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Documentary, The Silk Road 2016 S01E01
The Silk Road
The Silk Road was a network of Asian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Spanning over 6,400 km (4,000 mi), it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and religious interactions between the Eastern and Western worlds.
The name "Silk Road" was coined in the late 19th century, but some 20th- and 21st-century historians instead prefer the term Silk Routes, on the grounds that it more accurately describes the intricate web of land and sea routes connecting Central, East, South, Southeast, and West Asia as well as East Africa and Southern Europe.
The Silk Road derives its name from the highly lucrative trade of silk textiles that were primarily produced in China.
The network began with the expansion of the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) into Central Asia around 114 BCE, through the missions and explorations of the.
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.
The Silk Road was an ancient trade route that linked 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.
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.
The Silk Road
The Silk Road was a network of Asian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Spanning over 6,400 km (4,000 mi), it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and religious interactions between the Eastern and Western worlds.
The name "Silk Road" was coined in the late 19th century, but some 20th- and 21st-century historians instead prefer the term Silk Routes, on the grounds that it more accurately describes the intricate web of land and sea routes connecting Central, East, South, Southeast, and West Asia as well as East Africa and Southern Europe.
The Silk Road derives its name from the highly lucrative trade of silk textiles that were primarily produced in China.
The network began with the expansion of the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) into Central Asia around 114 BCE, through the missions and explorations of the.
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.
The Silk Road was an ancient trade route that linked 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.
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.
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LearningTranscript
00:01This is the story of a trade route that changed the world.
00:08A route that was over 5,000 miles long.
00:15It began with a single commodity.
00:19A material spun from the cocoon of a moth that became the clothing of emperors.
00:25This was the Silk Road. It ran all the way from China's ancient capital through Central Asia, through mythical cities such as Samarkand or Persepolis, until it reached the bazaars of Istanbul.
00:43And that's it from us this evening. Coming up tomorrow here on BBC4, Lucy Worsley seizes the reins of power at 8.
00:50I'll get to see the Silk Road treasures of Iran now once more opening to travellers like me.
00:57I'm starting to think that I may have actually been an Iranian merchant in a former life.
01:02And it ran through valleys and over mountain passes.
01:07From Alexander the Great to Genghis Khan, emperors and princes fought to control the Silk Road.
01:14It was worth fighting for. Along its many miles there was money to be made.
01:18But the peoples on the Silk Road not only bought and bartered goods, they also exchanged ideas and techniques on which Western Europe would one day depend.
01:29Paper, gunpowder and musical instruments.
01:32The Silk Road cut across borders and brought cultures into contact and conflict.
01:44In this episode I'll travel 2,000 miles in the footsteps of the ancient Chinese envoy who first made the Silk Road possible.
01:51I'll meet the goddess who discovered Silk and I'll find out that on the Silk Road business didn't even stop for death.
02:01He was expecting to collect on those loans in the afterlife.
02:05I'm a historian and Venice has always had a special fascination for me.
02:25It has a central vital place in European history.
02:30But there's something strange about it. Something mysterious.
02:35Charles Dickens once described Venice as a hallucination.
02:40When he visited here in 1844 he was unable to rid himself of the feeling that somehow, strangely, weirdly, Venice wasn't a European city at all, but an oriental one.
02:51Which, in his own words, was troubled by the wild luxuriant fancies of the East.
02:57He wrote to a friend,
03:00The wildest visions of the Arabian Nights are nothing to the Piazza of St. Mark. Opium couldn't build such a place.
03:12Wherever he looked he saw the Orient. Windows everywhere that belonged to the Arab world.
03:19Venice is full of traces of the trade on which its wealth was based.
03:26Memories of a network of business connections known today as the Silk Road.
03:32That once stretched across the Mediterranean Sea into the very heart of Asia.
03:38Once you're aware that these traces are there to be seen, you find them everywhere.
03:43The Doge's Palace in St. Mark's Square.
03:48The ornaments to its roofline and the repeated pattern of squares on its facade.
03:52Well, these aren't European at all.
03:57They're modelled on Muslim styles of architecture.
04:00North of the Grand Canal, approaching the edge of Venice, we find this.
04:11Does he look Italian to you?
04:13I don't think so.
04:16Statues like these advertise the presence of people who traded in the exotic artefacts and produce not of Europe, but of another world entirely.
04:25And then, around the corner, a stern-looking fellow with a strange metal nose and a pack on his shoulders.
04:36The fading letters spell out the word rhubarbaro.
04:40It's the Italian word for rhubarb, a plant that first came here from China, along the Silk Road.
04:46No Silk Road, no rhubarb crumble.
04:49And here's my favourite. A house, so the story goes, built by three brothers, the Mori brothers, in the 1120s.
04:59The Palazzo Camello.
05:01The house of the camel.
05:04But it's not merely a matter of decorations and carvings.
05:08It goes deeper than the skin of this old city.
05:11Commerce is always about more than just the exchange of money.
05:14If I walk away from a trader with a set of Chinese bowls or a barrel of gunpowder, a ream of paper or a text explaining the principles of algebra, I'm obviously carrying more than the objects themselves.
05:27I'm carrying ideas. Ideas that can change my life, that of my country, sometimes completely, whether I want to admit it or not.
