, ivory, and glass products. Use of the route peaked during the first millennium, under the leadership of first the Roman and then Byzantine Empires, and the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE) in China.

But the Crusades, as well as advances by the Mongols in Central Asia, dampened trade, and today Central Asian countries are economically isolated from each other, with intra-regional trademaking up a small percentage of all cross-border commerce. They are also heavily dependent on Russia, particularly for remittances, which made up nearly one-third of the gross domestic product (GDP) of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan before the Russian war in Ukraine scattered remittance-sending migrant laborers.

What are China's plans for its New Silk Road?

President Xi announced the initiative during official visits to Kazakhstan and Indonesia in 2013. The plan was two-pronged: the overland Silk Road Economic Belt and the Maritime Silk Road. The two were collectively referred to first as the One Belt, One Road initiative but eventually became the Belt and Road Initiative.

Xi's vision included creating a vast network of railways, energy pipelines, highways, and streamlined border crossings, both westward-through the mountainous former Soviet republics-and southward, to Pakistan, India, and the rest of Southeast Asia. Such a network would expand the international use of Chinese currency, the renminbi, and " break the bottleneck in Asian connectivity," according to Xi. (In 2018, the Asian Development Bank estimated that the continent faces a yearly infrastructure financing shortfall of over $900 billion.) In addition to physical infrastructure, China has funded hundreds of special economic zones, or industrial areas designed to create jobs, and encouraged countries to embrace its tech offerings, such as the 5G network powered by telecommunications giant Huawei.

Xi subsequently announced plans for the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road at the 2013 summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Indonesia. To accommodate expanding maritime trade traffic, China would invest in port development along the Indian Ocean, from Southeast Asia all the way to East Africa and parts of Europe.

China's overall ambition for the BRI is staggering. To date, 147 countries-accounting for two-thirds of the world's population and 40 percent of global GDP- have signed on to projects or indicated an interest in doing so.

Analysts estimate the largest so far to be the estimated $62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a collection of projects connecting China to Pakistan's Gwadar Port on the Arabian Sea. In total, China has already spent an estimated $1 trillion on such efforts. Experts have predicted that China's expenses over the life of the BRI could reach as much as $8 trillion, though estimates vary.

What does China hope to achieve?

China has both geopolitical and economic motivations behind the initiative. Xi has promoted a vision of a more assertive China, even as the country's outstanding loans have grown to the equivalent of over a quarter of its GDP.

To date, 147 countries-accounting for two-thirds of the world's population and 40 percent of global GDP-have signed on to projects or indicated an interest in doing so.

Experts see the BRI as one of the main planks of a bolder Chinese statecraft under Xi, alongside the Made in China 2025 economic development strategy. For Xi, the BRI serves as pushback against the much-touted U.S. " pivot to Asia," as well as a way for China to develop new trade linkages, cultivate export markets, boost Chinese incomes, and export China's excess productive capacity. "China has had a fair amount of success in redrawing trade maps around the world, in ways that put China at the center and not the U.S. or Europe," says CFR's David Sacks, an expert on U.S.-China relations.

At the same time, China is motivated to boost global economic links to its western regions, which historically have been neglected. Promoting economic development in the western province of Xinjiang, where separatist violence has been on the upswing, is a major priority, as is securing long-term energy supplies from Central Asia and the Middle East, especially via routes the U.S. military cannot disrupt.

More broadly, Chinese leaders are determined to restructure the economy to avoid the so-called middle-income trap. In this scenario, which has plagued close to 90 percent of middle-income countries since 1960, wages go up and quality of life improves as low-skilled manufacturing rises, but countries struggle to then shift to producing higher-value goods and services.

Finally, Beijing could seek geopolitical leverage over BRI countries. A 2021 study [PDF] analyzed over one hundred debt financing contracts China signed with foreign governments and found that the contracts often contain clauses that restrict restructuring with the group of twenty-two major creditor nations known as the "Paris Club." China also frequently retains the right to demand repayment at any time, giving Beijing the ability to use funding as a tool to enforce Chinese hot button issues such as Taiwan or the treatment of Uyghurs. In January 2022, Nicaragua officially joined BRI, one month after severing diplomatic ties with Taiwan.

What are the potential roadblocks?

The Belt and Road Initiative has also stoked opposition. For some countries that take on large amounts of debt to fund infrastructure upgrades, BRI money is seen as a potential poisoned chalice. China views BRI projects as a commercial endeavor [PDF], with loans close to a market interest rate that it expects to be fully repaid. Some BRI investments have involved opaque bidding processes and required the use of Chinese firms. As a result, contractors have inflated costs, leading to canceled projects and political backlash.

Examples of such criticisms abound. In Malaysia, former prime minister Mahathir bin Mohamad campaigned against overpriced BRI initiatives and canceled $22 billion worth of BRI projects, although he later announced his " full support" for the initiative. CFR's Belt and Road Tracker shows overall debt to China has soared since 2013, surpassing 20 percent of GDP in some countries.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine roiled global markets, a climbing number of low-income BRI countries have struggled to repay loans associated with the initiative, spurring a wave of debt crises and new criticism for BRI. In Pakistan, for example, imports required to build CPEC infrastructure contributed to a widening budget deficit, ultimately resulting in a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). And in Ghana and Zambia, high debt loads that partly consisted of BRI loans led to sovereign default. However, many countries that sign on to BRI have few alternatives, Sacks says.

"If loans that you know are charging an exorbitant interest rate are the only way [to get infrastructure financing], you still have to weigh that trade off and probably proceed with that," he says.

Other skeptics connect the BRI with climate change. Though China committed to stop building coal-fired power plants abroad in 2021, nonrenewable energy investment has made up nearly half of all BRI spending; ambiguity remains about whether the commitment applies to projects already in progress or only to new projects, and if it restricts coal-fired power plant financing in addition to construction.

How has the United States responded to China-led regional integration?

The United States has shared other countries' concernsabout China's intentions. Since the Obama administration's Pivot to Asia, the United States has spent billions of dollars and flexed diplomatic muscle to build infrastructure and foster cooperation between low-income countries. President Donald Trump passed the BUILD act, which consolidated Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a U.S. government agency for development finance, with components of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) into a separate agency (the Development Finance Corporation) with a $60 billion investment portfolio.

In 2021, President Joe Biden, in collaboration with the Group of Seven (G7), launched the Build Back Better World Initiative ("B3W") an infrastructure investment program conceived to compete with BRI. Though some supporters say B3W acts as a complement to BRI, many acknowledge that its lack of financing prevents it from acting as a serious challenger to China's initiative. One year after B3W was announced, commitments under the initiative totaled only $6 million, and it had been renamed the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment. Rather than investing in infrastructure, where China holds an economic advantage (China won more than eight times as many World Bank-funded infrastructure contracts as the United States in 2020), critics say Washington should boost its aid-based lending through existing multilateral institutions, such as the World Bank and IMF.

Others have argued that the United States might find a silver lining in the BRI. Jonathan E. Hillman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says the United States could use BRI projects as a way to have China pay for infrastructure initiatives in Central Asia that are also in the U.S. interest.

What is the role for third countries?

Some countries have sought to balance their concerns about China's ambitions against the BRI's potential benefits.

India. India has tried to convince countries that the BRI is a plan to dominate Asia, warning of what some analysts have called a " String of Pearls" geoeconomic strategy whereby China creates unsustainable debt burdens for its Indian Ocean neighbors in order to seize control of regional choke points. In particular, New Delhi has long been unsettled by China's decades-long embrace of its traditional rival, Pakistan. Meanwhile, India has provided its own development assistance to neighbors, most notably Afghanistan, where it has spent $3 billion on infrastructure projects.

Although India was a founding member of China's Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), Indian and Chinese officials have since diverged on trade policy. Accordingly, the United States views India as a counterweight to a China-dominated Asia and has sought to knit together its strategic relationships in the region, most recently via the 2022 Indo-Pacific Economic Framework.

Japan. Tokyo has a similar strategy to New Delhi's, balancing its interest in regional infrastructure development with long-standing suspicions about China's intentions. Japan has committed over $300 billion in public and private financing to infrastructure projects throughout Asia. Together with India, Japan has also agreed to cultivate the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor (AAGC), a plan to develop and connect ports from Myanmar to East Africa, though little progress has been made on the initiative since it was announced in 2017.

Europe. Over two-thirds of European Union (EU) member countries have formally signed on to BRI with large Chinese infrastructure investment responsible for projects such as the renovated port of Piraeus in Greece and the Budapest-Belgrade railway in Hungary. Beijing has also funded a number of projects on the continent in non-EU countries. These investments have "made it harder for the EU to craft a united approach to China," and Greece and Hungary have obstructed bloc-wide efforts to criticize China, CFR's Jennifer Hillman and Alex Tippett write.

Some European countries have been more critical. French President Emmanuel Macron has urged prudence, suggesting during a 2018 trip to China that the BRI could make partner countries "vassal states." In December 2021, the EU announced Global Gateway, a $300 billion infrastructure investment program explicitly meant to rival BRI, which critics say is a " drop in the ocean" compared to BRI. Others worry that China is using BRI funds to gain influence in Balkan countries hoping to become EU members such as Serbia, thereby providing China access to the heart of the EU's common market.

Russia. Moscow has become one of the BRI's most enthusiastic partners, though it responded to Xi's announcement at first with reticence, worried that Beijing's plans would outshine Moscow's vision for a "Eurasian Economic Union" and impinge on its traditional sphere of influence.

