Since Zhang Qian went to the Western Regions , there have been endless messengers, monks and merchants in all dynasties with different missions and purposes. They set out from China, either through the western mountains and Gobi, or cross the ocean, and explore the wider world outside Middle Earth all the way west. The material and thoughts they brought back also profoundly influence the life world of the Chinese. Silk Road was born from this.
How should we understand the Silk Road? How should the history of the Silk Road be divided into stages? What is the driving force for the prosperity of the Silk Road? Recently, at the "Understanding Ancient Globalization and Understanding Today's China - "The Great History of the Silk Road" New Book Sharing Session" held by Tianxi Culture, the author, freelance writer and social observer of "The Great History of the Silk Road" Guo Jianlong , an expert in financial issues and a scholar of world cultural history, Chen Haowu, a doctor of history at Peking University, editor of the Academic Publishing Center of Commercial Press, and a researcher at the World Political Research Center of East China Normal University, and a researcher at the One-way Space Dongfeng Dian.
"The Great History of the Silk Road", written by Guo Jianlong, Tianxi Culture|Tiandi Publishing, September 2021 edition
Silk Road provides us with another perspective on history
Guo Jianlong: First of all, if you want to read this book, I still recommend looking at the map first. For example, this may be a map of the world from the perspective of Arab . We can see from the picture how they planned the road. I hope readers can have a broad perspective.
Silk Road from different perspectives
In the above picture, the road of Faxian is red, and the road of green is Xuanzang . Xuanzang went west from Chang'an , and went around to a very west place before traveling to India. These history are recorded in " Record of the Western Regions of the Tang Dynasty ", but we do not know many stories behind Xuanzang.
When Xuanzang arrived in India, India split into many small countries, the largest of which was called Jingji Empire . When King Jie Ri heard that Xuanzang was coming, his first reaction was to go to the Dongtu Datang. So, he sent an envoy to Datang . The era when Xuanzang went to India was exactly the era when Princess Wencheng entered Tibet. After the Indian envoy arrived in Lhasa, he was likely to see Princess Wencheng's team entering Tibet, and China and India were connected. Therefore, before Xuanzang returned to his motherland, he had already helped China and India communicate.
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When Xuanzang traveled to India, the Arab Empire did not exist. When Xuanzang returned to his country, the Arab Empire had already occupied a large area. When Xuanzang returned to Chang'an, the Arabs' expansion had reached Persia and soon destroyed Persia.
So, shortly after Xuanzang returned to Chang'an, the territory of the Arab Empire had expanded to northern Afghanistan, and the western road of the Silk Road was broken. At that time, people could only walk one path - this is the Tubo-Nepala Road - but this road lasted only for more than ten years. So, people had to change their course.
From then on, the center of gravity of the Silk Road shifted from land to sea. Through this map and the sorting of time, we can uniformly sort out the international relations, political and military issues of in the Tang Dynasty, which is also a way this book shows.
What role has China's exploration on the Silk Road played?
Why bother: Generally speaking, when looking back on the Silk Road, we will pay more attention to the communication role played by Sogdians, Arab merchants, Indian merchants, Malay merchants, etc. on the Silk Road. However, the opening part of your book emphasizes more the history of Chinese people actively exploring the external exploration in the early stages of the Silk Road. How do you understand the role played by the Chinese in foreign exploration in early history?
Guo Jianlong: China has natural geographical advantages - there is no such huge and abundant plain area in the world, but this will also cause laziness - if we guard our own land, we can live a very good life. Therefore, Chinese people have never paid much attention to the outside world.
Guo Jianlong
Although Central Asia is very close to Xinjiang, the one that really affects Central Asia at the beginning is Alexander the Great HTML .After his destruction of Persia, he went to Central Asia and established a Hellenized country in Aktlia in northern Afghanistan. Therefore, China is relatively behind the West in terms of expansion of influence. It was not until the Zhang Qian period that China had its first exploration. The Western Regions have become real land from the legendary land of Queen Mother of the West.
Even so, the Western trade system is relatively complete, and it is a very complicated process for China to establish a trade system. When Zhang Qian arrived in the Western Regions, Han Dynasty considered conquest. Once the two civilizations begin to contact, everyone will first release their goodwill, but not long after, the two sides will start to conflict, and the highest form of conflict is conquest. However, conquest was very difficult - the fiscal and taxation system of the Han Dynasty could not support large-scale wars, and conquest could easily take time out of the wealth of the entire society.
