The passes of Karakoram and Torugut, linking China with western
Asia - and ultimately with the whole of the western world - have
only in recent years re-opened to a thin and tentative trickle of
cross-border traffic. Yet a thousand years ago these were crucial
and well-trodden trade routes.
The foundations for this famous road to the West , which
was to become one of the most important arteries of trade and
culture in world history, were laid over two millennia ago. In
the second century BC nothing was known in China of the existence
of people and lands beyond its borders, except by rumour. In 139
BC, the imperial court at Chang'an (Xi'an) decided to despatch an
emissary, a man called Zhang Qiang, to investigate the world to the
west and to seek possible allies in the constant struggle against
nomadic marauders from the north. Zhang set out with a party of a
hundred men; thirteen years later he returned, with only two other
members of his original expedition - and no alliances. But the news
he brought nevertheless set Emperor Wu Di and his court aflame,
including tales of Central Asia, Persia and even the Mediterranean
world. Further expeditions were soon despatched, initially
to purchase horses for military purposes, and from these beginnings
trade soon developed. By 100 BC a dozen immense caravans a year
were heading west into the desert. Jade, porcelain, lacquerware and
silk began flowing out of China.
The silkworm had already been domesticated in China for
hundreds of years, but in the West the means by which this exotic
material was manufactured remained a total mystery - people
believed it was combed from the leaves of trees. The Chinese took
great pains to protect their monopoly, punishing any attempt to
export silkworms with death. It was only many centuries later that
sericulture finally began to spread west, when silkworm larvae were
smuggled out of China in hollow walking sticks by Nestorian monks.
The first time the Romans saw silk, snaking in the wind from
the banners of their Parthian enemies, it filled them with terror
and resulted in a humiliating rout. They determined to acquire it
for themselves, and soon Roman society became obsessed with the
fabric which by the first century AD was coming west in such large
quantities that the corresponding outflow of gold had begun to
threaten the stability of the Roman economy.
Silk was not all that passed along the route. From China came
oranges, peaches, pears, roses, chrysanthemums, cast iron,
gunpowder, the crossbow, the wheelbarrow, paper and printing, and
from the West came cucumbers, figs, chives, sesame, walnuts, grapes
(and wine-making), wool, linen and ivory.
The entire route , from eastern China to the
Mediterranean, was incredibly long and arduous. Starting from
Chang'an, the Silk Road curved northwest through Gansu to the Yumen
Pass, where it split. Leaving the protection of the Great Wall,
travellers could follow one of two routes across the terrible
deserts of Lop Nor and Taklamakan, braving the attacks from
marauding bandits, to Kashgar. The southern route ran
through Dunhuang, Lop Nor, Miran, Niya, Khotan and Yarkand; the
northern route through Hami, Turpan, Kuqa and Aqsu.
Oases along the route inevitably prospered as staging posts
and watering holes, becoming important and wealthy cities in their
own right, with their own garrisons to protect the caravans. When
Chinese domination periodically declined, many of these cities
turned themselves into self-sufficient city-states, or
khanates . Today, many of these once powerful cities are now
buried in the sands.
High in the Pamirs beyond Kashgar, the merchants traded their
goods with the middlemen who carried them beyond the frontiers of
China, either south to Kashmir, Bactria, Afghanistan and India, or
north to Ferghana, Tashkent and Samarkand. Then, laden with western
gold, the Chinese merchants would turn back down the mountains for
the three-thousand-kilometre journey home.
As well as goods, the Silk Road carried new ideas in art and
religion . Nestorian Christianity and Manichaeism trickled east
across the mountains, but by far the most influential force was
Buddhism . The first Buddhist missionaries appeared during
the first century AD, crossing the High Pamirs from India, and
their creed gained rapid acceptance among the nomads and oasis
dwellers of what is now western China. All along the road,
monasteries, chapels, stupas and grottoes proliferated, often
sponsored by wealthy traders. By the fourth century, Buddhism had
become the official religion of much of northern China and by the
eighth it was accepted throughout the empire.
The remains of this early flowering of Buddhist art along
the road are one of the great attractions of the Northwest for
modern-day travellers. Naturally, history has taken its toll -
zealous Muslims, Western archeologists, Red Guards and the forces
of nature have all played a destructive part - but some sites have
miraculously survived intact, above all the cave art at
Mogao outside Dunhuang.
The Silk Road continued to flourish for centuries, reaching its
zenith under the Tang (618-907 AD) and bringing immense wealth to
the Chinese nobility and merchants. But it remained a slow,
dangerous and expensive transport route. Predatory tribes to the
north and south harried the caravans despite garrisons and military
escorts. Occasionally entire regions broke free of Chinese control,
requiring years to be "re-pacified". The route was physically
arduous, too, taking at least five months from Chang'an to
Kashgar, and whole caravans could be lost in the deserts or in the
high mountain passes.
There was a brief final flowering of the trade in the
thirteenth century, to which Marco Polo famously bore
witness, when the whole Silk Road came temporarily under Mongol
rule. But by now the writing was clearly on the wall for the
overland routes. With the arrival of sericulture in Europe and the
opening of sea routes between China and the West, the Silk Road had
had its day. The road and its cities were slowly abandoned to the
wind and the blowing sands.