浙江大学 2007年 攻读博士研究生入学考试题(13)

head because the Qin people esteemed the right.

To the surprise of both Chinese and Western archaeologists, a few of the clay soldiers showed non-Chinese characteristics, possibly being persons from as far away as Arabia or Persia. This was particularly surprising because it had long been assumed that there were no persons from outside China living there in such ancient times.

Yet a century later the historical record does indicate limited contact with foreigners. There is one report in the Eastern Han Dynasty (A.D.25-220) of a Roman juggler who arrived in China by way of Burma in A.D.109. and another of the arrival of an envoy from Macedonia at about the same time. And the Roman historian Lucius Annaeus Florus mentions the coming of a Chinese envoy to Rome as early as the reign of Augustus (27 B.C.-A.D.14).

But extensive contacts between China and the West didn’t really begin until the northern Silk Road was gradually developed after 138 B.C. This overland route started at present-day Xi’an and passed though the Western Corridor beyond the yellow River, Xinjiang, Farghana(now Uzbekistan), Persia(Iran) and Taijik(Iraq) where it met western boundary of the Roman Empire.

For more than a thousand years this northern Silk Road provided a route for caravans that brought to China dates, saffron powder and pistachio nuts from Persia, glass bottles from Egypt, and many other expensive and desirable goods other parts of the world. And the caravans went home with their camels and horses loaded down by holts of silk brocade and boxes filled with lacquer ware and porcelains.

Another Silk Road, documented in the geography section of the History of Han Dynasty was a sea route that began at the ports of Xuwen and Hepu on the Reizhou Peninsula in South China(near which the city of Beihai is now located), passed though the Malacca Strait and ended in Burma or the Huangchi Kingdown of southern India.

More Chinese porcelains and silks reached European by this route than by the overland one because of pirates and storms at sea. Subsidiary branches of this Silk Road of the Sea reached such places as Korea, Japan, and the Philippines to allow for the exchange of various goods not really available over the land route. For example, as early as the third century A.D., the Philippines were shipping gold to China by this