As Russia's relationship with the West has deteriorated, however, President Vladimir Putin has pledged to link his Eurasian vision with the BRI. Some experts are skeptical of such an alliance, which they argue would be economically asymmetrical. Russia's economy and its total trade volume are both roughly one-eighth the size of China's-a gulf that the BRI could widen in the coming years. And in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, some analysts have said that Beijing's refusal to condemn Russia has alienated Eastern European countries that are viewed as targets of BRI.

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China's Massive Belt and Road Initiative

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China's colossal infrastructure investments may usher in a new era of trade and growth for economies in Asia and beyond. But skeptics worry that China is laying a debt trap for borrowing governments.

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The Silk Road wasn't a single route, but rather a vibrant trade network that crisscrossed central Eurasia for centuries, bringing far-flung cultures into contact. Traveling by camel and horseback, merchants, nomads, missionaries, warriors and diplomats not only exchanged exotic goods, but transferred knowledge, technology, medicine and religious beliefs that reshaped ancient civilizations.

The term "silk road" was coined in 1877 by Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen, a German geographer, who focused on the flourishing silk trade between the Chinese Han Empire (206 B.C. to 220 A.D.) and Rome. But modern scholars recognize that the Silk Road (or Silk Roads) continued to enable cross-continental trade until large-scale maritime trade replaced overland caravans in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Here are eight of the most important trade goods that fueled centuries of Silk Road cultural exchange:

1. Silk

It's called the Silk Road for a reason. Silk, first produced in China as early as 3,000 B.C., was the ideal overland trade item for merchant and diplomatic caravans that may have traveled thousands of miles to reach their destinations, says Xin Wen, a historian of medieval China and Inner Asia at Princeton University.

"Your carrying capacity was very limited, so you brought whatever was most valuable, but also the lightest," says Wen, whose upcoming book is titled The King's Road: Diplomatic Travelers and the Making of the Silk Road in Eastern Eurasia, 850-1000. "Not only does silk fit these characteristics exactly-high value, low weight-but it's also extremely versatile."

The Roman elite prized Chinese silk as a luxuriously thin textile, and later, when silk-making technology was brought to the Mediterranean, artisans in Damascus created the reversible woven silk textile known as damask.

But silk was more than clothing, says Wen. In Buddhist cultures it was made into ritual banners or used as a canvas for paintings. In the important Silk Road settlement of Turfan in Eastern China, silk was used as currency, writes historian Valerie Hansen, and in the Tang Dynasty (618 to 907 A.C.), silk was collected as a form of tax.

2. Horses

Patrick Aventurier/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images

Horses were first domesticated in the steppes of Central Asia around 3700 B.C. and transported nomadic tribes that hunted and raided across vast territories that bordered China, India, Persia and the Mediterranean. Once the horse was introduced into agrarian societies, it became a sought-after tool for transport, cultivation and cavalry, writes historian James Millward in Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction.

The silk-for-horse trade was one of the most important and long-lasting exchanges on the Silk Road. Chinese merchants and officials traded bolts of silk for well-bred horses from the Mongolian steppes and Tibetan plateau. In turn, nomad elites prized the silk for the status it conferred or the additional goods it could buy.

Wen says that horses, by providing their own transportation, were the ultimate high-value, low-weight commodity on the Silk Road, and were "a very unique luxury item for the elite of the Eurasian world."

It's not surprising that the famous tomb of the Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang (259-210 B.C.) not only contains 8,000 terra cotta warriors, but also lifelike statues of 520 chariot horses and 150 cavalry horses.

3. Paper

Paper, invented in China in the second century A.C., first spread throughout Asia with the dissemination of Buddhism. In 751, paper was introduced to the Islamic world when Arab forces clashed with the Tang Dynasty at the Battle of Talas. The Caliph Harun al-Rashid built a paper mill in Baghdad that introduced paper-making to Egypt, North Africa and Spain, where paper finally reached Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries, writes Millward.

On the Silk Road, travelers carried paper documents that served as passports to cross nomadic lands or spend the night at a caravansary, a Silk Road oasis. But the most important function of paper along the Silk Road was that it was bound into texts and books that transmitted entirely new systems of thought, especially religion.

"It's not a coincidence that Buddhism spread to China around the same time that paper became prevalent in the region," says Wen. "Same with Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism. One of the central significances of the Silk Road is that it served as a channel for the spread of different ideas and cultural interactions, and much of that relied on paper."

4. Spices

Leemage/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

Spices from East and South Asia, like cinnamon from Sri Lanka and cassia from China, were exotic and coveted trade items, but they didn't typically travel the overland routes of the Silk Road. Instead, spices were mainly transported along an ancient maritime Silk Road that linked port cities from Indonesia westward through India and the Arabian Peninsula.

Across the Silk Road, spices were valued for their use in cooking, but also for religious ceremonies and as medicine. And unlike silk, which could be produced wherever silk worms could be kept alive, many spices were derived from plants that only grew in very specific environments.

"That means there's a clearer origin for spice than for some of the other luxury items, which adds to their value," says Wen.

5. Jade

Millennia before there was such a thing as the Silk Road, China traded with its western neighbors along the so-called Jade Road.

Jade, the crystalline-green gemstone, was central to Chinese ritual culture. When jade supplies ran low in the 5th millennium B.C., it was necessary for China to establish trade relations with western neighbors like the ancient Iranian Kingdom of Khotan, whose rivers were rich with hunks of nephrite jade, the best variety of jade for carving intricate figurines and jewelry. The jade trade to China flourished throughout the Silk Road period, as did trade in other semi-precious gems like pearls.

6. Glassware

Westerners often assume that most Silk Road goods traveled from the exotic Far East westward to the Mediterranean and Europe, but Silk Road trade went in all directions. For example, archeologists excavating burial mounds in China, Korea, Thailand and the Philippines have found Roman glassware among the prized possessions of the Asian elite. The distinct type of soda-lime glass made in Rome and fashioned into vases and goblets would have eagerly been traded for silk, which Romans were obsessed with.

7. Furs

The taiga is the vast stretch of evergreen forest that runs through Siberia in Eurasia and continues into Canada in North America. In the days of the Silk Road, writes Millward, the taiga attracted hardy bands of trappers who harvested fox, sable, mink, beaver and ermine pelts. This northern "fur road" supplied luxurious coats and hats to Chinese dynasties and other Eurasian elites. Millward writes that Genghis Khan cemented one of his earliest political alliances with a gift of a sable coat. By the 17th century, in the waning days of the Silk Road, rulers from the Chinese Qing Dynasty could buy furs from Siberian trappers.

8. Slaves

Enslaved people were a tragically common "trade good" along the Silk Road. Raiding armies would take captives and sell them to private traders who would find buyers in far-flung ports and capitals from Dublin in the West to Shandong in Eastern China, writes Silk Road historian Susan Whitfield. The slaves became servants, entertainers and eunuchs for royal courts.

Wen says that while enslavement was pervasive in premodern Eurasia along the Silk Road, none of these kingdoms or societies could be classified as "slave-based" in the same way that the African slave trade operated in the New World.

"Slaves were more like an ornament of the life of the Silk Road elite," says Wen, "Not a major economic source."

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The Silk Road: 8 Goods Traded Along the Ancient Network

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The Silk Road wasn't a single route, but rather a vibrant trade network that crisscrossed central Eurasia for centuries, bringing far-flung cultures into contact. Traveling by camel and horseback, merchants, nomads, missionaries, warriors and diplomats not only exchanged exotic goods, but transferred knowledge, technology, medicine and religious beliefs that reshaped ancient civilizations.

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Silk Road - Facts, History & Location | HISTORY

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The Silk Road was a network of trade routes connecting China and the Far East with the Middle East and Europe. Established when the Han Dynasty in China officially opened trade with the West in 130 B.C., the Silk Road routes remained in use until A.D. 1453, when the Ottoman Empire boycotted trade wi…

