Mapping The Silk Road

When I used to think about the Silk Road, the first image I'd see would be deserts, and camels, women and men dressed in colourful garments with their caravans and for some odd reason, it did not once occur to me that perhaps the Silk Road or otherwise known as the Seidenstrasse, was actually a transportation route, for none other than... Silk (among other things). I don't know why I didn't quite catch that but you learn something new everyday, right?

So this week's reading was based on the first three chapters of Frances Wood's The Silk Road: Two Thousand Years in the Heart of Asia. The text is actually very easy to read and is oozing with geographical and historical facts, as well as cultural, and social facts about the Silk Road.

Wood does an excellent job of presenting the geographical aspects of the Silk Road. At the beginning of chapter one, he communicates very clearly how the Silk Road is not just one road or route, but is several routes, and several roads ranging from Europe to China. He presents the northern and southern routes and describes the towns that they run through and describes the weather and the landscapes, mostly through the accounts of the people who travelled them. Wood uses a few examples of individuals who travelled the routes of the Silk Road, such as Marco Polo, who is the most popular Western traveller to write about the Silk Road, as well as missionaries and other curious midieval travellers. Wood uses their accounts on the weather conditions, the landscapes, the animals (or lack thereof, since many of the accounts claim that there weren't very many birds and animals), the people they encountered, the food they ate, and the trials they faced on their journey in this strange world.

Wood also writes about the cultural and social aspects of the people who made up the Silk Road. From the spice sellers in the Sunday market in Kashgar, to the people who produce the silk. In chapter two, Wood gives a discription of how silk is made from silkworms. He uses an account of a young man Chiang Yee who along with his sisters, as a hobby, raised and fed silkworms. Yee describes how his Grandmother taught him and his siblings the importance of country life, which indicates in rural areas people would do this as a profession. Wood also supplies a diagram of silkworms and their process of making silk. At the beginning of chapter 2 Wood describes the signifance of jade in the transportation along the Silk Road. Jade was produced and transported just as much as silk was, and was very prized by the Chinese. So much so that even Confucius compared jade to his favourite virtues such as benevolence and strength.

All in all, Wood's text is a great material in introducing the many facts that lay the foundation in the study of the Silk Road, and I'm excited to learn more.

Thanks for reading!

- Arista