COVER STORY

THE SILK ROAD ENDURES

Three stories from three eras on the Silk Road

唐代的漫漫征途，明代的发现之旅，当代的商贸道路……三个故事带你走过丝绸之路

It’s diffcult to say when the Silk Road began or what it constitutes. Indeed, it obviously isn’t a road at all—merely a series of outposts, oases, fortresses—and it’s not as if silk was the main commodity, carrying everything from armies and gold to priests and jade. But, surely, the Silk Road is a tale of the mysteries, wonders, and appetites of the East, of China. The road has changed hands from emperors and kings to local bandits and rebels. None of them owned it; they simply rode in its wake.

Perhaps what most defnes the Silk Road is that it endures. It was built in the fres of battle during the Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE), but the path to and the hope of the East existed long before. Long after the Tang Dynasty (618 – 907) put the Silk Road in its heyday in the second Pax Sinica, the Silk Road remained. Even when China itself was completely overrun by the Mongols of the North, the Silk Road thrived. And, today, even as shipping lanes and international logistics have made the path all but obsolete, the Silk Road endures.

So, where then can the Silk Road be found? Where else but in the enduring stories and people that made it happen—that bore its journeys, that protected it, learned from it, succeeded from it, and died by it. History often records the most famous: Marco Polo, Xuanzang, Genghis Khan; but the Silk Road has a million tales to tell and all of them came at a cost. With each step on the Silk Road, one steps over a story. Here are three of them: a general, a servant, and a long-haul trucker.