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There are several important Chinese texts relating to the early development of the "Silk Routes" that have not been translated into English previously. They include the 'Chapter on the Western Regions,' several biographies of the Chinese generals who expanded Chinese power to the west, from the Hou Hanshu (covering the period from 25-220 * My first translation, a draft annotated version of The Western Regions According to the Hou Hanshu, appeared on the Silk Road Seattle website in May of 2002. The response from readers was beyond any expectations. I was inundated with a wealth of new material, comments and suggestions from scholars in more than 30 countries. This led to a thorough revision and updating of my original draft which had been available on this site since July 2003. It is presently being revised once more before being published in book form.
John E. Hill
PO Box 467
Cooktown, Qld.,
AUSTRALIA 4895
Email:wynhill@bigpond.com
Acknowledgements
Many, many people have helped to encourage me and with the research that went into this new draft version of the Weilue.
I would like to acknowledge the constant help and encouragement I have received from Jo Wynter, my beloved partner of almost 30 years. Without her untiring patience and constant help, editing and suggestions, none of my historical work would have ever come to fruition.
My special thanks go to Professor Fida Hassnain, who originally fired my enthusiasm in early Indian history, took me to visit many Kushan sites, helped me explore the archaeological collections held in Kashmir, while conveying the knowledge he had gained through his long career; Professor Daniel Waugh for his encouragement and for making it possible to publish my work on the Silk Road Seattle website; and to Professor Victor M. Mair for ongoing advice and assistance. Others who have generously provided valuable help include: Nettie K. Adams, Dr. Farhad Assar, Dr. Thomas Bartlett, Professor Christopher I. Beckwith, Dr. Craig Benjamin, Professor Alison Betts, Professor E. Bruce Brooks, Professor Felix Chami, Almost inevitably I will have forgotten some who have helped me along the way - and a few have asked not to be named. I extend my heartfelt gratitude to you as well.
Thank you all so very much. I will be forever in your debt. This is your work as well as mine - there is no way I could have written it without the kind support and assistance I received from you. I hope you will find it worthy and will be pleased with it. I look forward to any suggestions you may have to improve it in the future. Dr. T. Matthew Ciolek, Professor Joe Cribb, Chris M. Dorn'eich, Professor Étienne de la Vaissière, Aayko Eyma, Professor Richard N. Frye, Professor M. Gawlikowski, Dan Gibson, Gaston Giulliani, Dr. Irene L. Good, Dr. David T. Graf, Paul Greenhall, Chris Hopkins, Professor Karl Jettmar, Agnes Korn, Henriette Kress, Whalen Lai, Valérie Lefebvre-Aladwi, Renzo Lucherini, Pavel Lurje, Thomas K. Mallon-McCorgray, Dr. Michael Macdonald, Professor Daniel L. McKinley, Raoul Mclaughlin, Felicitas Maeder, Josef Maier, Samir Masri; Professor Irina Merzliakova, John Moffett, Khademi Nadooshan, Professor Giorgio Nebbia, Mark Passehl, Prof. E. G. Pulleyblank, Lic. Paola Raffetta, Fr. Yves Raguin, S.J., Professor Nader Rastegar, Professor Donald Redford, Joachim K. Rennstich, Janet Rizvi, Peter Rowland, Dr. Edmund Ryden, Orit Shamir, Michael Schimmelpfennig, Professor Steven Sidebotham, Professor Nicholas Sims-Williams, Sören Stark, Dr. Sebastian Stride, Dr. Mehmet Tezcan, Professor E. H. Uphill, Dr. Chunyun WANG, Professor Donald B. Wagner, Antonia Willis, Richard Wong, and the Editorial staff of Shen-Nong of Integrated Chinese Medicine Holdings Ltd., in Hong Kong (www.icm.com.hk). * I have divided the text into numbered and headed sections for clarity and ease of use. Modern place-name equivalents are in rounded brackets after the Chinese names. Many are well-established and widely accepted. Tentative identifications are indicated with a question mark, and the evidence is discussed in the notes.
The modern place-names adopted here sometimes only refer to the general location of the ancient sites mentioned in the text. Usually I have only given the name of the nearest modern town, or the main town of an oasis. For example, the oasis of Kashgar (Shule) contained several towns, as it still does, and these are sometimes referred to individually. Literal translations of place-names and products have been put within single inverted commas, such as: 'Eastern Division.'
Where needed for clarity, I have added comments and notes in square brackets, eg: "the three heavenly bodies [the sun, moon, and stars]." Identifications that remain uncertain are indicated by a question mark. * For those wishing to check the reconstructed ancient pronunciations I highly recommend first checking Edwin Pulleyblank's masterful Lexicon of Reconstructed Pronunciation in Early Middle Chinese, Late Middle Chinese, and Early Mandarin (1991), UBC Press, Vancouver. It is arranged alphabetically according to the Pinyin renderings and also contains references to the entries in Karlgren's earlier, but still useful,Grammata Serica (Recensa). Pulleyblank's listing of the reference numbers to the characters in Karlgren's work probably provides the most convenient way of finding particular characters in that work, which is notoriously difficult to access. Some additional reconstructions have been added from theGrand dictionnaire Ricci de la langue chinoise. 7 volumes. Instituts Ricci (Paris - Taipei). Desclée de Brouwer. 2001, which is abbreviated asGR in the entries. * Note that the EMC reconstructions are only reliable back to the time when the Qieyun dictionary was completed in 601* Some of the rarer characters may not be available in the fonts on your computer. In this case, if you are using Windows 2000 or XP format, try to obtain the very extensive "Simsun (Founder Extended)" font which is available on the (unfortunately very expensive) Microsoft Office Proofing Tools CD.
Those with Office XP 2002 or later should be able to install it from your Office XP CD using the information available at:http://www.i18nwithvb.com/surrogate_ime/background.htm