Therefore, the Han Dynasty was in the stage of conquering the Western Regions. Conquest does not have very obvious benefits, and even continues to lose the occupied land. After China fell apart again, the Silk Road established a kind of exchange through folk beliefs, trade and other cultural forms. During this period, the Silk Road reached its golden age.
Why bother: In this book, you roughly divide the history of the Silk Road into four stages: the era of conquest, the era of faith, the era of trade and the era of empire.
These four eras can be attributed to three endogenous driving forces of the Silk Road: the first driving force is the driving force of politics, such as conquest; the second driving force is the driving force of faith, which will drive people to actively explore outward; the third driving force is the driving force of commerce.
Among these three driving forces, politics is an external force, commerce is the attraction of interests, and the driving force for external exploration that really touches people is faith. Buddhism plays a very important role on the Silk Road.
Chen Haowu has a lot of research on religion and has visited many Buddhist sites in Central Asia, Xinjiang and Gansu. Can Teacher Chen share with you what importance does religion have in the formation of the Silk Road?
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Chen Haowu: I have talked about a concept called "cultural China". In the ancient Chinese worldview, "China" is not a geographical concept, but a cultural concept. The ancients believed that as long as the traditional Chinese culture is implemented and adhered to, it is China. Therefore, ancient China had a very strong ideology - "dividing between barbarians and summer". "Yi" refers to the four barbarians around China, and "Xia" refers to China. They believe that China's core is a value, not just a geographical concept.
This idea is very consistent with China's geography. The east of China is the sea, the south of the sea, the north of the desert, and the west of the Pamir Plateau . In this environment, Chinese people are not used to looking at things outside the world. They will think that Chinese civilization is the highest civilization in the world, and are called Yi, Man, and Di in other places. From the Han Dynasty to the Tang Dynasty, China's way of ruling the Four Barbarians was called "Region". The so-called restraint is - I am your sect leader, so you can just come and pay tribute. If you give me a rabbit or a sheep, I may give you 10 times the wealth I have to return to you. You just need to express your support to me. China is satisfied with this state.
Chen Haowu
So, from this perspective, the Silk Road has very important historical significance - let the Chinese open their eyes to see the world, and there are more advanced civilizations in the world than us. I talked to Guo Jianlong that Kushan Empire is very important. Kushan is actually Great Yuezhi . He was driven to the land of today's Uzbekistan by Huns - that is, Amu River and Sir River basins, forming the Kushan Empire.
Zhang Qian was sent to the Western Regions in 139 BC, and he returned to Chang'an in 129 BC. The Kushan Empire was formed around 100 AD. At that time, Zhang Qian met five tribes of the Great Yuezhi people. He hoped to unite these five tribes and attack the Huns together. However, the Great Yuezhi people at that time had already settled in the Hejian area. I have been to Uzbekistan many times, and their richest place is the Hejian area. Since the Hualazimo era, a very fine farming civilization has been developed in that place.Moreover, there is a business road that is important, so the Dayuezhi people live a very comfortable life. They changed from nomadic people to settled people and did not want to fight.
Zhang Qian lived there for almost a year, and the king of Dayuezhi has not given him the accurate letter of sending troops. Later, Zhang Qian realized that the people of the Great Yuezhi would not send troops. I told Guo Jianlong that the Chinese did not physically welcome the Great Yuezhi, but the Chinese spiritually welcomed the Kushan Empire. What does this mean?
Because around 30 AD, the five tribes of the Great Yuezhi were unified by one of the Kushan Marquis, forming Kushan Dynasty . The Kushan Dynasty later gradually developed into a great empire in Central Asia, which lasted for about 300 years, and Buddhism became the state religion of the Kushan Empire.
India has three major dynasties, Mauryan dynasty , Kushan dynasty, and Gupta dynasty , but Indians don’t like to talk about the Kushan dynasty because they think the Kushan dynasty is an alien dynasty. However, the Kushan Empire was very important. First, Mahayana Buddhism emerged from here. The Kushan Empire's Qiu Jue King began to practice Hinayana Buddhism and govern the country with Buddhism. His descendant, King Yan Gaozhen, overthrew Buddhism and returned to Hinduism. However, King Yan Gaozhen's descendant, King Jia Nisega, brought the Kushan Empire back to Buddhism, and also changed Hinayana Buddhism to Mahayana Buddhism. Therefore, Buddhism spread to China step by step along the oasis of the Silk Road. Buddhism has a close relationship with the Kushan Empire, which is why I said that we did not welcome the Dayuezhi people back physically, but spiritually we welcome the Buddhism of the Kushan Empire.
