The Adventurer Zhang Qian and the Creation of the Silk Road

Greetings one and all, Laszlo Montgomery here. Today, in this episode of China History Podcast, I'm making good on my past promises about not necessarily going in any particular order of topics. We're going to go into the Wayback Machine, about 2150 years to the Western Han Dynasty. The Han Dynasty, as you'll no doubt all recall, began with Liu Bang and the Chu Han Contention, the Chu Han Xiangzheng in 206 BC. Liu Bang defeats Xiang Yu and kicks off the Han Dynasty that is divided up into the Western and Eastern time periods with Wang Meng and the Xin Dynasty in the middle. The Western Han ran for a good couple centuries, ending in 8 AD. As the Western Han ends and Wang Meng sets up his brief Xin Dynasty, Augustus Caesar is reigning in all his glory in Rome. In these two great civilizations, Rome and China, have no relations and no one's ever met the other. About halfway through the Western Han, we have one of the greatest of the great emperors of China, Han Wu Di. He was one of those occasional emperors who not only reigned for a good half century, from 141 to 87 BC, but did some great things too. We discussed Han Wu Di in the Han Dynasty Part 2 podcast. I devoted maybe a minute to this person who we're going to look at today. We're going to zoom in today and take a closer look at one of the greatest adventurers of all time, Zhang Qian. He's one of China's national heroes from ancient times and his story, although we only know bits and pieces, is really an amazing epic. Now a lot of what I'm mentioning today came straight out of Si Ma Qian's shi ji, or records of the Grand Historian. Si Ma Qian was a contemporary of Zhang Qian. I would think the account Si Ma Qian gives to us in his records of the Grand Historian about the adventures and the impact of Zhang Qian's travels are probably pretty accurate. The reason, well one of the reasons, I find Zhang Qian so interesting is that besides having the guts or the fearlessness to wander out into the great unknown, he also acted as a kind of catalyst to join two great parts of the world, that is China and the dominant city-states that were scattered throughout Central Asia. With Zhang Qian, we can get a perfect example of how one single human being's exploits can really have a great historic impact. Our story takes place in what we call before the Common Era or before Christ. These are still BC times and the world is huge. It takes a long time to get to wherever you want to go. In these days, in the Han Dynasty, people are still walking or riding animals to get to wherever they want to go. Civilizations have been developing in Europe, India, all over Africa and in Egypt of course, but China didn't know about any of these guys. So you can see why those in Chang'an might believe China was the Middle Kingdom. If you recall anything at all from the earlier podcasts, from the Imperial Dynasty overviews, China from the beginning of recorded history until, well some might say even to this day, but in any case historically the Han Chinese and all those who lived within China proper always had the mental stress of all those Central Asian people who lived on every side of them from the northeast all the way west and then draping down to the south. It was like one thick heavy blanket that sat on top of China beginning just on the northern side of the Great Wall. We tend to homogenize these people. I know I have vastly oversimplified them, call them step people or people of the steps. You heard the word Xiongnu, Mongol, Manchu, Jurchen, Tangut. These people live this nomadic tribal life, probably not much different than the people who are living in these lands today. 2150 years ago, I'm willing to bet there are a lot of traditions and cultural aspects of these people of these Central Asian lands that were the same or similar back in the times of Zhang Qian. He was the first Han Chinese who wandered out of the safety and comfort of Chang'an, the Han capital and now the lovely city of Xi'an, and followed a path that ultimately became known as the Silk Road and lived amongst the Xiongnu for a decade, traveled throughout Xinjiang, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan. He's not as famous in the west as Lewis and Clark, Magellan, Columbus, Lee Ferrikson or Ponce de Leon, but he was no less adventurous. He was the perfect man for the job. He managed to talk his way out of many a tight spot and was most likely extremely sensitive to the cultural differences of those he encountered. Zhang Qian was effective on many levels. Like I said, he had the guts to take on such an adventure as this, and he had the innate skills of diplomacy and human sensitivities that allowed him to make a connection. He was able to effectively communicate his adventures to his countrymen when he returned, and the information he brought back sparked a mini economic revolution of sorts with the establishment of the Silk Road. When the emperor Han Wudi selected Zhang Qian to go do his bidding, he definitely chose wisely. Zhang Qian was born not too far away from Xi'an in what is now the environs of Hanzhong, down in the southwest portion of Shaanxi. He was just another trained and educated gentleman who came to Chang'an to make a career for himself. He served as a palace attendant to Emperor Wu from 140 to 135 BC, Emperor Wu of course being Han Wudi. Han was the dynasty, Wu was his regnal name, and Di of course means emperor. Several Xiongnu soldiers had been captured by Han Chinese and the information they revealed