*For Mac users I recommend checking the following website for information on Chinese fonts for the various OS X operating systems: http://www.yale.edu/chinesemac/pages/os_x.html
*For Linux users I recommend checking the following website for information on Chinese fonts: http://seba.studentenweb.org/thesis/linux.php If this font is not on already your computer it can be easily downloaded and installed from this site, or: information on the Gentium font can be found at: http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=Gentium&_sc=1 Gentium fonts may be downloaded from: http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=Gentium_download&_sc=1 Fortunately, it is free, and not a large file, and so should not take too long to download and install in your "Fonts" folder. * The use of "Gentium" has allowed me accurately represent almost all the diacritics employed in the quotes. Don't forget, if you can't find exactly the diacritic you need already in the list of characters, you can combine marks from the "Combining Diacritical Marks" heading, by typing the character you wish to mark and then going to "Symbol" and adding the appropriate diacritical mark. This works reasonably well in most cases.
In spite of this, some readers may still experience difficulties. However, I believe that most of the notes will be meaningful even if the odd character is missed. If readers continue to have problems, or wish to discuss some point, contact the author directly at:wynhill@bigpond.com . But please - do not contact the Webmaster. * The Weilue fills in many gaps in our knowledge of the extensive international contacts and trade networks at this early period. The kingdom of Wei was one of the 'Three Kingdoms' (Wei, Wu and Shu) formed after the disintegration of the Han dynasty in 220 * Unfortunately, Yu Huan does not mention his sources in the text that has survived. Some of this new data undoubtedly came to China via traders from Da Qin. Land communications with the West apparently continued relatively uninterrupted to the northern state of Wei after the fall of the Han dynasty.
Wei was the northernmost of the three kingdoms the Han empire had split into and it controlled access to Dunhuang and the main trade routes to the west. It was also, of course, the state that Yu Huan lived in. An entry of the "Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms" for the year 222 "Second month (Mar. 1-29). The Kings of Shan-shan
* There is information in theWeilue about the maritime routes to the Roman Empire and it is quite possible that some, or all, of the new information on the Roman Empire and Parthia came from foreign sailors. One record of information obtained from such sources (whichmay have been available to Yu Huan) is recorded in theLiangshu: "During the 5th year of the Huangwu period of the reign of Sun Quan [= Note: In the name of the "Roman" merchant Qin Lun above, Qin, as is standard Chinese practice with foreign names, stands for 'from Da Qin' or the Roman Empire. The old pronunciation of the personal name Lun * Yu Huan apparently never left China, but he collected a large amount of information on the countries to the west of China including Parthia, India, and the Roman Empire, and the various routes to them. Some of this information had reached China well before Yu Huan's time, and can also be found in the sections dealing with the 'Western Regions' of the Shiji, theHanshu, and the Hou Hanshu. * In spite of this repetition of earlier (and sometimes fanciful) information, the Weilue contains much new, unique, and generally trustworthy material. Most of it dates from the late second and early third centuries"The time of the Han dynasty, especially the Later Han, was one of the relatively important scientific periods in Chinese history. There were great advances in astronomy, improvements in the calendar, an outstanding development in the earth sciences, and foundations laid for methods of classifying plants and animals; alchemy flourished, and the first book ever written on the subject appeared (A.D. 142). A sceptical and rationalist way of thinking developed, particularly about A.D. 80 in the hands of Wang Chhung [Wang Chong].., while there were two Han princes who also took part in active intellectual life. One, Tê of Ho-Chien, was a scholar and bibliophile who preserved the important 'Artificer's Record' section of the Chou Li (Records of the Rites of Chou), the other was the almost legendary Liu An of Huai-Nan, who gave his name to theHuai Nan Tzu, a compendium on all the science of the day and one of the most important monuments of ancient Chinese scientific thought. Indeed, bibliography as a whole received great stimulus, for the Han period marked the first systematic development of book lists; compiled by experts in astronomy, medicine, military science, history, magic and divination, these were incorporated into the Han histories and list some 700 works written on wooden or bamboo tablets, and on silk. Buddhism also entered China in Later Han times and the first sutras were translated into Chinese at the capital, Loyang.
In technology the Han age was marked by the invention and spread of the use of paper, by numerous developments in ceramics such as the first glazes and the introduction of a material that was the forerunner of porcelain, by advances in architectural techniques such as making decorated bricks and tiles, and by raising the level of textile technology to a stage not approached by Iran or Europe until centuries later. A large number of natural products new to China were also imported: alfalfa and the grape-vine from the west, oranges, lemons, betel nuts and lychees from the south and south-west. From the west also came improved breeds of horses, and from Khotan, possibly from Burma too, jade arrived in large quantities. Perhaps the greatest achievement of the Han people in nautical technology was the cardinal invention of the axial rudder at least as early as the first century A.D.
Towards the end of Later Han times, palace revolutions became increasingly frequent, and in 184 a farming crisis led to a peasant revolt guided, in this case, by the 'Yellow Turban' secret society. Although the revolt was suppressed, it left some of the army generals in positions of great power, and by 220 the central government found itself ineffective. The country became divided, and for the next half century remained fragmented into three independent kingdoms in a state of permanent mutual hostility." Needham (1978), pp. 39-40. * Along with these great scientific and technological exchanges came new ideas, philosophies and religions. Foreign ideas and religions spread incredibly quickly via the trade routes across the whole of Eurasia and much of Africa. The acceleration of information exchange was unprecedented. Buddhism became established in Central Asia well before the turn of the millennium and in China during the 1st century * There is also some fairly convincing evidence that Christianity and Judaism had reached both China and India by the first century * This was followed in 1905 by a translation of the rest of the text of the Weilue into French by Édouard Chavannes, under the title of, "Les pays d'occident d'après le Wei lio."
Chavannes' translation is accompanied by copious notes in which he clarified numerous obscurities, and convincingly identified many of the countries and towns mentioned in theWeilue, especially along the eastern sections of the overland trade routes. These are, to my knowledge, the only translations of significant portions of the text into European languages to date. * In 1980 I was living in India, beginning to study the history of the Kushan Empire, when Professor Edwin Pulleyblank very kindly sent me copies of Chavannes' annotated French translations of the Weilue and the chapter on the 'Western Regions' as well as other key texts from theHou Hanshu. I translated Chavannes' accounts into English as an aid to my studies. What a wonderful treasure chest of information I discovered there!
It was soon clear to me, however, that the translations and notes were badly in need of expansion and updating, and, as there had never been a complete translation of the whole texts into English, I decided to began teaching myself Chinese so I could study and translate the original Chinese texts.
I had not realised when I first started in 1980 what an immense and lengthy, but rewarding, task the translating and annotating theWeilue would be. It was an audacious undertaking, as my knowledge of Chinese was (and still is) very limited. It would have been impossible without the help of many experts and friends and any merits this new translation might have are due largely to their kind and generous suggestions and advice. "Mr. Chavannes always makes use of the edition of the twenty-four historians published by the library of Tushujicheng in Shanghai from 1888. This edition has the advantage of being printed clearly in a convenient format and is relatively inexpensive. It accurately reproduces the Imperial edition published in the 18th century by order of Qianlong and which is authoritative in China today. It is just that this edition in moving characters¹, generally correct for the Shiji or the Histories of the Han, and which is at the same time the first and the only true reflection of the dynastic histories, is quite careless from theSanguozhi onwards. Additionally, Mr. Chavannes has had at his disposal the edition of theSanguozhi known as the Baorentang (p. 550, n. 2; p. 555, n. 1), but he does not seem to have always checked it for, in at least two cases it is unlikely that theBaorentang edition gives readings which, in the edition of Shanghai are clearly printing errors: on p. 522, "Page 365, note 1. I have several times, and with others with me, spoken of the lithographic or photolithographic edition of the twenty-four historians. This is the edition used here by Mr. Chavannes ; it was published in 1888 and in the following years in a small format, and, in fact, has been carried out with the use of mobile metallic characters. The same applies to the corresponding edition of theTushujicheng. Page 366, note 1. This xylographic edition of 1887 does not, however, reproduce the official edition of the 18th century, but that published under the Ming by the Page 366, note 3. We have not so much as mentioned ancient Chinese manuscripts. Meanwhile, exception should be made for those that have been rediscovered in Japan over the last few years. Among them is a manuscript from the Tang period giving the * Paper was a new invention, first recorded in China in the year 105 "The biography of Yu Huan has not been admitted to the canonical histories. Therefore, we would only be able to guess at the date at which this author wrote if a celebrated critic of the Tang period, Liu Zhiji 239, the end of Emperor Ming's reign, and 265, the end of the Wei dynasty." Translated and adapted from Chavannes (1905), pp. 519-520. "The first question to resolve was to establish clearly in which period the Weilue was composed. It is known that the author was called "After the Tang, the only title that survived, before the complete disappearance of the work, is the Weilue in 50 chapters, mentioned still in 1225 in the* Since the time of Chavannes and Pelliot, there has been almost a century of scholarship devoted to various aspects of the text by scholars from many countries.
Recent archaeological finds, and research on other key texts, notably thePeriplus of the Erythraean Sea, and the chapters on the 'Western Regions' in theShiji, the Hanshu, and the Hou Hanshu, have helped to throw light on this difficult but important work.
In spite of all this attention, many place-names in the text remain unidentified (or the identification is not convincing), and some sections of the routes outlined in the text have remained unclear. This is especially true of the sections relating to the Roman Empire, and the sea routes between China and Egypt, where the data available is very sparse. * The Weilue includes much of the information on the Roman Empire already recorded inzhuan 118 of the Hou Hanshu on the "Western Regions." This information seems to have been mainly based on the accounts of the Chinese envoy, Gan Ying, who had been sent by the famous Chinese General Ban Chao, Ban Yong's father, in CE 97, to the west to gather information. It has been either paraphrased from theHou Hanshu itself, or taken from the same sources. On the other hand, much of the information on Parthia and the Roman Empire is additional to that included in theHou Hanshu. It was presumably collected after the report of the Chinese General Ban Yong to the Emperor in, or just before, * Gan Ying got as far as the banks of the Persian Gulf but was persuaded not to go further by the Parthians. He returned to China in 101 In the ninth Yanxi year [166 * Much of the new information in the Weilue is very specific and quite detailed, giving distances and directions between cities, and must have been based on actual travel notes. Who supplied this information is not clear, although the routes described strongly suggest that they were mainly gathered from Arab, possibly Nabataean, traders.
However, the many references to Anxi (Parthia) indicate that the information in theWeilue on the Roman Empire and Parthia must date from before the collapse of the Parthians and the founding of the Sasanian Empire in 224- the Shiji [Shih-chi] by Sima Qian [Szu-ma Ch'ien], particularly chapter 123 on Dayuan [Ta-yüan] which covers up to the end of the 2nd century to late 2nd century, with most of the information on distant countries dating prior to 125- the chapter on Chinese expansion into the Tarim Basin (zhuan 77) of the Hou Hanshu (French translation by Chavannes in T'oung pao 7, 1906, pp. 149-234). (1st and early 2nd century). See the excellent translation (from H. Frisk 1927 with up-dates and improvements) with the Greek text and extensive notes by Lionel Casson: The Periplus Maris Erythraei. (1989), Princeton, Princeton University Press. Also still useful is William H. Schoff's 1912 translation:The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea.Wilfred H. Schoff. New York, Longmans, Green, and Co. Second Edition. Reprint, New Delhi, Oriental Books Reprint Corporation. 1974. The main text from the earlier translation by Schoff is now fortunately available to all on this website, although one should still consult both his book and Casson's more recent one for their useful commentaries. - the Naturalis historia by Pliny the Elder - completed, except for finishing touches, in 77 CE I have not included maps with this translation but strongly recommend having a good atlas at hand while reading the book. Some of the maps available on the "Silk Road Seattle" website will also prove helpful, especially the detailed map showing the main routes across the Tarim Basin and the one accompanying the Schoff's translation of The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea. Interactive maps and much additional information may be accessed at the following sites:http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~chgis/chgis_home.html, andhttp://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~chgis/tools/ * The basic units of measurement employed in the Weilue, were the * On the basis of this lucky discovery, the li was calculated by Dubs (1955): 160, n. 7 to be 415.8 metres. See also Chapter IV, Appendix I, Standard Weights and Measures of Han Times,ibid., 276-280.
In most cases, I have given the exact equivalents to the nearest kilometre based on this measurement even when the number ofli given is obviously an approximation (e.g. 8,000 or 10,000li). For relatively short distances (less than 100 li), I have calculated to the nearest tenth of a kilometre. * Most, though not all, of the distances between places given in the Weilue - where they can be checked - prove to have been surprisingly accurate, especially those in areas controlled at times by the Chinese.
Sometimes there are mistakes in the distances given in the text. This may be because it is not clear exactly where the ancient route went between two points (or which of several alternatives was used). Occasionally, especially over longer distances, the figures given are obviously widely inaccurate. * Some Chinese words have no exact equivalent in English. One such example is the word is frequently translated as 'capital' in spite of the fact that there are many examples of more than one du existing in a single state. Additionally, Dubs (1938), p. 28, n. 2, says that in "ancient times" it referred to "a large walled city". I have, therefore usually translated this word as 'major centre' or 'large town.' Sometimes theWeilue designates a town as awangzhi which translates literally as the "king's chief town or residence" and this is much closer to the concept of 'capital' as we use it today, so I have translated it variously as "the (king's) capital," or "the king's residence."