Confucianism is rejected by Confucianism from foreign cultures. After a long game, Buddhism first merged with Taoism to form the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties metaphysics. Metaphysics is actually a combination of Taoism and Buddhism. By the Song and Ming dynasties, Buddhism and Confucianism were combined to form Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism. Therefore, Chinese culture began with the axis era, and both of Confucianism, Han Confucianism, Wei and Jin Metaphysics, Tang and Song Buddhism, and Cheng and Zhu Neo-Confucianism were related to Buddhism, and Buddhism had a profound impact on the entire Chinese culture.
Guo Jianlong: Let me add it. If you open the book, you will find that there are several pictures that are very interesting. How did the Buddha statue change? Ancient Greek statues combined with Indian Buddha statues combine the very elegant Gandhara culture.
Gandhara Sculpture
The Kushans were still a nomadic people when they were in the Hexi Corridor in Gansu. When they just arrived today in northern Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, they were actually a very rough nation. Why do they no longer want to come back after they get there?
Kushan avatar
Because the Kushans occupy the place that is really important. Whether you go to Iran , Central Asia, China, or India, everyone must pass through that place. So, that place is very suitable for business tax . It is precisely because of this trade spirit that the barbarian nation suddenly became a very civilized trade nation, and developed very elegant statue art like Gandhara and the tradition of the Dharma King. Therefore, the trade documents on the Silk Road are clearly very developed.
Marine Silk Road, what is the significance of
for the Central Plains dynasty?
Why bother: Just now, Teacher Guo Jianlong pointed out another important force of the Silk Road, which is commerce. By the Yuan and Ming dynasties, the Maritime Silk Road became important, and the Arab Empire interrupted the land Silk Road, thus causing the Maritime Silk Road to prosper.
When you study the history of the Song Dynasty, everyone knows institutions such as Ningbo Maritime and Guangzhou Maritime and . They opened up the Central Plains dynasty's attempt to obtain national interests in trade. How do you understand the significance of the opening of the Maritime Silk Road to the Central Plains dynasty?
Guo Jianlong: In fact, the Arab Empire interrupted the Silk Road, which was wrong. We cannot say "interruption", because the Arabs just pulled the Silk Road towards them.There is a relatively obvious example: a businessman in Samarkand wanted to do business in China. If he had gone to China by land, it would be very close, but the merchants at that time no longer walked like this. They chose another very circling road - passing through the current Turkmenistan into Iran, after passing through the Iranian desert, they arrived at the Persian Gulf, then took a boat from the Persian Gulf, from India to Southeast Asia, and finally headed to Guangzhou, China. Why?
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They have a strong interest orientation when making such a choice. If they go directly to the Silk Road on the Land, they can only make one transaction. If they go on the Silk Road on the Maritime Road, they can have many trading opportunities and make profits multiple times. Therefore, after the Tang Dynasty, the trade ratio between the land Silk Road and the maritime Silk Road was no longer the same. The sea route is already very developed.
In fact, there was already a Maritime Warehouse in the Tang Dynasty. Moreover, there was no dominant force on the Silk Road during this period. India was in a state of division at that time, and the shipbuilding industry in the mid-Tang Dynasty was not yet developed enough. Since the Wei and Jin Dynasties, if Chinese pilgrims and merchants walked on the sea, they all took Persian and Indian ships. It was not until the land closure that China's shipbuilding industry rose and reached its peak in the Song and Yuan dynasties.
Another aspect, because there is no dominant force on the Silk Road, everyone must negotiate a result. Finally, the Tang and Song governments developed a very advanced tax system . China has always collected agricultural taxes, but there is no tradition of collecting commercial taxes. During the Tang and Song dynasties, China developed a commercial tax system for overseas trade.
Maritime Trading Department is a tax collection agency. After a ship came in, local officials asked the crew and the captain to have dinner. After dinner, everyone pointed out the goods on the ship clearly. These goods are 1/10—sometimes higher, and at the highest level, they can reach 30%—take them as taxes. The best quality of the goods was purchased by the royal family at a high price, and the rest were sold locally.
So, the royal family has obvious interest factors, the royal family can collect taxes and get good things. Moreover, through transactions, the material resources among the people have become richer, and businessmen also make money. The Maritime Silk Road has formed a win-win chain. Therefore, whether it is Persian, Arab, or Indian businessmen, they are well protected after they arrive in China. China even allows foreigners to be the leaders of these businessmen institutions, such as the Sogdians, and let them manage themselves. This position is called Sabao, and it is up to the second grade.
Of course, one disadvantage of this tradition is instability. As a centralized empire, whether it can withstand such instability for greater prosperity is a very test of the rulers.