05:34So here's my question. Exactly how much does Venice and all of Europe really owe to the Silk Road?
05:43So, I'm going on a journey from China through Central Asia, through Iran, to Turkey and back here to Venice.
05:52A very similar journey was made by Marco Polo, the Venetian travel writer, trader and explorer extraordinaire, more than 700 years ago.
06:02When Marco Polo returned to this great city, he wrote a book.
06:07Now, I'm going to take one with me instead to write in a journal, but also a scrapbook, somewhere to put photographs of the places and the people that I will meet.
06:17I'm also going to have a few sketches to put in here as well of the people, of the creatures I might hope to meet, sketches of princesses, of conquerors.
06:25Now, today, these pages are blank, but come with me. Watch me fill them.
06:30And the first thing I'm going to put in here is a map.
06:36This is China, and this is where my journey begins, in a 3,000-year-old city that, once upon a time, was China's capital.
06:46Xi'an.
07:05Every evening in Xi'an's old city, the market comes to life.
07:09Xi'an has always been seen as the beginning of the Silk Road.
07:16The streets are bustling and narrow, but I feel a little like Charles Dickens did in Venice.
07:23I'm not entirely sure where I am.
07:26Chinese writing is everywhere, but China, and Chinese food, is rather harder to find.
07:35Hmm.
07:37Lamb kebabs, which I'm pretty sure is a Turkish dish.
07:41Everywhere I look, there are people wearing Islamic prayer hats.
07:45And this is nothing new. It's not some recent wave of immigration.
07:49I think you'll agree, I could be forgiven if I became confused.
07:57And the fact that there's been a Muslim community here since the 8th century
08:02is entirely due to the Silk Road, to the lines of trade and communication it established.
08:08The Muslims who came here weren't tourists or captives.
08:12They were traders.
08:13And all around me in Xi'an's ancient city is the world the Silk Road delivers.
08:27The market. Trade.
08:31And it reminds me that consumer society is nothing new.
08:35Even something as simple as this.
08:41White china, blue decoration.
08:45Now, China's porcelain was incredibly fine.
08:48But further down the Silk Road, I'll find local versions in inferior, thicker clay.
08:53With the same basic shapes, the same basic colour scheme.
08:57In this single object, you can begin to see the power of the Silk Road.
09:01Everything sells on the Silk Road, and where trade leads, cultures follow.
09:13The next morning, the market's closed for business.
09:19In the gardens just beside it, the world seems Chinese again.
09:26What could be more Chinese than this collection of buildings?
09:29These eaves.
09:33These roofs.
09:35This dragon.
09:37But once I've reached the largest building which stands in these gardens,
09:41plainer than the others, but still apparently very Chinese,
09:45I find this.
09:53It's a mosque.
09:54The Great Mosque of Xi'an.
09:55There's been one here since the 8th century.
09:59As mixed messages go, this has to be one of the biggest I have ever seen.
10:05Tardis levels of strangeness.
10:08Outside, one place.
10:11But inside, another.
10:13Another.
10:14Trade brought these people here, and religion came with them as inevitably, as naturally, as their luggage.
10:26China was a magnet to traders.
10:28For more than a thousand years, it was a place of innovations and inventions.
10:32And with a regularity that I, as a Westerner, feel I have to take personally, they came up with these things time and time again hundreds of years before we did.
10:44I'm still in Xi'an, visiting a museum dedicated to just one of those vitally important inventions.
10:57But which one?
10:58It's not immediately obvious what's going on here.
11:02This man appears to have it in for a pile of moistened vegetable matter.
11:09He passes his work on to these ladies, who remove the last traces of bark.
11:13And then a man thrashes at it in a bath until it's broken down entirely.
11:26What are they up to?
11:33Ah, it's paper.
11:35One of those ideas that seems so obvious once you've had it.
11:38China may have developed paper before the time of Christ for wrapping medicines.
11:47Writing came later.
11:49But China's official histories have always dated it to 105 AD and named the inventor.
11:56It was a court eunuch, a civil servant named Tsai Lun, who invented paper.
12:01The absence of testicles in the Chinese civil service was seen as a positive advantage.
12:05There were fewer distractions.
12:08Tsai Lun was completely focused on his career.
12:11Now, it has been claimed that he took credit for an invention that wasn't really his.
12:16But he was immediately promoted and has been remembered ever since.
12:23And here's a new statue of him.
12:27As well as paper, many other things were invented in China,
12:31travelled along the Silk Roads and transformed European life.
12:33From the relatively trivial, the umbrella, to the absolutely vital.
12:38Such as printing.
12:42Then there's gunpowder and the magnetic compass and certain kinds of suspension bridge,
12:48certain kinds of pump, techniques for deep drilling, rotary fans, wheelbarrows,
12:52crossbows, kites, the casting of iron, canal locks.
12:54Once the Silk Road was established, there were moments when ideas and commodities were traded along it.
13:02Now, paper is a good example.
13:04Until 751, it was an exclusively Chinese technique.
13:08But then Muslim and Chinese forces met in battle way out beyond China's western borders,
13:15in a place called Talas.
13:17The Chinese were defeated and amongst those captured were a band of hapless papermakers.
13:23Within 50 years, paper was being made in Baghdad.
13:25But it wasn't until the 12th century that it reached Europe.