In one place in Section 11, just after referring to the fact that Rome controlled hundreds of minor kings, the text becomes more specific, using the termwangsuozhi cheng When a woman marries, she wears a renlu 24 that, in the way that it is trimmed and decorated, sometimes resembles therenlu of the Qiang, and sometimes the tunic of the Middle Kingdom. All braid their hair. The Zilu originated among the Xiongnu. Zi is the name the Xiongnu used for slaves. Formerly, in the Jianwu period [ During the period (at the end) of the Han and (the beginning) of the Wei [circa 220 From Dunhuang in the Western Regions2 to the Chuo Qiang ('Disobedient Qiang')3 in the Nan Shan ('Southern Mountains'),4 and several thousand li west to the Congling (the Pamirs),5 are the remnants of the Yuezhi6 and the Congzi ('Brown Onion'),7 the Baima ('White Horse'),8 and the Huangniu Qiang ('Yellow Ox' Qiang).9 At this time the kingdoms numbered thirty-six. Later they split into more than fifty. From the Jianwu period [ [2] Heading west from the Yumen ('Jade Gate') Frontier Post, leaving the Dadu jing (The Protector General's Well),10 turning around the northern end of the Sanlongsha ('Three Sand Ridges'),10 one passes by the Julu cang ('Depot Dwellings').12 Then, on leaving the Shaxi jing ('West-of-the-Sand Well'),13 and turning northwest, passing by the Longdui ('Dragon Dunes'),14 one arrives at ancient Loulan15 and, turning west, goes to Qiuci (Kucha),16 and on to the Congling (Pamir) mountains. - This is the Central Route.17 [3] Heading northwest from Yumen ('Jade Gate') Frontier Post, passing through Hengkeng ('East-West Gully' = the Bēsh-toghrak Valley), one avoids the Sanlongsha ('Three Sand Ridges')¹¹ as well as the Longdui ('Dragon Dunes'),¹⁴ and emerges to the north of Wuchuan ('Five Boats') and arrives in the territory of Jushi at Gaochang (47 km SE of Turfan), which is the residence of theMao (Wu) and Ji Colonel (in charge of the agricultural garrisons). Then it turns to the west and rejoins the Central Route to Qiuci (Kucha). This is the New Route. Initially Moye (Maya) dreamed of a white elephant and became pregnant. When the Buddha was born, he emerged from the left side of his mother.4 At his birth, he had a topknot (theushnisha) of hair.5 As soon as he touched ground, he was able to take seven steps6." This territory is several thousand li from east to west, and north to south. The men and women of this nation are all eighteenchi tall [mistake for 8chi = 1.85 metres, or just over 6 feet, as in the Hou Hanshu].7 They ride elephants and camels into battle. Currently they provide military service and taxes to the Yuezhi (Kushans).8 The kingdom of Panyue (Pandya) is also called Hanyuewang.1 It is several thousand li to the southeast of Tianzhu (Northern India), and is in contact with Yi Circuit.2 The inhabitants are small; they are the same height as the Chinese. Traders from Shu (Western Sichuan) travel this far.3 * the kingdom of Zhenzhong (Arach?),9 the kingdom of Suoju (Yarkand),10 the kingdom of Jieshi,11 the kingdom of Qusha,12 the kingdom of Xiye (Khargalik),13 the kingdom of Yinai (Tashkurghan),14 the kingdom of Manli (modern Karasul),15 the kingdom of Yire (Mazar - also known as Tágh Nák and Tokanak),16 the kingdom of Yuling,17 the kingdom of Juandu ('Tax Control' - near Irkeshtam),18 the kingdom of Xiuxiu ('Excellent Rest Stop' - near Karakavak),19 and the kingdom of Qin,20 which are all dependencies of Shule (Kashgar).21 The people (of these countries) are connected to each other. Every 10 li (4.2 km) there is ating (relay shed or changing place), and every 30 li (12.5 km) there is azhi (postal station).23 There are no bandits or thieves, but there are fierce tigers and lions that kill those travelling on the route. If you are not in a group, you cannot get through.24 They divide the various branch principalities of their territory into small countries such as that of the king of Zesan (Azania?),29 the king of Lüfen (Leucos Limen),30 the king of Qielan (Wadi Sirhan),31 the king of Xiandu (Leukê Komê),32 the king of Sifu (Petra),33 (and that of) the king of Yuluo (Karak).34 There are so many other small kingdoms it is impossible to give details on each one. Moreover, the Xiyu Jiutu ('Ancient Sketch of the Western Regions') now says that both Jibin (Kapisha-Gandhāra) and Tiaozhi (Characene and Susiana) produce precious stones approaching the quality of jade.11 Note: The translator has added the numbering in brackets for the convenience of the reader in checking the notes on the various items. For information on any of the items mentioned in the list, please click on the blue superscript No. 12 after "Product List" above, and then scroll down the page of notes until you come to the number you are looking for. For instance, if you want to check the notes on tin, scroll down until you reach note number 12.12 (6). As well as the overland route from Da Qin (Roman territory) through Haibei ('North of the Sea' - the lands between Egypt and Parthia), one can also follow the sea south along the seven commanderies of Jiaozhi (stretching down the north Vietnamese coast),1 which are in contact with foreign countries.2 Nearby (or 'North')3 is a waterway (the Red River)4 which leads to Yongchang5 in Yizhou (a commandery in present-day southern Yunnan).6 That's why rare items come from Yongchang. (Zesan) is in close communication with Angu city (Gerrha) in Anxi (Parthia).5 You can (also) travel (from Zesan) southwest to the capital of Da Qin (Rome), but the number ofli is not known.6 The king of Lüfen (Leukê Komê)1 is subject to Da Qin (Rome). It is 2,000 li (832 km) from his residence to (the nearest) major city (= Daphnae) of Da Qin (the Roman Empire).2 The king of Qielan (Wadi Sirhan)1 is subject to Da Qin (Rome). From the kingdom of Sitao (Istakhr, Stakhr)2 you go south, cross a river (the Rūd-i Kor), then head west 3,000li (1,247 km) to go to Qielan (Wadi Sirhan).3 The route leaves south of the river (the Rūd-i Kor), only then do you head west.4 North of Qielan (Wadi Sirhan), Sifu (Petra), Sibin (Susa)9 and Aman (Ariana)10 there is a mountain range (the Taurus mountains)¹¹ running east to west. The king of Xiandu ('Aynūnah = Leukos Limên)1 is subject to Da Qin (Rome). From his residence it is 600li (250 km) northeast to Sifu (Petra).2 The king of Sifu (Petra) is subject to Da Qin (Rome). From his residence northeast to Yuluo (Karak), you go 340 li (141 km), and cross over a sea (mistake for 'river' = the Wadi al- Yuluo (Karak) is subject to of Da Qin (Rome). The seat of government is northeast of Sifu (Petra) across a river (the Wadi al- The New Route of the North1 goes west reaching the kingdom of Eastern Jumi (near modern Dashito),2 the kingdom of Western Jumi (near modern Mulei),2 the kingdom of Danhuan,4 the kingdom of Bilu,5 the kingdom of Pulu,6 and the kingdom of Wutan,7 which are all dependencies of the king of the Further Jushi Section (near Jimasa). These kingdoms have large numbers of their famous sables.5 They raise cattle and move about in search of water and fodder. They are close to a big marsh (to the northeast and north of the Aral Sea).6 Previously they were vassals of Kangju (Tashkent plus the Chu, Talas, and middle Jaxartes basins). Now they are no longer vassals.⁷ It is 5,000 li (2,080 km)5 south to the six kingdoms of Jushi;6 3,000 li (1,247 km) southwest to go to the frontier of Kangju (Tashkent plus the Chu, Talas, and middle Jaxartes basins); 8,000li (3,326 km) west to go to the capital of the king of Kangju. The kingdom of Duanren ('Short Men')1 is northwest of Kangju (Tashkent plus the Chu, Talas, and middle Jaxartes basins). The men and women are all threechi tall [0.693 metres or 2.27 feet]. They are very numerous. It is a long way from Yancai (at the mouth of the Syr Darya near the Aral Sea) and the other kingdoms. The elders of Kangju (Tashkent plus the Chu, Talas, and middle Jaxartes basins) say that merchants frequently cross this kingdom.2 It is possibly more than 10,000li (4,158 km) from Kangju (Tashkent plus the Chu, Talas, and middle Jaxartes basins). Moreover, as to the speculations of Zou Yan,3 or the hypotheses of the Dayitai xuan, "The Great Mystery of the Noble Yi (-jing)",4 alas, I am limited to travelling by foot, and living in the puddle left in the hoof print of an ox.5 Besides, I don't have the longevity of Peng Zu.6 [Note that there is also a 'New Route of the North' outlined below in Section 10]. which can be translated as "the king's centre of administration city," which I have rendered: "the king's administrative capital" - i.e. Rome itself. See note 11.25. cheng , which literally translates as 'walled town,' but it was also used for large towns that were not walled. It is sometimes rendered 'city,' but only a handful of the cheng mentioned in the Weilue would be large enough to be called a 'city' in our age of megalopolises. Most of them were what we would think of as country towns or provincial centres. I have translated the word simply as 'town' and leave it to the reader to add the nuances according to the context.
Similarly, guo is used to refer to entities ranging from tiny fiefdoms or even villages to entire empires and can be translated as 'kingdom,' 'fief,' 'nation,' 'state,' 'country,' or 'empire.' I have translated it as 'kingdom,' unless the context specifically indicates otherwise, as most of these territories seem to have had a hereditary system of rulers at this period. li . They have varied considerably through the ages and from district to district. Fortunately, measurements remained stable over the Qin and Han periods, and an inscribed bronze standard measure, dated 9 . For a full translation see: Natural History. Pliny the Elder (77 ). Translation by W. H. S. Jones, Loeb Classical Library, London/Cambridge, Mass. (1961). For a widely available, readable and useful selection see: Natural History - A Selection. Pliny the Elder (77). Translated by John F. Healy, London, Penguin Books. (1991). ). (I hope to make an English translation of these biographies available soon.) ): See the 2nd edition of the annotated translation of myThe Western Regions According to the Hou Hanshu (abbreviated asTWR in this work), which is freely available on the Silk Road Seattle website:http://depts.washington.edu/uwch/silkroad/texts/hhshu/hou_han_shu.html . See the very readable translation in: Watson, Burton, 1961, II: 264-289. .
Indications in the text strongly suggest that the information on Parthia and the Roman Empire was gathered after the accession of Meredat to the throne of Mesene/Characene (i.e. sometime after 116), and before the fall of Sura on the Euphrates (along with the whole region between Dura-Europos and Edessa), to the Romans in ], during the reign of Emperor Huan, the king of Da Qin (the Roman Empire), Andun (Marcus Aurelius Antoninus), sent envoys from beyond the frontiers through Rinan (Commandery on the central Vietnamese coast), to offer elephant tusks, rhinoceros horn, and turtle shell. This was the very first time there was [direct] communication [between the two countries]. The tribute brought was neither precious nor rare, raising suspicion that the accounts [of the 'envoys'] might be exaggerated."Hou Hanshu, ch. 118. See TWR Section 12. . Much of this information is duplicated in the Weilue. Fan Ye, the compiler, who died in 445, added a few bits of later material to the Hou Hanshu (dating up to about 170). These include this fascinating passage: Shilue of Gao Sisun . Xin Zhu reports another work of Yu Huan, the Zhongwai guan , of which the title has been preserved for us in the Nanqi shu chapter dedicated to the administration. This was, without doubt, a sort of table of the metropolitan and provincial functionaries. Yu Huan is this time qualified as a guanyi , but there is no doubt that it refers to the same individual. Here again it is said that Yu Huan lived under the Wei. As the Nanji shu deals with the years 479-501, and was compiled in the first half of the 6th century, we have in this passage new evidence, 100 years previous to theShui shu, and 200 years before the Shih tong, which allows us to fix the period in which theWeilue was written in the second third of the 3rd century." Translated and adapted from Pelliot (1906), pp. 363-364. Yu Huan, and various indications support the late testimonies that place him under the Wei (220-265), but Mr. Chavannes is the first to base this date on a text definitely from the 8th century. This text is found in the Shi tong of Liu Zhiji [661-721], published in 710. Mr. Chavannes believes that it is unique and decisive. In fact, it is truly the only text that the Chinese bibliographers quote regarding Yu Huan that is not taken from the canonical histories. However, the fact of not coming from the official compilations, regarding material on Chinese history, does not give more authority to a work. Henceforth we will be able to call upon a text more than a hundred years older, and more reliable. It is said in the chapter on literature of the dynastic history of the Sui (581-617) that Yu Huan occupied a post of langzhong ("Palace Gentleman") under the Wei²." , had not left us, in his Shi tong published in 710, this very short bit of information: Shihuozhi Jiguge . It is known that the Jiguge of the Zixiang Di" is incorrect for " Baixiang Di" and the correct reading is found in the example in the xylographic edition published by Jiangnanshuju in 1887¹. It is the same for the Weibi of p. 526 where Mr. Chavannes clearly sees that it ought to be written Lufu in place of the Fulu of Mr. Chavannes (p. 521); Juejing instead of Jingjue (p. 556). On the other hand, this same edition of 1887 gives readings or characters in certain places that one cannot reject a priori: such as the fact that it always writes Yuedi and not Yuezhi ling in place of (although I do not believe the two characters were used interchangeably); in the name of Yulai (p. 558), one finds yu in place of its equivalent ; Danduo (p. 526) is written with to and not with tuo [note Chavannes (1905), p. 526, n. 5, writes: "The character Pikang of p. 558 is not a priori better than the Pirong given in the edition of 1887. In the enigmatic title that the edition of the library of Tushujicheng gives in the form of bosuwen (p. 550), the edition of 1887 agrees with other sources that have xian wen . All these examples show that one cannot safely translate using a single contemporary edition of the dynastic histories. The first palace edition alone deserves complete trust for the text adopted under Qianlong, and yet modern criticism can only see there the version which was followed by the scholars of the 18th century, but not a sufficiently reliable text that comparison with the editions of the Sung, Yuan, or the Ming would be without profit³.
All these editions, from whatever period, have this in common, that they have not modified the text even if it was clearly in error. Disregarding the copying or printing faults that they inevitably present in greater or lesser numbers, the differences between the editions to which Chinese or European science are able to refer to always provide various readings furnished by previous printed or manuscript examples, and the various editors have not chosen between them in the same manner. This prudence, this respect for the text, is one of the principal merits of Chinese scholarship and it is, in part, due to this that the dynastic histories have retained such great authority. But, as a result, commentaries are necessary to establish, whether by comparison between the dynastic histories or referring to other works of Chinese literature, if a certain passage is certainly or probably in error, and in which manner it ought to be corrected. It is principally under the present dynasty, which is the great period of Chinese exegesis, that this research has been undertaken." , and Christianity was definitely well-established in southern India at least by the second century . This rapid spread of religions was to continue in later centuries with Manichaeism, Nestorian Christianity and Islam. See: Appendix I: "The Spread of Ideas and Religions Along the Trade Routes." . It is this new information that makes the Weilue such a valuable source. Most of the new information appears to have come from the Later Han dynasty, before China was to a large extent cut off from the West by civil wars and unrest along its borders during the late 2nd century is reconstructed as: K. 470b *li̯wən / li̯uĕn or *lwən / luən; EMC lwənor lwənh. This, as Renzo Lucherini has kindly pointed out in a private communication of 23 May, 2004, may well have represented the Greek name of Leon. (Kutcha), and Yü-tien (Khotan) each dispatched an envoy to offer tribute. [The Emperor said in an edict: "'The Hsi-jung came to submit to his arrangements,' and 'The Ti-ch'iang came to seek acknowledgment,' - these lines are sung in praise in the Shih. Now, the distant barbarian tribes of the Western Regions have all come to offer submission and allegiance to us. Envoys shall be sent to soothe them."] From this time on, the Western Regions maintained contact with China, and the wu-chi chiao-yü was appointed." Fang (1965), p. 98. [Note: this latter title is usually transcribed as: "wu- (or mao-)chi hsiao-wei" - which translates as the "Maoji Commandant" - see Hucker No. 2456 andTWR notes 1.5 and 22.5. Also, "the Ti-ch'iang" above would be better rendered as "the Ti and the Ch'iang."] , as Pulleyblank himself notes on p. 20 of his Lexicon. This means there was a gap of over 300 years between the composition of theWeilue and the best phonetic reconstructions for the characters we have at our disposal.
Although the reconstructions back to the late 6th century are frequently useful in helping to identify place-names, there were undoubtedly significant phonetic changes between the 3rd century and 6th century . Also, there were likely significant differences in pronunciation between the Chinese soldiers and settlers on the northwest frontiers and the inhabitants of the capital.