The foreign trade in the Tang Dynasty allowed everyone to benefit through the tax system, while in the Ming Dynasty, all normal trade was completely banned, and overseas trade was also banned. However, this demand for overseas trade exists, and the Ming Dynasty had to open a note - this is a tribute. Therefore, overseas businessmen in the Ming Dynasty could not say that they were businessmen, they could only say that they were messengers. The Ming Dynasty would assign quotas to each country. For example, the quota for a country is 30, and only 2 of them are the chief envoys - they are the real envoys. The 28 places in the mission can be sold to merchants. Among these merchants, there were eight big merchants. They could follow the chief and deputy envoys to bring goods to Beijing with them, and these goods were directly presented to the emperor. They offered the emperor a commodity worth 10,000, and the emperor would return the commodity worth 30,000 through the reward, so that they could gain enough benefits. These 8 big businessmen can make money. The remaining 20 businessmen stayed locally, that is, Guangzhou to do business, and they could make money, but their profits were not that high.
We can see that such trade itself is no longer a win-win situation. Who is the biggest loser? If we only look at trade, the biggest loser is the emperor. The emperor was not profitable, so he had no motivation to expand trade, but instead had to restrict trade. Some countries are once every three years, some countries are once every two years, and Japan is once every ten years. Finally, because such a system design is unreasonable, commerce has basically been cut off.
Through this comparison, we can see how advantageous the trade system in the Tang and Song dynasties was.This was also the reason why the Silk Road was unprecedentedly prosperous at that time. Later, this prosperity disappeared.
Chen Haowu: We know that in 750 AD, a war broke out, and this war was called the Battle of Talas. After the Battle of Talas, 100,000 Tang troops were wiped out. Korean Gao Xianzhi led 100,000 Tang troops, Han has more than 30,000 Han , and nearly 70,000 people are Geluo and Turkic . At that time, China had an administrative division of in Central Asia, called Anxi Protectorate, and the supreme leader was Gao Xianzhi.
This war has promoted very important civilization exchanges. The Tang army had a team of 1,700 craftsmen at that time - these people were papermaking experts, construction experts, engineering experts, silk reeling experts, silk experts, engineering experts - and were captured to the Arab Empire, which made China's papermaking technology, silkworm breeding technology, silk reeling technology and silk technology spread to the West. Through this war, Arab world civilization has developed significantly.
Two years ago, I went to Uzbekistan to do archaeological research on Hualazimo . When I arrived in Samarkand, I found that there was an ancient paper mill there, which used papermaking technology from the Tang Dynasty. After papermaking technology was introduced to Samarkand, Samarkand became the papermaking center in the Arab world. To this day, this ancient paper mill has become a tourism project. The papermaking technology in the Tang Dynasty was very interesting. One piece of paper was sold very expensive because it was made by hand. The factory manager told me that the quality of paper is very good and can be made into clothes and bags for women.
If you travel to Central Asia, you will find that the most trees on the roadside are mulberry . I saw in Bukhara that there are more than 400 years of mulberry trees in the center of the city, and they are still lush and leaves today. There is another interesting topic. There is an idiom in Chinese that it is orange when it is born in , Huainan , and it is tangerine when it is born in Huainan. I went to touch their mulberry leaves and found that it was indeed different from our mulberry leaves. Their mulberry leaves are thick and thick. Later, the Persians had an idea and weaved them into a carpet. We know that Persian carpets are particularly precious because the carpets woven in thick silk are particularly beautiful.
Guo Jianlong: A few years before the Battle of Talas, there was actually another battle called the Battle of Xiaobolu. This battle was also led by Gao Xianzhi. Gao Xianzhi is no less famous in the world than in China. Although he died in the Anshi Rebellion, he is still a very powerful, very famous general who can even be compared with Hannibal. Hannibal is famous because he crossed the Alps from Spain into Italy and attacked Rome from behind. As we all know, it is very difficult to cross the Alps.
British Stein analysis, in fact, it is much more difficult for Gao Xianzhi to cross Xiaobolu than Hannibal. Because in the northern part of Pakistan today, there is a place called Yasin Valley - Xiaobolu. The mountain to the north of Yasin Valley is more than 5,000 meters high. It has snow mountains on both sides and snow in the middle. When climbing over the mountain pass, Gao Xianzhi still had to walk on the cracked ice surface, which was equivalent to climbing down from a steep cliff before attacking the city. Gao Xianzhi led his Tang army from now Kashgar to Tashkurgan, and then divided into three routes in Tashkurgan, from today's Tajikistan and Afghan and Pakistan to climb down the mountain pass and defeat the enemy. Until now, no battle has surpassed this difficulty.
