Silent witnesses to emergence of Maritime Silk Road
- By staff reporter Dang Xiaofei
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E-mail China Today, July 28, 2017
Xu Fu's Trip to the East
How did the Maritime Silk Road open? More than 2,200 years ago, the First Emperor of the Qin Dynasty sent his alchemist, Xu Fu, overseas, in search of the elixir of immortality. As the head of a caravan of thousands of children and technicians from different fields and carrying tons of cereals of different varieties, Xu Fu left Haizhou (as Lianyungang was known at the time), his hometown, for the East. The alchemist obviously did not find the elixir, but he did open up a navigation route in the eastern part of the country, thus becoming the pioneer of the Maritime Silk Road.
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On his journey, in addition to arriving in Wakayama, a prefecture located on Honshu, the main island of the Japanese archipelago, Xu Fu also went to Kitakyushu, on the northern tip of Kyushu Island, the Setonaikai Sea and the Kii Peninsula. In fact, nowadays in Japan it is possible to visit historical sites related to Xu Fu, like his temple, his tomb, his well, his point of disembarkation, and so on. Some Japanese scholars have even come to suggest that Xu Fu was Jimmu Tenno, the first Japanese emperor.
Why did Xu Fu chose Lianyungang as the starting point of his journey? According to Luo Lin, deputy director of the Lianyungang Historical Relics Protection Research Institute, the ancient inhabitants of the region mastered navigation techniques and traded with the outside world by sea, laying the basis for the opening of the Maritime Silk Road. "All that can be seen in the paintings on the Jiangjun Cliff," Luo explained. Known as the "Heavenly Scriptures of the East," the paintings on the Jiangjun Cliff are not only the first of their type to be discovered on the Chinese coast but also, with about 7,000 years of history, the oldest of their kind in the country.
In order to find the elixir of immortality for the emperor, Xu Fu's expeditionary fleet traveled on several sea routes, which would then provide precious experiences for the merchant ships to come. Thanks to the gradual consolidation of the Maritime Silk Road, silk products and Chinese porcelain articles were exported from Lianyungang to Japan, the Korean Peninsula, India and Sri Lanka, among other South Asian countries. In turn, the ships brought back Buddhism.
If calculating since the date Xu Fu left Lianyungang, the Maritime Silk Road has existed for over 2,000 years. For its part, being the small hometown of Xu Fu, Lianyungang has been transformed and nowadays is a coastal commercial and military city.
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