13:34But none of this could happen until there was a Silk Road.
13:37And that didn't happen until after China became a single kingdom.
13:40Xi'an is home to the Terracotta Army, the construction of which was ordered by the man responsible,
13:48in the 3rd century BC, for creating China.
13:52China is named after him.
13:54He was the Qin Emperor.
13:57When he died in 210 BC, his clay guard was ready for installation in an elaborate tomb.
14:038,000 life-sized figures, 130 chariots and 600 horses.
14:09A marriage of art and power.
14:15The dust from the army's construction has long since settled.
14:19But this business in Xi'an is dedicated to producing exact replicas,
14:24using red clay from the same pits.
14:27We could easily be in the 3rd century BC.
14:30The Qin Emperor has just died.
14:33Work on the last few ranks of his funeral guard is underway.
14:39There were deliberate attempts to convey a variety of faces.
14:44Look into their eyes.
14:49Here is a ruthless veteran of the wars of conquest.
14:54And here's a young man who's only just signed up.
15:00And here are some soldiers who disappointed the Emperor.
15:09And here is the figure of the Emperor himself.
15:14There's more than a hint of self-satisfaction about his bearing, don't you think?
15:18And if there's a sense that the faces of all of the soldiers are portraits, then perhaps this is too.
15:25Perhaps some memory is preserved here of the face of the man who first forced China, despite itself, to become one realm.
15:33And of course, in real life, these glorious robes were all made of silk.
15:39The company's founder, Mr Han, has been working on these figures for more than 20 years.
15:45Why do you think the Emperor chose to be buried with his soldiers?
15:48So, planning to fight in the afterlife.
15:50What do you think he would have been like if you'd met him?
15:51So, planning to fight in the afterlife.
15:52What do you think he would have been like if you'd met him?
15:53So, planning to fight in the afterlife.
15:54What do you think he would have been like if you'd met him?
15:56So, planning to fight in the afterlife.
16:01So, planning to fight in the afterlife.
16:03What do you think he would have been like if you'd met him?
16:06I think he would have been like a young man.
16:07I would rather like him to meet him.
16:09But if he could meet him, I would like to thank him.
16:13Because he was a young man.
16:16He was my father.
16:18He was a young man.
16:19He was my son of a happy life.
16:25He was a young man.
16:28He would have seen him.
16:31Because he used to be like a young man.
16:32He was a young man.
16:33He should be the same person with Mao Zedong.
16:36Do you think his soldiers would have been frightened of him?
16:39That would have been afraid of him.
16:46From the Terracotta Army, we learn that the unification of China was no accident.
16:51It was achieved by force of arms.
16:54Even in death, the Qin Emperor wanted to leave a reminder that China was armed to the teeth
16:59and that he and his successors wanted more.
17:03Enough is never enough.
17:10The court of the Qin Emperor was dangerous.
17:13One sacked advisor fled the court and left this opinion behind.
17:18The king of Qin is like a bird of prey. There is no beneficence in him.
17:23He has the heart of a tiger or a wolf.
17:26If his ambitions for the empire are fulfilled, all men will be his slaves.
17:38This army shows that in the century before the Silk Roads opened up,
17:43China was ready for conquest and expansion.
17:46But it can show us something else as well.
17:49Humans are all life-size and the horses must be too, but they're all tiny.
17:56In the Qin Emperor's day, all China had was little ponies, almost too cute for combat.
18:04And that remained true for decades after the Emperor's death.
18:13Until a world-changing journey took place.
18:16It's a journey that China has recently decided to celebrate outside Xi'an's ancient city in a carefully antique style.
18:25On a roundabout in the middle of a business district.
18:28I'm not sure what I'm seeing here, I haven't been in China long enough, but I strongly suspect that art and power are still in bed together.
18:42Fifty years after the death of the Qin Emperor, there was a new dynasty in charge, the Han Dynasty.
18:47And there was an emperor, Wu Di, who wanted to deal with the barbarians who plagued the edges of his territory.
18:56The Chinese called these people the Xiongnu.
19:00Now, the Xiongnu, quite possibly the people that we call the Huns, were experts at mobile warfare.
19:06And they were more than an irritant.
19:09They were a threat.
19:12There were rumours of other people far to the west, potential allies in the war against the Xiongnu.
19:18And so the emperor sent an envoy, Zhang Chen, on a mission of discovery.
19:25And here he is.
19:26It was a long and difficult journey, and what this sculpture commemorates is what he brought back, more than ten years later.
19:37China's horses were tiny, but the nomads had fabulous steeds.
19:42So much more impressive than anything in China, that Zhang Chen declared them heavenly.
19:50After Zhang Chen returned with tales of these heavenly horses,
19:53magnificent animals of great stamina which you could ride if you were brave enough,
19:58which were descended from dragons which sweated blood, it was all too much for his emperor to resist.
20:04Here was the perfect war horse, which is exactly what China needed to defend and extend its borders.
20:11So almost immediately, Zhang Chen was sent back to do the first ever iconic Silk Road deal.
20:18He would exchange silk for these heavenly horses.
20:23Zhang Chen's journey would lay the very foundations of the Silk Road.
20:28But before I retrace his steps, I'm travelling 700 miles from Xi'an to the green hills near the city of Chengdu.