* The reconstructions of "Archaic Chinese" according to Karlgren'sGrammata Serica, in which he attempts to reconstruct pronunciations back to the Chou period (up tocirca 220 ), are also included. These reconstructions of "Archaic Chinese" are indicated by the use of a preceding asterisk: *. Sometimes Karlgren's attempts to provide these earlier reconstructions are of value, but they should be regarded with caution. They are followed by Karlgren's "Ancient Chinese," which are his reconstructions for the period equivalent to Pulleyblank's EMC.
As entries are often difficult to find in Karlgren's book, I have included his numbering system preceded by "K", so a typical entry from his work will look like this: K. 139s *g'ân / γân.
Introduction

THE TEXT OF THE WEILUE

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There are several important Chinese texts relating to the early development of the "Silk Routes" that have not been translated into English previously.

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Connecting Women to the Silk Road Main Menu (Women in World History Curriculum)

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Silk Road Project (Women in World History Curriculum)

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14th Century Scroll Painting of Lady Wenji

Two Chinese Travelers/ Two Fates Taken from a fourteenth century scroll, which used poems written
in 733 during the Tang dynasty called "Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute."

Traditional poems, which were most often sung, tell the stories of two Chinese women - one from the Han period, the other from the Tang - who both were forced to travel west to live among peoples foreign to themselves. They are stories of divided loyalties and affections by women who traveled beyond their homelands, sometimes against their will. While the following song/poems express sadness over lost, and fears of the unknown, the reasons each lady had for leaving her homeland and the fate of their lives in their new lands was strikingly different.

Song Poem: Story of Lady Wenji (195 CE)

The story of the capture of Wenji (or Ts'ai Yen), the daughter of a prominent Han dynasty statesman, by nomadic marauders in about 195 CE has been told and retold throughout the centuries. In the twelve years spent in exile, Wenji was forced to marry the nomadic chief and bore him two sons. Eventually, she was found, ransomed, and taken back to China. The legend's popularity in part comes from descriptions of Wenji's emotions at the time of her separation from her homeland and family, and the harrowing pain she experienced when she had to leave her children behind when she was found, ransomed, and forced to return to China.

The following excerpts from this account is thought to be in her own words, told through two laments in her Han biography. Some of the early illustrations of the poems show her with her qin, a musical instrument of high status, to emphasize Wenji's refined upbringing and her loneliness among those so beyond the bounds of her Han culture.

"I was born in a time of peace,
But later the mandate of Heaven
Was withdrawn from the Han Dynasty.

Heaven was pitiless.
It sent down confusion and separation....
Overrun by the ruthless Tatar bands.
Our people lost their will and power and integrity.
I can never learn the ways of the barbarians.
I am daily subject to violence and insult.
I sang one stanza to my lute and a Tatar horn.
But no one knows my agony and grief.

A Tatar chief forced me to become his wife,
And took me far away to Heaven's edge.
Ten thousand clouds and mountains bar my road home,
And whirlwinds of dust and sand blow for a thousand miles."

Over time, Wenji seems to have adjusted to her new life, particularly after the birth of her two sons:

"My nomad husband was fond of me, and we had two sons.
I nurtured them, I brought them up, I can feel no shame for this,
I felt for them, pitied them, born in the far frontier."

Later, upon being found and ransomed, she describes the scene of having to leave her sons when she is now forced to return to her home:

"I never believed that in my broken life
The day would come when suddenly I could return home.
I embrace and caress my Tatar sons.
Tears wet our clothes.
An envoy from the Han Court has come to bring me back...

Who can measure the grief of my sons?
They thought I would live and die with them.
Now it is I who must depart.
Sorrow for my boys dims the sun for me.
If we had wings we could fly away together.
I cannot move my feet,
For each step is a step away from them.
My soul is overwhelmed.
As their figures vanish in the distance
Only my love remains."

