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SILK
ROAD
Ancient
Silk Road connected the Orient and the West,
Today Dragon
Celeste connecting the culture once again !

The Silk Road was an ancient, 7000 miles long,
network of trade route between China's capital
Changan and the westernmost reaches of the Roman empire. These routes,
historically, were
used to exchange not only silk with China and the West, but a wide variety
of other commodi-
ties as well. There are 4 major routes, Northern route as the map above -
westward to Black
Sea. Central route - Westward to Persia, Mediterranean Sea, Rome. Southern
route - Westward
to Afghanistan, Iran, India. Eastward to Xi'an..
These routes all started from the capital in Changan, headed up the
Gansu corridor, reached
Dunhuang on the edge of the Taklimakan. The northern route then passed
through Yumen
Guan ( Jade Gate Pass) and crossed the neck of the Gobi desert to Hami(
Kumul), before follow-
ing the Tianshan mountains round the northern fringes of the Taklimakan.
It passed through
the major oases of Turfan and Kuqa before arriving at Kashgar, at the foot
of the Pamirs. The
southern route branched off at Dunhuang, passing through the Yang Guan and
skirting the
southern edges of the desert, via Miran, Hetian ( Khotan) and Shache (
Yarkand), finally
turning north again to meet the other route at Kashgar. Numerous other
routes were also used
to a lesser extent. One branched off from the southern route and headed
through the Eastern
end of the Taklimakan to the city of Loulan, before joining the northern
route at Korla.
Kashgar became the new crossroads of Asia. From here the routes again
divided, heading across
the Pamirs to Samarkiand and to the south of the Caspian Sea, or to the
South, over the
Karakorum into India. A further route split from the northern route after
Kuqa and headed
across the Tianshan range to eventually reach the shores of the Caspian
Sea, via Tashkent.


view of the Silk Route
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