20:37I want to learn more about the miraculous commodity on which all this was based, silk.
20:42And there's someone I want to pay my respects to.
20:47The person who discovered that fibres from the cocoon of the silk moth could be unwound and woven.
20:55Archaeologists have found and carbon dated traces of silk manufacture from about 5,000 years ago.
21:01But, pardon me, that's mere science.
21:04The Chinese prefer to believe that the discovery was made by a goddess in about 2000 BC.
21:12Good afternoon, Silk Mother.
21:16The Silk Mother dominates this lush green landscape two hours drive from Chengdu.
21:21The worship of the Silk Mother is about 4,000 years old and still continues.
21:29This statue is recently built.
21:32Mrs Wu and Mrs Leung are its caretakers.
21:36Very kindly, they've agreed to talk to me at the same time.
21:40Why do people still revere the Silk Mother?
21:59Do you teach your children to revere the Silk Mother as well?
22:10Yeah, yourself.
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22:32The Silk Mother wasn't always a goddess.
22:45Over 4,000 years ago, she was merely human, an emperor's wife.
22:50Her name was Leitsu.
22:52Married to an emperor who was himself more a myth than a reality,
22:56he reigned from 2697 to 2597 BC, a whole century.
23:04In myths, emperors lived that long.
23:07One day she was drinking tea in her garden underneath a mulberry tree
23:12when the cocoon of a silk moth fell out of a branch into her teacup.
23:19She tried to pick it out but ended up pulling on a thread
23:22because in its scalding heat, the cocoon had begun to unravel
23:27and she pulled and she pulled
23:29and soon, every branch of every tree in the garden was covered in silk.
23:36So grateful were the Chinese people for her discovery
23:39that they promoted Leitsu.
23:41They made her into a goddess.
23:52Every year, at the same time,
24:01the silk manufacturers of China harvest their cocoons
24:04and I'm lucky enough to be here when it happens.
24:07It's late October.
24:11It's almost as if they re-enact the Silk Mother's discovery every year.
24:17Local farmers arrive with their cocoons,
24:19the unique source of silk.
24:224,000 years ago, before the Silk Roads were established,
24:27it would have been impossible to see this anywhere else in the world.
24:32Silk moths could be found only in China.
24:36Inside each of these cocoons, there's a living caterpillar
24:40in the process of transforming into a moth.
24:43I'm really not sure what to make of this place.
24:45The first thing that hits you is the smell.
24:48It smells a bit like a farm
24:49and there's this weird noise of sort of clicking and clacking
24:53as they sort through the tables.
24:56It really is very odd.
24:59The cocoons are sorted for colour and quality.
25:03And then this.
25:09Each cocoon is a tiny tragedy.
25:15They're plunged into boiling water
25:17to loosen the threads of which they're made.
25:19So the making of silk has two outcomes.
25:23A pile of tiny, sodden caterpillar corpses.
25:30And this extraordinarily beautiful, glossy thread.
25:34It looks like human hair,
25:47as though a million Rapunzels have just donated.
25:57Silk was and is magical.
25:59The strength of its threads rivals anything we can synthesise.
26:03When woven into fabric, it has a natural sheen.
26:08It can be made into luxuriant materials
26:10with soft, buttery folds
26:12or into almost transparent wisps,
26:15an invitation to extremely bad behaviour.
26:19Silk itself has been used as money
26:21and it has become the very stuff of history too.
26:24Traded for jewels and jade.
26:30Traded for weapons and cosmetics.
26:32Traded for slaves.
26:33Traded from east to west.
26:36The Romans would desire its secrets
26:38and eventually, after centuries of envy
26:41and by espionage, secure them.
26:44It would become the ultimate commodity.
26:46This extraordinary thread was the engine of the Silk Road trade.
26:52And between about 200 BC and 1400 AD,
26:57it was of absolutely vital importance,
27:00not just to the history of China
27:01or to the history of Central Asia,
27:04but to the history of the world.
27:06And without the cultural contact it inspired,
27:09the changes it generated,
27:11the ideas and inventions that arose along the Silk Road,
27:15well, we Westerners would still be counting on our fingers,
27:19writing on leather and thinking that the earth is flat.
27:24When Zhang Qian set out on his journey to the west,
27:28China had had silk for at least 2,000 years.
27:32His journey would end that monopoly.
27:36Silk would go west, just like Zhang Qian.
27:39His journey was arduous, risky, slow.
27:44Mine will be more comfortable.
27:46I want to get to one of the places he'll have passed through or near to,
27:50a city which, in his day, sat at China's western edge.
27:55It's a place called Dunhuang.
27:57Over 1,000 miles, 24 hours, two trains.
28:02It's not exactly a bullet train, it's more of a turtle train.
28:06I meant tortoise.
28:11After Zhang Qian, this journey to the west became commonplace,
28:15not just because of horses,
28:17but because one of the first things that arose from his journey
28:20was a trading partnership with another race
28:23who would become of central importance to Silk Road history.
28:26Zhang Qian made contact with a group of people
28:30whose stock in trade was trade itself,
28:33the Sogdians, who lived in the heart of Central Asia.
28:36They could sell anything.
28:39If only they were alive today,
28:40Alan Sugar would be spoiled for choice.
28:43He'd probably hire a lot.
