ABSTRACT
Of the great civilizations that spanned the agricultural underbelly of Eurasia, China was the most self-sufficient. It was accessible by water from the Indian Ocean, but this required passage around Southeast Asia and across the dangerous South China Sea. Overland was an even greater challenge since separating China from South Asia, West Asia, and the Mediterranean were the highest mountains and some of the worst deserts in the world. In his comments on the Seres, the Late Roman Empire historian Ammianus Marcellinus notes that they “shun intercourse with the rest of mankind. So when strangers cross the river into their country to buy silks or other commodities, they exchange no words with them, but merely intimate by their looks the value of the goods offered for sale; and so abstemious are they that they buy not any foreign products.” Of course, this was nonsense, but it is instructive to note that Ammianus Marcellinus is considered as one of the best historians of his time, and by then his countrymen had been trading, albeit indirectly, with the Chinese for four centuries. Chinese perceptions of the land to the west were not much better but
did improve over time. Initially it was viewed as a mythical place of creatures that were part men and part beast, where the Queen Mother of the West rode in a chariot drawn by phoenixes. Somewhat later it was given the name Shizi and was said to be inhabited by devils, spirits, and dragons, that, peculiarly enough, had a commercial bent to them because they traded with the merchants of neighboring countries. The Kingdom of Women played a prominent role in some accounts. Men were said to have lived there, but their activities were confined to military functions: the place was governed by women. The Land of Women also did its fair share of trading with exports that included copper, cinnabar, musk, yaks, horses, and salt. Another story that appeared in a later annal concerns the adventures of a certain Emperor Mu c. 1000 BCE. According to modern speculation, this may reflect the actual travels of early Chinese merchants since it contains some real information about geography and trade goods in the form of presents given to Mu, which included jade, horses, leopard skins, and women.