Excerpt from "Poem of Affliction." Kenneth Rexroth and Lang Clung translation

Song of Welcome for Wencheng

In 640 C.E., the emissaries of Songtsan Gambo, one of Tibet's most powerful rulers, arrived at the border of China to escort the Tang Dynasty Princess Wenching to Tibet. There, a year later, she married King Gambo, the thirty-third ruler of the Tubo Dynasty. Through the centuries, this event and Wenching's influence was, and is, celebrated in both Tibet and China.

In Tibetan culture, songs are sung on joyous occasions, from the celebration of a wedding to an important political event. In the case of Wenching, her travel from China to Tibet follows the route of an old southern Silk Road between the two empires. The following song and accompanying dance is performed in a section of this road. They claim it was first performed by the nobles and ladies of Tibet to welcome the Chinese princess to her new home.

Don't be afraid of crossing the prairie
A hundred horses are waiting for you.
Don't be afraid to climb over the snow
A hundred docile yaks are waiting for you.
Don't be afraid to ford the deep river
A hundred horse head boats are waiting for you.

From: Barbara Bennett Peterson, "Dutiful Daughters: Seven Moral Exemplars in Chinese History," World History Connected, vol. 1, no. 2.
Dramatic interpretations of stories about women traveling from their homelands continue today. In 2008, a dramatization of the Princess Wenching tale was created using a mixture of Tibetan and Peking operas. The part of Tibetan opera was performed by Tibetan actors/actresses while the Peking opera was carried out by artists from the Chinese National Peking Opera Theater.

From Tibet and Chinese 2008 opera showing
Princess Wenching arriving in Tibet for her marriage. Web Link
Find fuller information on Wenching and her influence in Tibet at:
"The Marriage of Wenching (625-680 C.E.): Connecting Tang China and Tubo Tibet

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Primary Source Artifact - Two Travelers / Two Fates - Silk Roads (Women in World History Curriculum)

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Primary Source Artifact - Two Travelers / Two Fates - Silk Roads (Women in World History Curriculum)

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For more than 1500 years, across more than 4000 miles, the Silk Roads connected East and West. These overland trails and sea lanes carried not only silks, but also cotton textiles, dyes, horses, incense, spices, gems, glass, and ceramics along with religious ideas, governing customs, and technology. For this book, Xinru Liu has assembled primary sources from ancient China, India, Central Asia, Rome and the Mediterranean, and the Islamic world, many of them difficult to access and some translated into English for the first time. Court histories, geographies and philosophical treatises, letters, travelers' accounts, inventories, inscriptions, laws, religious texts, and more, introduce students to the complexities of cultural exchange. Liu's thoughtful introduction considers the many ways the peoples along the Silk Roads interacted and helps students understand the implications for economies and societies, as well as political and religious institutions, over space and time. Maps, document headnotes and annotations, a chronology, questions for consideration, and a selected bibliography offer additional pedagogical support.

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The Silk Roads: A Brief History with Documents

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For more than 1500 years, across more than 4000 miles, the Silk Roads connected East and West. These overland trails and sea lanes carried not only silks, but also cotton textiles, dyes, horses, incense, spices, gems, glass, and ceramics along with religious ideas, governing customs, and technology.

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Videos and Images for Silk Road (trade route)

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Where did the Silk Road start and end?

What major goods traveled along the Silk Road?

What traveled along the Silk Road besides goods?

This article was most recently revised and updated by

Silk Road, ancient trade route, linking China with the West, that 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 Buddhism (from India) via the Silk Road.

Originating at Xi'an (Sian), the 4,000-mile (6,400-km) road, actually a caravan tract, followed the Great Wall of China to the northwest, bypassed the Takla Makan Desert, climbed the Pamirs (mountains), crossed Afghanistan, and went on to the Levant; from there the merchandise was shipped across the Mediterranean Sea. Few persons traveled the entire route, and goods were handled in a staggered progression by middlemen.

Know Your Asian Geography Quiz

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 centuries the route was revived under the Mongols, and at that time 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.

Part of the Silk Road still exists, in the form of a paved highway connecting Pakistan and the Uygur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, China. The old road has been the impetus behind a United Nations plan for a trans-Asian highway, and a railway counterpart of the road has been proposed by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP). The road inspired cellist Yo-Yo Ma to found the Silk Road Project in 1999, which explored cultural traditions along its route and beyond as a means for connecting arts worldwide across cultures.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Amy Tikkanen.

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Silk Road, ancient trade route, linking China with the West, that carried goods and ideas between the two great civilizations of Rome and China. Silk went westward. Wools, gold, and silver went east. China also received Nestorian Christianity and Buddhism (from India) via the route. Read more about the Silk Road here.

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Traversing as they do all of Eurasia, the Silk Roads encompassed almost every climate and vegetation zone and crossed every kind of terrain. This sketch of Silk Road geography has the modest aim of introducing a few of the important features of Eurasian physical geography which help us to understand patterns of human habitation and interaction across that vast expanse.

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About the Project

About the Project

We wish to archive now the huge amount of cultural resources that have been collected and studied from the ancient to the current in a form without deterioration, and inherit those resources for the future. We wish to improve accessibility to those cultural resources for many people to actually see and use those resources.

Digital Silk Road Project is a research project to realize these goals by integrating information technology with the study of culture. To be specific, we must investigate various methods, starting from the digitization of real cultural artifacts, and the construction of digital archives, to the exhibition of digital cultural resources over the network and annotation to digital cultural resources based on collaborative work.

Naturally, this kind of a big issue cannot be solved only by the experts of informatics. That is why we are promoting international collaborative research ranging over various academic fields. We have been working together with several international organizations and several universities in Japan and in foreign countries.

Our future plan includes the dissemination of research results over the network to broaden the outreach of the digital archive. We also understand, however, that another important issue is the improvement of accessibility to digital cultural resources, especially in countries along ancient Silk Road in which the usage of information technology still remains premature.

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About the Project - Digital Silk Road Project

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About the Project We wish to archive now the huge amount of cultural resources that have been collected and studied from the ancient to the current in a form without deterioration, and inherit those resources for the future. We wish to improve accessibility to those cultural resources for many people to actually see and use those resources.

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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Silk Road, the trade routes which spanned Asia for over a thousand years, carrying Buddhism to China and paper-making and gunpowder westwards.

Melvyn Bragg and guests Tim Barrett, Naomi Standen and Frances Wood discuss the Silk Road, the trade routes which spanned Asia for over a thousand years, carrying Buddhism to China and paper-making and gunpowder westwards.In 1900, a Taoist monk came upon a cave near the Chinese town of Dunhuang. Inside, he found thousands of ancient manuscripts. They revealed a vast amount of evidence about the so-called Silk Road: the great trade routes which had stretched from Central Asia, through desert oases, to China, throughout the first millennium.Besides silk, the Silk Road helped the dispersion of writing and paper-making, coinage and gunpowder, and it was along these trade routes that Buddhism reached China from India. The history of these transcontinental links reveals a dazzlingly complex meeting and mingling of civilisations, which lasted for well over a thousand years.With:Tim Barrett is Professor of East Asian History at the School of Oriental and African Studies; Naomi Standen is Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at Newcastle University; Frances Wood is Head of the Chinese Section at the British Library.

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BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, The Silk Road

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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Silk Road, the trade routes which spanned Asia.

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Neil MacGregor presents an omnibus edition of five more items in his history of humanity, exploring the world along and beyond the Silk Road in the 7th century AD.

Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum in London, continues his global history as told through objects from the Museum's collection.
In this episode he is exploring the world along and beyond the Silk Road in the 7th century AD at a time when the teachings of the prophet Muhammad were transforming the Middle East. He begins by discovering how the Syrian capital Damascus was rapidly becoming the centre of a new Islamic empire. His journey then takes him onwards to Korea, Peru and Sutton Hoo in Great Britain.

Producers: Paul Kobrak and Anthony Denselow.

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BBC Radio 4 - A History of the World in 100 Objects Omnibus, The Silk Road and Beyond (AD 400 - 800)

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Neil MacGregor explores the world along and beyond the Silk Road 1300 years ago.

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Located on the first floor of the Thomas Jefferson Building, the Asian Reading Room is where the public and scholars alike may freely access more than 4 million physical items that make up the Asian collections housed at the Library of Congress. These materials encompass approximately 200 languages and dialects from across Asia, including Bengali, Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Thai, Tibetan, Urdu, Vietnamese, and many others. In the Asian Reading Room, users can browse an encyclopedic, multilingual reference collection while making use of the vast and diverse collections of printed materials, rare books, and microform kept onsite and stored in remote facilities. Users will be greeted by knowledgeable and friendly reference librarians ready to assist with their research questions and general learning about the countries and peoples of East, South, and Southeast Asia while also directing them to Asian materials in other parts of the Library. The Asian Division serves users who wish to access the Asian American Pacific Islander collection as well.

Hundreds of Asian studies subscription databases and in-copyright digitized resources can only be accessed in the Asian Reading Room and on the Library of Congress campus. For those users not able to visit in-person, this Asian Reading Room website serves as a resource to explore the Asian Division's growing digital collections, curated web archives and freely available online resources on Asian studies. Research guides prepared by specialists with expertise in many Asian languages as well as humanities and social science fields will aid users as they navigate the rich and diverse Asian collections.

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About this Reading Room | Asian Reading Room | Research Centers | Library of Congress

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Located on the first floor of the Thomas Jefferson Building, the Asian Reading Room is where the public and scholars alike may freely access more than 4 million physical items that make up the Asian collections housed at the Library of Congress.