28:44The Sogdians were of Persian descent.
28:50Here we see them bearing tribute to the Persian emperor,
28:53accompanied by a camel, their pack animal of choice.
28:57The Chinese sent more envoys to these Sogdian traders.
29:01China reached out to the west.
29:04Trade began to flow,
29:05and with it ideas, religions,
29:08commodities of every sort,
29:11cosmetics, rare oils, works of art,
29:13weapons of war and slaves.
29:17On the Silk Road, everything and any body was for sale.
29:21There would be deals, there would be battles
29:23and Europe's future,
29:25when it would discover the new and startling things
29:28the Silk Road had to offer, grew closer.
29:31Imagine that this train contains not people,
29:35but ideas and inventions that will arrive in Europe
29:38and change everything.
29:40Imagine that it contains paper, stirrups, gunpowder, compasses.
29:46That's the power of the Silk Road.
29:48It brings change.
29:50Unstoppable, inevitable change.
29:55Change on the Silk Road could be fundamental.
29:59It could travel in almost any direction.
30:00In the second century after Christ,
30:13that process of constant change brought Buddhism to China.
30:29By Zhang Chan's day,
30:32Danquan, was a vibrant focus for Buddhist culture,
30:35with a complex of almost 500 caves,
30:38full of Buddhist imagery, statuary and art,
30:42the Mogao Caves.
30:44They've been included in UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites
30:48since 1987.
30:51Inside, they are monumental, massively varied.
30:54There are Buddhas who could step on you and never notice.
31:02Amidst it all, there was room for images
31:05that evoked the sometimes unpleasant realities of life
31:08along the Silk Road.
31:12Well, here's proof that this trading business
31:14wasn't all fun and games.
31:16Here we've got some bandits with their swords lying in ambush
31:19for some Silk Road trailers.
31:24But the biggest moral we can draw from these caves
31:27has more to do with relations between East and West,
31:30our failure to grasp how much Europe owes to the Silk Road.
31:36As the 19th century drew to a close,
31:39a huge cache of documents was discovered here,
31:42documents dating from between the 3rd and 10th centuries AD.
31:46Archaeologists from Europe, Russia, even Japan,
31:51descended on Dunhuang.
31:53Imagine for the next few minutes that you're one of them.
31:57You are an explorer and archaeologist,
32:00Hungarian-born, British by choice.
32:03The year is 1907,
32:05and your name is Aurelstein.
32:08Here you are, neat, freshly washed and combed,
32:11the embodiment of Western civilisation and all its values.
32:16You discover that the Mogao Caves are in the charge of the abbot
32:25of the nearby Taoist monastery.
32:29You meet the abbot, and you take a picture of him.
32:33He looks a bit simple and shabby,
32:35and that's how you treat him.
32:38Shabbily.
32:39You expend a certain amount of energy on charming the abbot,
32:44and you gain access to the cell where the documents were found.
32:48You discover a solid mass of manuscript bundles rising to nearly 10 feet.
32:57You later calculate that that's almost 500 cubic feet of documents.
33:02You also note that in other caves there are paintings dating from the Tang dynasty.
33:08That's from the 7th to the 9th centuries.
33:10And you take your pick, having to rip them off the walls.
33:14You also take your pick of the documents, including the Diamond Sutra,
33:20the earliest printed book ever discovered, dating from the 9th century.
33:25And then you convince Abbott Wang that £130 is more than enough for all of these treasures.
33:32And then you leave.
33:35You load 29 cases of your plunder onto the backs of camels,
33:39and take everything back to Britain.
33:42That, as they say, is how we rolled in 1907.
33:46Ahrlstein was no worse, and certainly no better,
33:49than the other archaeologists from Germany, France, Russia,
33:52who saw China's weakness in those years as an opportunity to plunder her past.
33:57For Mr Wang Zhudong, the director of the Mogao Caves,
34:03the wounds are still fresh.
34:05How do you feel about the fact that so many wonderful treasures were taken away from you?
34:10Could you talk a little about the extraordinary
34:40variety of material that was in the cave,
34:44and particularly all the languages that the documents were written in?
34:48Just because in this mission LORD mindset,
34:52why don't you get your wish?
34:54Why don't you think so many stories?
34:58What if you work with it,
34:59how different lessons will come from you?
35:09But from the 40th century to the 11th century,
35:16the entire journey of the四處,
35:21is very complicated.
35:24How would you like to move forward
35:28considering that all of these treasures
35:30are now spread around the world?
35:32Do you think that they should be brought back?
35:35For me, for me, for me, for my country,
35:39we hope that these treasures
35:42will return to their own land.
35:46Because these treasures
35:48are a whole of the entire land.
35:53This truth would have been lost on Erlstein.
35:57He returned many times to Dunhuang
36:00to strip it of antiquities.
36:05On his second visit, in the desert,
36:08he discovered a postbag lost in the 4th century,
36:11containing undelivered letters,
36:14several written by the Silk Road's legendary traders,
36:17the Sogdians.
36:22Translated, they reveal the stock phrases
36:24of Sogdian courtesy and goodwill.
36:26It would be a good day for him who might see you happy.
36:35It would be a good day for him who might see you healthy
36:38and at ease.