during interrogation said that their people, the Xiongnu, had defeated the Da Yuejir. Da means great, so these were the great Yuejir people. They have been identified as the Kushan people or the Scythians. The Kushans had their own empire in the first century AD. They populated the area around Bactria, which historically was the eastern edge of Iran, but now it's part of Afghanistan. Anyways, prior to being pushed out of their turf around Dunhuang and all along the Gansu-Qinghai border around there, they had just gone down in defeat to the Xiongnu from Mongolia and their king had been killed. And these captured Xiongnu revealed their king had used the Yuejir king's skull as a drinking vessel from which to drink wine. So it was here that Han Wudi and his closest advisors pondered the opportunities. If they could somehow find out where the Yuejir had gone and forge an alliance with them, surely these people would jump at the chance to seek vengeance and team up with Han China to get revenge against the Xiongnu. These Hans, as the Xiongnu were also referred to, had been a thorn in the side of the Chinese for longer than anyone could recall, so they were anxious to push these guys as far back as possible. And so it was that after a, no doubt, careful selection process, Zhang Qian was chosen as the emissary of Han Wudi to venture out as surreptitiously as possible through Xiongnu territory and on to the Yuejir to speak with their king's son, discuss the alliance, and then the plan essentially called for the Yuejir to attack from the west and Han China would attack from the east and the Xiongnu would be caught in the middle. And if all went according to plan, they would go down in defeat and this existential threat would be gone once and for all. So Zhang Qian set out in 138 BC with 100 men and his loyal translator Gan Fu, who was a Xiongnu slave and spoke the necessary languages of the regions. Multiple sources I used all noted that Gan Fu, being a Xiongnu and all, was a skilled archer and brought down plenty of game for the traveling party. The path they set out on was probably just a dirt path. There were no paved or marked roads that led you from China proper to the western regions. They traveled probably about three miles per hour and covered perhaps 25 miles per day. The road from Chang'an west was more or less the same as the roads today. Zhang Qian and his party would have to ferry across the Yellow River at Lanzhou in Gansu. From there they would probably have taken the path that rimmed the Taklamakan Desert and way out here was already the western frontier or the wild west of the Han Empire. Not long after they set out west, once they were well inside Xiongnu territory, they were captured in 137 BC and taken before the Shanyu or Chanyu as they called their supreme leader. Their lives were spared but they were held as captives. According to the records of the grand historian, the Chanyu asked Zhang Qian, what's the big idea with the Han Emperor sending an envoy across my lands to talk to my enemy? Would he like it if I sent a Xiongnu envoy to talk to the Yue people down in the south of China? The Yue were an independent people down in the south of China who had not yet been taken into the Han fold and constantly raiding the southern fringes of the empire. And so it was, Zhang Qian and his men were held captive for 10 years. Not much is written about this period of captivity amongst the Xiongnu except that Zhang Qian was given a wife by the Chanyu and with her he had a son. And together they lived until the time when the Xiongnu had more or less given up watching him and treating him like a prisoner. Zhang Qian and his men planned their escape and one day they departed in 127 BC and continued on their journey to meet up with and send the message from Han Wudi about the proposed alliance. Zhang Qian dared not return to Chang'an and appear before Han Wudi empty-handed. A month after leaving, Zhang Qian arrived in Dayuan and met with the king there. Dayuan aka Fair Ghana was one of the three most powerful kingdoms of Central Asia at that time. You also had the Greco-Bactrians down in the south and the Parthians in the west in what is today northern Iran. So the Yuezhir are now occupying the Fair Ghana valley which spreads through Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. They spoke Indo-European languages and had strong Greek influences. The meeting between Zhang Qian and the Dayuan people marked the first time China had come in contact with any of these people speaking these Indo-European languages and from this meeting Zhang Qian later reported to the emperor that quote, Dayuan, this is very indicative the kind of intel he would send back in his report or that he brought back in his report, Dayuan lies southwest of the territory of the Xiongnu, some 10,000 li directly west of China. A li is about one-third of a mile. The people are also settled on the land, plowing the fields and growing rice and wheat. They also make wine out of grapes. The region has many fine horses which sweat blood. Zhang Qian here is talking about these horses that apparently due to skin parasites cause these sores to bleed. Anyway, continuing on, their forebears are supposed to have been foaled from heavenly horses. The people live in houses and fortified cities, there being some 70 or more cities of various sizes in the region. The population numbers several hundred thousand. The people fight with bows and spares and can shoot from horseback. Dayuan is bordered on the north by Kangzhi, on the