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About this Collection | World Digital Library | Digital Collections | Library of Congress

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This collection contains cultural heritage materials gathered during the World Digital Library (WDL) project, including thousands of items contributed by partner organizations worldwide as well as content from Library of Congress collections. The original World Digital Library site (preserved in LC’s Web Archives here) and all descriptive metadata were translated from English and made available in six additional languages: Spanish, Portuguese, French, Arabic, Russian, and Chinese. All item records include narrative descriptions submitted by the contributing partners and enhanced by WDL researchers to contextualize the item and its cultural and historical importance. Books, manuscripts, maps, and other primary materials in the WDL collection are presented in their original languages; more than 100 languages are represented, including many lesser known and endangered languages. Additionally, all World Digital Library metadata in each of the seven languages is available as a downloadable dataset.

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Part of our Silk Road Seattle Project is to make available interesting historical sources which may be used in teaching and learning about the Silk Road. Here is an initial list of links to texts which have been digitized and posted on the web already.

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Textiles and Clothing along the Silk Roads

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Textiles and Clothing along the Silk Roads

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What is the Belt and Road initiative? | CNBC Explains

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History of Silk Road: How ancient China opened trade with the West

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How the Silk Road Made the World | Full Documentary

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Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

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Tales from the Silk Road of the Sea Ep.1: Rediscovering the Route

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Sailing from Past to Present on the Maritime Silk Road

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China's Maritime Silk Road | The New Silk Road | CNA Insider

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India, China, and the Maritime Silk Road: More Than Just a Trade Route | Indian Ocean History

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A window to data and analysis at regional, subregional and country levels on SDG statistics for Asia and the Pacific.

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Asia-Pacific SDG Partnership

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Publication

March 28, 2022

Building Forward Together: Towards an Inclusive and Resilient Asia and the...

Building Forward Together: Towards an inclusive and resilient Asia and the Pacific is the theme report of the Asia-Pacific SDG partnership for 2022....

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Event

March 28, 2022

Report Launch | The 2022 Asia-Pacific SDG Partnership Thematic Report:...

YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW661Ks_cdw The 2022 Asia-Pacific SDG Partnership Thematic Report "Building Forward Together - Towards an...

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SDG Data

SDG Progress

Assess progress on SDGs at goal (Snapshot), target (Dashboard), and indicators (Progress Gap) for the Asia-Pacific region and subregions.

Country SDG Profiles

Access data and visualizations on SDG indicators for countries in Asia and the Pacific.

Country Comparison

Compare the latest data of the countries in Asia-Pacific by SDG indicator.

Knowledge Products

Building Forward Together: Towards an Inclusive and Resilient Asia and the...

Building Forward Together: Towards an inclusive and resilient Asia and the Pacific is the theme report of the Asia-Pacific SDG partnership...

Responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Leaving No Country Behind

Responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Leaving No Country Behind is the theme report of the Asia-Pacific SDG partnership for 2021. Reflecting...

Fast-tracking the SDGs: Driving Asia-Pacific transformations

Fast-tracking the SDGs: Driving Asia-Pacific transformations is the theme report of the Asia-Pacific SDG partnership for 2020 (with...

Acceleration towards SDGs: How to identify the top performers?

This introduces a methodology for identifying top performers in various aspects of sustainable development. Top performers demonstrate...

Partners

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Promoting sustainable solutions for the Asia-Pacific region.

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SEA breakout session: Launch of the Asia and the Pacific SDG Progress Report 2022

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Why do I have to complete a CAPTCHA?

Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property.

What can I do to prevent this in the future?

If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware.

If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices.

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The Sustainable Development Goals – Tracking Progress and Engaging Stakeholders in Review

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ESCAP serves as the United Nations’ regional hub promoting cooperation among countries to achieve inclusive and sustainable development. It is the largest regional intergovernmental platform with 53 Member States and 9 associate members.

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Asia and the Pacific SDG Progress Report

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Asia and the Pacific SDG Progress Report

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Sustainable Development Report: South Korea

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Sustainable Development Report: South Korea

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Korea, Rep.

OECD member

Overview Indicators Policy Efforts

SDG Dashboards and Trends

Click on a goal to view more information.

Dashboards:

SDG achieved

Challenges remain

Significant challenges remain

Major challenges remain

Information unavailable

Trends:

On track or maintaining SDG achievement

Moderately improving

Stagnating

Decreasing

Trend information unavailable

Check us out on social media!

The Sustainable Development Report (formerly the SDG Index & Dashboards) is a global assessment of countries' progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. It is a complement to the official SDG indicators and the voluntary national reviews.

All data presented on this website are based on the publication Sachs et al. (2022): From Crisis to Sustainable Development: the SDGs as Roadmap to 2030 and Beyond. Sustainable Development Report 2022. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Feedback? Questions? Contact us at info@sdgindex.org

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The Sustainable Development Report 2022 tracks the performance of all 193 UN Member States on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

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Sustainable Development Report: North Korea 

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Sustainable Development Report: North Korea 

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Korea, Dem. Rep.

East and South Asia

Overview Indicators

SDG Dashboards and Trends

Click on a goal to view more information.

Dashboards:

SDG achieved

Challenges remain

Significant challenges remain

Major challenges remain

Information unavailable

Trends:

On track or maintaining SDG achievement

Moderately improving

Stagnating

Decreasing

Trend information unavailable

Check us out on social media!

The Sustainable Development Report (formerly the SDG Index & Dashboards) is a global assessment of countries' progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. It is a complement to the official SDG indicators and the voluntary national reviews.

All data presented on this website are based on the publication Sachs et al. (2022): From Crisis to Sustainable Development: the SDGs as Roadmap to 2030 and Beyond. Sustainable Development Report 2022. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Feedback? Questions? Contact us at info@sdgindex.org

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The Sustainable Development Report 2022 tracks the performance of all 193 UN Member States on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

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Japan

OECD member

Overview Indicators Policy Efforts

SDG Dashboards and Trends

Click on a goal to view more information.

Dashboards:

SDG achieved

Challenges remain

Significant challenges remain

Major challenges remain

Information unavailable

Trends:

On track or maintaining SDG achievement

Moderately improving

Stagnating

Decreasing

Trend information unavailable

Check us out on social media!

The Sustainable Development Report (formerly the SDG Index & Dashboards) is a global assessment of countries' progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. It is a complement to the official SDG indicators and the voluntary national reviews.

All data presented on this website are based on the publication Sachs et al. (2022): From Crisis to Sustainable Development: the SDGs as Roadmap to 2030 and Beyond. Sustainable Development Report 2022. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Feedback? Questions? Contact us at info@sdgindex.org

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The Sustainable Development Report 2022 tracks the performance of all 193 UN Member States on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
China

East and South Asia

Overview Indicators Policy Efforts

SDG Dashboards and Trends

Click on a goal to view more information.

Dashboards:

SDG achieved

Challenges remain

Significant challenges remain

Major challenges remain

Information unavailable

Trends:

On track or maintaining SDG achievement

Moderately improving

Stagnating

Decreasing

Trend information unavailable

Check us out on social media!

The Sustainable Development Report (formerly the SDG Index & Dashboards) is a global assessment of countries' progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. It is a complement to the official SDG indicators and the voluntary national reviews.

All data presented on this website are based on the publication Sachs et al. (2022): From Crisis to Sustainable Development: the SDGs as Roadmap to 2030 and Beyond. Sustainable Development Report 2022. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Feedback? Questions? Contact us at info@sdgindex.org

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The Sustainable Development Report 2022 tracks the performance of all 193 UN Member States on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

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Wild Classroom Our Planet Educator Guides

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Use these guides in accompaniment with the Our Planet series episodes to help shape supplementary discussions and activities within your 5th-12th grade learning environment.

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We promote use of the Sustainable Development Goals in learning so that children can contribute to a better future for all. From citizenship and justice to climate change and the environment, inspire children to make a difference!

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Eric X. Li: A tale of two political systems

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How Did China Come to Be: A geographic perspective?

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How Did China Come to Be: A geographic perspective?

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How Did China Come To Be: A geographic perspective | 中国从哪里来？——以地理的视角

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China's 1911 Revolution: The Overseas Chinese and the Revolution

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China's 1911 Revolution: The Overseas Chinese and the Revolution

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海外华侨是辛亥革命之母 / China's 1911 Revolutio: The Overseas Chinese and the Revolution

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Overseas Chinese: Stories of Struggles and Success

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Overseas Chinese: Stories of Struggles and Success

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E01 天下华人：奋斗（上）https://youtu.be/K0fyIRwYG9Y

E02 天下华人：奋斗（中）

https://youtu.be/y8tQeVbhUuc

E03 天下华人：奋斗（下）

https://youtu.be/Ufbcjfz0uZQ

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Overseas Chinese: Stories of Struggles and Success E01 天下华人：奋斗（上）

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https://youtu.be/U4SrQVsvyDA

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CHINESE WILDLIFE TRADE/TRAFFICKING-CHINESE ILLEGAL ANIMANL WILDLIFE TRADE[BAN CHINA KILLING WILDLIFE

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Japan's Approach to Sustainable Forest Management

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Japan's Approach to Sustainable Forest Management

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https://youtu.be/FHTn6ZIEMkM

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[JICA-Net Library]Japan's Approach to Sustainable Forest Management(Full ver.)

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https://youtu.be/4-kyj4WAcQA

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S & E Asia Environmental Issues - YouTube

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SS7G10 Discuss environmental issues across Southern and Eastern Asia. a. Describe the causes and effects of pollution on the Yangtze and Ganges Rivers. b. De...

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What is Deforestation? | Eco Facts | One Tree Planted

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Global Forest Watch | Monitoring Forests in Near Real Time