36:39And my favourite one of all,
36:41when I hear news of your good health,
36:44I consider myself immortal.
36:46Written as they are by Sogdians,
36:51most of the letters are about business.
36:53Reports to employers of what they have to sell,
36:56what's selling well, what's selling badly,
36:58silver, linen, unfinished cloth,
37:01pepper and powdered white lead, a cosmetic,
37:04are referred to.
37:05All the letters dated from early in the 4th century.
37:08They speak to us across a gulf of 1,700 years.
37:15One of them was written by a Sogdian woman named Munay
37:18to her errant husband, called Nanai Dat,
37:21who had abandoned her.
37:23Now, after the standard Sogdian messages of goodwill,
37:26her real feelings become apparent.
37:30Behold, she writes,
37:32I am living badly, not well, wretchedly,
37:35and I consider myself dead.
37:37Again and again I send you a letter,
37:40but I do not receive a single letter from you,
37:43and I have become without hope towards you.
37:47My misfortune is this.
37:49I have been in Dunhuang for three years, thanks to you.
37:53Surely the gods were angry with me
37:55on the day I did your bidding.
37:57I would rather be a dog's or a pig's wife than yours.
38:02It's a tantalising glimpse into her life.
38:09We know no more, and we want to.
38:13Was she okay?
38:15Did she get home?
38:16Did she remarry?
38:18Or did she die here?
38:20Have I walked over her grave?
38:23Hey, there's another salvation ainsi a year for days.
38:27Lives we can understand,
38:29real lives were lived here,
38:31began and ended here.
38:32Donhwang is full of such memories.
38:35such memories. Memories, too, of real choices. The fact that at every oasis, at every city
38:43along the Silk Road, the trader faced moments of decision. In this case, it was, how shall
38:49I cross this desert? And then other little worries came hurrying along. Where can I sell
38:56what I'm carrying? Will what I'm carrying survive? Will I?
39:05Today, tourists can hire camels for a ride across the dunes. They're the right kind of
39:11camels, Bactrian, too humped. The Chinese had known the breed for centuries by the time
39:17Zhang Chen set off on his journey, and for centuries more, they would remain the most important
39:22pack animal along the Silk Road. So yes, right camels, but this is where the authenticity
39:29begins to stutter slightly. Come in, number 591. Your time is up.
39:35The camel trek brings the tourists to Crescent Lake. A real enough oasis, certainly once
39:43a real stop on the Silk Road. But by the 1990s, the oasis had largely run dry. Apparently, ever
39:51since, it's been regularly topped up. The desert is entirely real, but today, it's
39:57tame enough to walk in. Tame enough to write on. It's no longer what it was. Which was terrifying.
40:10The desert that stretched to the west of Dunhuang was the stuff of fables. 130,000 square miles
40:17of extreme aridity. A graveyard for the unwise Silk Roader, the Takla Makan.
40:28People are unsure of where the name derives from or its exact meaning, but none of the possible
40:33translations. Very appealing. The place of ruins. The abandoned place. The place to leave behind.
40:45You couldn't go through it. There was no water. West of Dunhuang, you made your choice.
40:51You could go to the desert's north or its south.
41:05Eventually, you came to a gate. There was once one here, and the Great Wall of China stretched
41:11out on either side. This is the Yang Guan, the Yang Pass. You paid your toll and passed through.
41:19If you were a trader, you thought about your return. What you might exchange your silk,
41:26your cosmetic, your paper for. You thought about profit. But exiles came this way too. This
41:34was China's western edge. It became a place that inspired poetry. About loss. The painful
41:41separation of friends. On the long road from the Yang Pass, not one person returns. Only
41:48the geese on the river fly south for the winter. Or the morning rain of Wai Cheng dampens the dust.
41:58The guest house is green like fresh willows. Let's finish one more cup of wine, dear sir.
42:05West of Yang Guan. You'll meet no more old friends.
42:12Here at the edge of the Taklamakan, the Chinese authorities have done their best to supply what time
42:18has destroyed or history never provided. This shaded viewpoint. Waggons abandoned by the Silk Road
42:26traders. And the Yang Fortress, ruined by centuries of desert weather and recently rebuilt, cast in concrete.
42:35Inside, pillars carved with camels and caravans supply the necessary Silk Road branding. And of course, there's another essential ingredient. Our old friend.
42:52Here is Zhang Tian, astride another one of those heavenly horses.
43:02The more I follow in Zhang Tian's footsteps, the further along the Silk Road I go, the more I find that China has put a great deal of effort into bringing it all back to life.
43:13The obvious reason is that the Silk Road is becoming a tourist route, which requires tourist destinations. Less obviously, China is reopening doors into its past, many of which have been shut since the days of Mao Zedong. History is once again permitted.
43:32I've made my choice. I'll take the northern passage along the edge of the Taklamakan. I want to get to an oasis city called Topan. And I'm beginning to wonder if somewhere I might see a heavenly horse for myself.
43:47I've travelled 500 miles. I'm still well within China's current borders, but it really doesn't feel like it. It feels as though I've gone much further. The writing on the wall looks like Arabic. I'm surprised, just as I was by the great mosque in Xi'an.
44:08Here in Turpan is a world of Islam. Mosques and minarets and faces that are not Chinese. These people are Uyghur. And the Uyghur are a vexed question. Their history is far from simple.
