China L4: The Silk Road

China L4: The Silk Road

Learn about the Silk Road and how it spread goods, traditions, learning and ideas

The caravan slowly plods across the hot sands of the Taklimakan Desert. A caravan is a group of traders traveling together.

Weary travelers wearing long robes sway on top of camels. Riderless camels are heaped high with heavy loads.

Multiple Choice

What is a caravan?

• a group of camels

• a vehicle for transportation

• a group of traders traveling together

• a desert

Suddenly the camels stop, huddle together, and snarl viciously. A man riding the lead camel turns around and shouts. No one can hear him because the screaming wind drowns out his words. The man jumps from his camel and quickly wraps a strip of felt around his own nose and mouth. The other travelers rush to dismount and cover their faces too. Just then, the sandstorm hits with full force. The fine desert sand flies at the caravan, stinging man and beast with needle-sharp grit.

 Then, as quickly as it came, the sandstorm was gone. The travelers wipe sand from their eyes and tend to their camels. They have survived just one of the many challenges of traveling on the Silk Road, an ancient trade route between China and Europe.

Open Ended

What was the Silk Road?

The Silk Road

Travel along the Silk Road was very dangerous. Travelers face geographical and human-made barriers, attacks by robbers, and extreme weather conditions.

Open Ended

Why was the Silk Road dangerous?

 The emperor Wudi’s conquests in the west brought the Chinese into contact with the people of Central Asia. Trade with these people introduced the Chinese to such new food as grapes, walnuts, and garlic. In turn, Chinese goods and ideas passed to the peoples living to the west. This exchange of goods gave rise to a major trade route, the Silk Road. This ran all the way from China to the Mediterranean Sea.

Multiple Choice

The Silk Road ran all the way from China to

• the Mediterranean Sea

• the Persian Gulf

• the Gobi Desert

• the Himalayas

Connecting roads

 The Silk Road was a series of routes covering more than 4,000 miles, a little less than the distance from present-day Chicago all the way to Hawaii. You can follow the route on the map titled the Silk Road.

Multiple Choice

How long was the Silk Road?

• 400 miles

• 4000 miles

• 40 miles

• 40,000 miles

The Silk Road followed a challenging route through mountainous country and desert land. The road passed through Persia and Mesopotamia. Finally, it turned north to the city of Antioch, in present-day Turkey. From there, traders shipped goods across the Mediterranean to Rome, Greece, Egypt, and other lands that border the Mediterranean.

Multiple Select

What two geographical features made the Silk road challenging to travel?

• mountains

• plains

• seas

• desert

Price inflation

 Few travelers ever journeyed the entire length of the Silk Road. Generally, goods were passed from trader to trader as they crossed Asia. With each trade along the route, the price of the goods went up. By the time the goods arrived at the end of their journey, they were very expensive.

Open Ended

What happened to goods as they were passed from trader to trader along the Silk Road?

A route for goods

 The Silk Road got its name from silk, a valuable cloth originally made only in China. Han farmers had developed new methods for raising silkworms, the caterpillars that made the silk. Han workers found new ways to weave and dye the silk. These methods were closely guarded secrets. The penalty for revealing them was death.

Open Ended

Explain where silk comes from and/or how it is made.

 The arrival of silk in Europe created great excitement. Wealthy Romans prized Chinese silk and were willing to pay a high price for it. Wealthy people in China would pay well for glass, horses, ivory, woolens, and linen cloth from Rome. Silk was also used to make musical instruments, fishing line, and even paper.

A route for ideas

 More than goods traveled the road. New ideas did too. For example, missionaries from India traveled to China along a section of the road and brought the religion of Buddhism with them. By the time the Han Dynasty ended, Buddhism was becoming a major religion in China.

Tradition and learning

 Traditional Chinese ideas flourished during the Han Dynasty. People returned to the teachings of Confucius. A renewed interest in learning led one Han scholar to record the early history. His efforts helped the people of China understand their past.

Multiple Choice

What did people return to during the Han Dynasty?

• obedience

• disorder

• Confucius' teaching

• learning about wealth

Respect for learning

 Han rulers found that during troubled times in the past, many people had lost respect for their traditions. As a way of bringing back this respect, rulers encouraged people to return to the teachings of Confucius. Rulers of the Han and later dynasties also required members of the civil service to be educated in Confucius’ teachings.

Multiple Choice

What positions during the Han dynasty had to be educated in Confucius' teachings?

• doctors and nurses

• members of the civil service

• common people

• jailworkers and judges

History of China

 Until the time of the Han dynasty, the Chinese people had little knowledge of their own history. They knew only myths that have been passed down from generation to generation. Often, these stories were in conflict with one another. No one was sure exactly when the various Chinese rulers had lived or what each had accomplished.

Sima Qian

The scholar Sima Qian decided to solve the problem. Sima Qian spent his life writing a history of China from mythical times to the reign of Wudi. "I wish to examine all that encircles Heaven and man. I want to probe the changes of the past and present,”  said Sima Qian.  Sima Qian's work, called Historical Records, is a major source of information about ancient China.

Multiple Choice

Who was Sima Qian?

• a teacher

• a leader of the Qin dynasty

• a philosopher

• a historian and scholar

Invention of paper

The Chinese first used wooden scrolls and bones to keep records. Later, they wrote messages and even whole books on silk. Then, around AD 105, the Chinese recorded one of their greatest achievements, the invention of paper.

Multiple Select

What did the Chinese first use to keep records?

Choose 2

• bones

• clay

• wooden scrolls

• paper

Early paper

 Archaeological evidence shows that paper may have already been in use before that time. Early paper was made from materials such as tree bark, hemp, and old rags. The materials were soaked in water, beaten into pulp, and dried flat on a screen mold.

Open Ended

Name one material that early paper was made of.

 The availability of paper greatly influenced learning and the arts in China. After several centuries, the use of paper spread across Asia and then to Europe. Eventually, paper replaced papyrus from Egypt as the material for scrolls and books.

 The Han Dynasty came to an end in the AD 200. But it's accomplishments were not forgotten. Today, people in China still call themselves “The Children of Han.”

Multiple Choice

What was invented by the Chinese that greatly influenced learning and the arts?

• papyrus

• wood

• paper

• children