After the Mongol Empire, why are the civilizations on both ends of the Eurasian continent so different?
Why bother: I think the comparison Guo Jianlong just now made is very interesting. It shows the change in Chinese civilization's own attitude towards commerce. The early stage of this transformation was the Tang and Song dynasties, and the later stage was the Ming and Qing dynasties. There was a period in the middle that was the most critical - the Yuan Dynasty.
Why
The meteorological phenomenon of the Mongolian Empire was very open. At that time, Quanzhou Port was the port with the largest throughput in the world. The entire city of Quanzhou Port and the governance rights of the port were in the hands of Muslim merchants. What we are more familiar with is Pu Shou Geng during the Song and Yuan changes, and helped the Yuan Dynasty destroy the Song Dynasty, causing the city to turn to the Yuan Dynasty.The Yuan Dynasty trusted such Muslim merchants very much and let them control the entire city, thus making Quanzhou a big port at the peak of the Maritime Silk Road.
After the Yuan Dynasty, we will find that the history of the East and West has gone in different directions. On the one hand, Chinese civilization began to become introverted, became more cautious about all external things, hoping that everything could be controlled in its own hands. On the contrary, Europe began to explore the development path of outward exploration.
After the great geographical discovery of in , when European businessmen and missionaries came to China again, this was incomparable to the collision of different civilizations on the Silk Road before. Teacher Chen Haowu, can you analyze with you from a civilization comparison perspective why after the Mongol Empire, the development of civilizations on both ends of the Eurasian continent would take such a different path?
Chen Haowu: Why is the Yuan Dynasty different in ? Kublai Khan had his very strong vision for the Yuan Dynasty - he wanted to use the business of the Muslim and Islamic world to accumulate his wealth and build the wealth of the empire. This is Kublai Khan's ambition.
There is a place called Jishuitan in Beijing today. Today's Jishuitan looks like a small pool. In the Kublai Khan era, Jishuitan was a huge wharf that connected to Tonghui River in Tongzhou and then to the Grand Canal of Beijing and Hangzhou. Kublai Khan had a very huge idea. Yuanshangdu is about 300 kilometers away from our Beijing city today. He once wanted to dig a canal to Yuanshangdu. Later, he asked Han experts to calculate for him that the height difference between Yuan Dadu and Yuan Shangdu was 56 meters, and 56 sluices were required to be built for each meter of each gate. This project was too huge, so Kublai gave it up. Therefore, there was a reason why Quanzhou became a world harbor during the Kublai Khan period. Because the Mongol Empire had an empire vision.
Why did it start to shrink by the Ming Dynasty? Because the Ming Dynasty also had to resist interference from the north. The Ming Dynasty did not have enough military strength. Dunhuang was filled with quicksand in the Ming Dynasty. During the Ming Empire, the territory retreated from Dunhuang - that is, Yumen Pass to Jiayu Pass, which was 400 kilometers away. It contracted in the Ming Dynasty, not only in the ocean, but also on land.
Guo Jianlong: In fact, there was a less lucky event in China - Mongolia's first Western Expedition. Because before Mongolia's first western expedition to , Mongolia's main attack direction was the Central Plains region - the Jin Kingdom. At the beginning, Genghis Khan unified the branch. Even after Genghis Khan unified the branch, they were likely to be like the Northern Wei people and the Khitans - the Khitans were also nations that grew up from the north - and were interested in the Central Plains. By occupying some parts of the Central Plains, the Mongols gradually became assimilated by Han culture. This is definitely unfortunate for the Mongols, because they cannot establish a great empire, but it is not necessarily a bad thing for East Asia. But when the Mongols attacked the Jin Kingdom, they suddenly attacked Hualazimo. This turn was related to trade. The Mongolians sent a trade team and envoys to the west, but were killed by Hualazimo's border generals.
This time, the turn opened up the world blueprint for the Mongolians. The Mongolians suddenly knew that the world was so big. They suddenly knew about Hualazimo and even confronted the Iranians and Russians. Another very important factor is that the Mongolians are exposed to the core content of Muslim culture - commerce. If the Mongols were limited to Han cultural territory, they would likely have established a land-based taxation system. But they first came into contact with Muslim culture, and what they were trying to establish was a business-based taxation system, lending system and financial system. In fact, the early Mongolian Yuan invited many such people to manage the Han area. This makes the Yuan Empire have completely different institutional thinking from other Central Plains dynasties.
Guests | Guo Jianlong, Chen Haowu, Why
Organized | Xu Yuedong
Edited | Zhang Ting
Proofreading | Wei Zhuo
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