44:26The Uyghur have been here since the 9th century. The Chinese authorities treat them as a single minority, but even the briefest look at their faces reveals a mixed heritage. Some look Caucasian, some look Turkish, some more Mongol. A few might even be Chinese.
44:46And that is their story. They arrived here from lands that had been conquered by the Mongols, settling around the edges of the Taklamakan Desert. The language that they spoke was related to Turkish.
44:58But once here, they interbred, converted to Buddhism, and were eventually conquered and converted by Islamic forces. On the Silk Road, tribes, even entire races, get knocked from place to place like billiard balls.
45:16The Uyghur are living history, and Turpan itself is a cupboard containing several sorts of yesterday. One of them is an ancient tradition, that of Chinese wine.
45:29I'm here at entirely the wrong time of year to see grapes on the vines. If I were here in summer, I'd be sweltering in 40-degree heat at the very least. 50 degrees is more common.
45:41But now, people are getting ready for a winter that will be well below freezing, pulling the vines off their frames, so that they'll be less exposed to the cold.
45:50It's going to be quite a long day.
45:52Grapes have been grown here for about 2,000 years. Some people say they were brought here by Zhang Chen.
46:04But to me, it seems a bit neat, as if everything momentous that happens on the Silk Road has to be attributed to that miraculous Chinese envoy.
46:15The truth appears to be that when Zhang Chen passed this way, the grapes were already here, brought perhaps by the short-lived Empire of Alexander the Great.
46:25When he finally returned to his emperor in China's ancient capital, Zhang Chen took some of those grape vines with him.
46:32It's a tradition that China has only recently learnt to treasure. The Lulang Company in Turpan is a little more than 20 years old, but it draws on a much deeper history.
46:44It's named after a lost kingdom once centred on Turpan. I'm meeting the managing director, Mr Huang, in a boardroom lavishly decorated with reproductions of that kingdom's ancient glories.
46:56Good wine, nice chairs, odd conversation.
47:01So what have we got here?
47:03This wine is a very normal wine, but it can represent the Lulang Company.
47:09The local people are very welcome to this wine. The taste is very good.
47:13This wine is not a special treatment.
47:18It's nice to think of some Silk Road traders having a rest and sipping some wine in Turpan all of those years ago.
47:31And you can imagine much the experience.
47:35If this is true, you wouldn't only be able to do this wine for the presence, but you can only see from the outside world.
47:41You can also look at the outside of the city, you can imagine the outside world.
47:46You can also think of the outside world.
47:48And with this wine for teams that you like.
47:51And the reason for this wine for people, this wine for the whole scene.
47:54With every answer, Mr Huang adds another thousand years to the history of winemaking in Japan.
48:16It reminds me of the Silk Mother.
48:18China's history is so long that all its tales grow in the telling.
48:32But some of Tapan's ghosts have much more substance.
48:37The Astana Cemetery lies 25 miles from Tapan itself.
48:42Its tombs contain bodies over a thousand years old, mummified by the desert climate.
48:48And buried with many of them were contracts, records of deals done.
48:53One of the archaeologists who dug here was Aral Stein.
48:57So we already know the fate of many of these fascinating documents.
49:00They're in Britain.
49:04These bodies are a husband and wife from the 7th century.
49:08I feel a little uncomfortable.
49:11After all, they hardly invited me in.
49:14In another tomb, the body of a moneylender called Zhuo Chongzi was discovered.
49:22The contracts found with him were particularly revealing about business on the Silk Road.
49:27We learn that he took payment in silver coins and bolts of silk.
49:31And that when he died, he was ensnaring a local farmer in a stifling debt.
49:39He was grasping.
49:40He was flinty.
49:42Think Ebenezer Scrooge.
49:44He was 57 when he died in the year 673.
49:49And the contracts reveal a small number of loans which were outstanding at the time of his death.
49:56The implication being that he was expecting to collect on those loans in the afterlife.
50:01Zuo's standard rate of interest was a blood-sucking 10 to 15% a month.
50:12It reminds us that along the Silk Road, business was done scruple-free.
50:17And that payday loans are nothing new.
50:19If wine was indeed already being made here in Zuo's lifetime, it's easy to imagine his customers and clients making good use of it.
50:40People drank it to forget their debts.
50:43Zuo's ghost is one I'm happy to leave behind.
50:53It's time to leave Te Pan and drive for a couple of hours to the west towards the Tian Shan Mountains.
51:04We're at least 100 miles northwest of Te Pan.
51:06We've come out here to the mountains.
51:08It's staggeringly, breathtakingly cold.
51:10But we've come here because we've had a tip-off that there's a nomad out here with about 100 horses.
51:17So I've come out to see if any of them are those wonderful, heavenly horses, but I'm not sure what I'm going to find.
51:25Before we start filming, I glimpse a couple of large horses, but they disappear.
51:30The ones left behind look like something from the Shetland end of the scale, even smaller than the Terracotta Army horses.
51:36There's certainly loads of them. I wonder why. So I ask why. Stupid of me, really.
51:43Mr Yeh, why do you have so many horses?
51:45Why do you have so many horses?
51:47Why do you have so many horses?
51:48Why do you see them?
51:49Why do you have so many horses?
51:50Why do you have so many horses?
