The Great History of the Silk Road: When Ancient China Encountered the World

For more than two thousand years, China's unique geographical conditions have created China's unique tradition of unification and the resilient continuity of Chinese civilization. However, since Zhang Qian emptied the Western Regions, there have been an endless stream of envoys, monks, and businessmen from all dynasties with different missions and purposes. They have set out from China, crossing the mountains and Gobi deserts in the west, or across the oceans, all the way west to explore the wider world outside of China. The materials and ideas they brought back have also profoundly affected the living world of the Chinese people. Thus the Silk Road was born. This is a history of two thousand years of civilizational exchange between ancient China and the Western world. It is also a grand history of the formation, prosperity, evolution and decline of the Silk Road from a Chinese perspective. Through meticulous excavation of historical materials and vivid and popular words, the author restores the legendary experiences of important diplomats, monks, explorers, etc. On the Silk Road. During the Western Han Dynasty, Zhang Qian served as an envoy to the west to communicate with Dayuezhi and Wusun to jointly attack the Xiongnu, opening up the road to the Western Regions; during the Tang Dynasty, Xuanzang went to India to learn Buddhist scriptures; during the Song Dynasty, maritime trade in the southeast flourished, and porcelain and silk were sold overseas; during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, with the strict implementation of the maritime ban policy, the Silk Road gradually weakened. The Silk Road is not only a historical road of conquest, belief, trade and empire, but also a future road that determines the direction of human civilization in the current new era.