51:51We raise these horses in winter.
51:55We will sell the horse meat, the smoked horse meat.
52:04So in the past 30 years, I have got more than 100 horses.
52:10Despite appearances, I'm in an abattoir.
52:14After a moment's respectful silence, I ask about the larger horses.
52:18And Mr Yeh assures me that they are indeed heavenly.
52:25Somewhere in this fairytale forest is a heavenly horse.
52:29And Mr Yeh has sent his lads off to try and herd it up, so I'm expecting it to magically appear.
52:37But it wouldn't surprise me if Little Red Riding Hood came along as well.
52:40There he is. Not very big.
52:50Perhaps the heavenly horse was only something Zhang Chen had never seen before.
52:55A horse of normal size. Even so.
53:01I can only wonder what he thought when he first saw a horse of that size,
53:04when he was used to such small ponies.
53:07He would have known that it was going to change his world.
53:13But when you look closely, you can see that this horse is not in the best of condition.
53:19I wish I'd met a heavenly horse that was prouder, freer, healthier.
53:24And not for dinner.
53:30Zhang Chen wouldn't meet his heavenly horses until he was well beyond China's western border.
53:37So westward I go, another 300 miles, to the city of Khotan.
53:48Close to the border, no more than 100 miles from Pakistan to the southwest,
53:53the Himalayas and India due south.
53:56Here, the population is about 90% Uyghur,
53:59and their historical connections with the Silk Road are strong.
54:07Khotan was one of the first places outside of central China that began to cultivate silk.
54:12And legend has it that it came not as an official export, but by an act of subterfuge.
54:18In 1900, our old friend from Dunhuang, Oral Stein, found some evidence to support that legend
54:25in some desert ruins 80 miles from here.
54:28And he did what he always did.
54:29He removed it, labelled it, and took it to the British Museum.
54:32I've brought along a sketch.
54:33So the story goes, a Chinese princess was offered in marriage to the King of Khotan.
54:50But being unhappy about being reduced to a term in a diplomatic deal,
54:55and fearing a life without any sort of luxury here in this distant province,
54:59she decided to take matters into her own hands.
55:03Before she left on her journey, she hid silkworms and mulberry seeds in her headdress.
55:09And thus the secret of silk cultivation made its escape from the Chinese heartland.
55:14And it's been here ever since.
55:20Khotan's markets and bazaars are full of silk fabrics to this very day.
55:24And for at least a thousand years, they've been making it in this style, known as Atlas Silk.
55:30I've been waiting 2,000 miles to see this.
55:36These silks embrace colour with a wild abandon.
55:38Nothing is supposed to blend tastefully.
55:40It's all designed for maximum impact.
55:42It's so bright that if you look at it and then look away,
55:45you get flashing after images.
55:47In fact, it's quite difficult to explain just how much this Atlas Silk pokes you in the pupils.
55:54It's as if the colour decisions are all made on the basis of which is most likely to cause retinal detachment.
55:59I love it.
56:02The results insist, very loudly indeed,
56:04that although the Uyghur territories have been part of China's dominions for over 200 years,
56:10the makers of this fabric are not Chinese at all.
56:13Many Uyghur don't even speak Chinese.
56:19Khotan very clearly identifies itself as a Silk Road city.
56:23Everywhere I've been in China, there have been new tourist opportunities and statues commemorating figures from that rich bed of history.
56:31China wants to remind itself, and us, that in the days of the Silk Road, it was a place of commerce and creativity.
56:38That, however it's spent the 20th century, it wants to do business now.
56:44And doesn't want anything else to matter.
56:51Beyond Khotan, the desert reasserts itself.
56:54But today, the Chinese government refuses to listen to what the sand has to say.
57:03They're editing the desert.
57:08Flattening dunes.
57:10Planting hardy grasses.
57:12Pushing it all back.
57:14Or trying to.
57:16More than 2,000 years later.
57:19And they're still not letting this godforsaken place get in their way.
57:23There's more than a little of the spirit of Zhang Tian in all of this.
57:27I can still feel his yearning presence.
57:30Faithfully doing his emperor's bidding.
57:32Constantly pushing westward.
57:34Making contacts.
57:36Each contact maturing into a deal done.
57:38And each deal carrying with it an extra little burden of cultural change and contact.
57:43Once he got through this desert, he'd come to a mountain pass.
57:48And once through that mountain pass, he would come to the kingdom of the Sogdians.
57:53An entire world waiting for what China had to offer.
57:57For what China had to sell.
58:03I'm following him west.
58:07In the next episode, Hidden Valleys.
58:09The art of the Sogdians.
58:12The ancestor of the loot.
58:15A ceramic paradise built by captive artisans for one of the most ruthless conquerors the world has ever seen.
58:23And the Central Asian cities where modern mathematics and astronomy were born.
58:29And we discover some of the things handmade on the Silk Road here on BBC Four on Wednesday at half past seven.
58:40A new series of unheard real life stories from around the UK starts tomorrow with the true story of former soldier Rob Laurie,
58:46who attempted to smuggle a four-year-old girl into the UK from a refugee camp in Calais.
58:51Listen to The Untold tomorrow morning at 11 on BBC Radio 4.
58:55"'ooooop'
59:0201
59:03Don
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59:08When
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