west by the kingdom of Dayuezhi, on the southwest by Daxia, which was Bactria, and on the northeast by the land of the and on the east by the Yumi and Yutian. Now Zhang Qian spoke to the king of Dayuan and learned that the king had long wished to establish relations with the Han emperor. Zhang Qian told him get him some guides and whatnot and lead him to the kingdom of the Yuezhi where he could pass on his message and when he got back to Chang'an he would personally tell the emperor he had a So he was given the necessary wherewithal to continue his journey and he soon met with the son of this slain Yuezhi king in his stronghold in the grasslands of what is now present-day Uzbekistan. The Yuezhi had also taken control of the lands around Bactria and much to Zhang Qian's disappointment, the new king there wasn't very enthusiastic about an alliance with the Han since they were so far away and furthermore they had no intention or desire to seek revenge against the Xiongnu for that alleged insult of drinking wine from the king's skull. Anyway Zhang Qian lingered in the region a while, for about a year it's said, lingering mostly in the parts that's today northern Afghanistan, hoping the Yuezhi chieftain would change his mind about that alliance I imagine what Zhang Qian saw in the late 2nd century BC and what you might see today trekking through the mountainous regions where Afghanistan borders Tajikistan be pretty much the same. These were lands visited by Alexander the Great and no doubt Zhang Qian had seen some of the Greek culture that Alexander's armies had brought with them to the area and then with all these years of observations and intelligence stored up, he begins to head back to China to sort of report into the head office. I don't know if the imperial court had given up or if they assumed he had perished trying to carry out this dangerous mission rather than skirt the north of the Tarim basin Zhang Qian his wife and his trusty slave Gan Fu took the southerly route of the vast basin which 2,000 years later would be where China would test its atomic and hydrogen bombs but wouldn't you know it as he was tiptoeing through Xiongnu territory on his way back to China he was captured again but this time his captivity lasted only a year before he was able to escape thanks to the confusion created by the death of the Chanyu at the time in 126 BC and so 13 or so years after he left Zhang Qian returns to the palace and regurgitates everything he had learned throughout the period of his amazing journey. One of the many important discoveries made concerned a market Zhang Qian had seen in the Bactrian city of Lanxir. There he had noticed that in this vast market there cloth that he recognized as having come from somewhere in the southwest near Sichuan was on sale and seemed to be very highly prized by the merchants. After a few inquiries Zhang Qian learned that the cloth had come all the way from India for this reason Zhang figured the southern route that began in Sichuan was a safer and more reliable route to the lands of central Asia than the northern route he had taken much earlier. Zhang noted that there now existed proof of some trade routes that carried this commodity from China to India and then north to the markets of central Asia. Oh if I could have been a fly on the wall as Zhang Qian sat there in the palace in Chang'an and regaled Han Wu Di of all the wonders he had seen. His approximate 6,000 miles of travels yielded tales of peoples and customs from faraway lands. He reported for example that in what is today northern India people rode elephants into battle. Many of these stories were just downright fantastical. Besides the diplomatic opportunities that now presented themselves the emperor thought about this valuable information concerning how prized Chinese goods were in all of these lands. The economic opportunities were boundless and to facilitate all this secure trade routes had to be established. What we know is the Silk Road existed actually long before the Han dynasty made it famous. The only problem with the Silk Road up till now was that the Xiongnu controlled it and they were hardly dependable hospitable and friendly. There were always battles raging or some sort of disturbance along the route that made it a very perilous journey indeed. But trade back then was more or less nickel and dime individual adventurers traders who carried with them all they could and sought out the markets found there in Gansu, Qinghai, Xinjiang and beyond. Dead men tell no tales and little is known about the trade that flourished along the Now it was a completely different ball game. Now the emperor was armed with the knowledge that vast markets existed to the west in lands he had only just learned about. Not only were there whole civilizations just like China beyond the fringes of the emperor but even beyond those lands existed other people and everyone seemed to hold Chinese goods of high esteem and value. Now it became imperative to deal with the Xiongnu problem once and for all and secure these trade routes for the vast armies of traders to ply their wares in both directions of the Silk Road from west to east as well as from east to west. Besides all that alliances were going to be the key to projecting China's power and might beyond the western regions of China. What was going to be the next move? Up till now the Chinese imperial government had still been using the old Heqin system to keep peace with the Xiongnu. This went back to Liu Bang, Han Gaozu, founder of the Han dynasty. He had suffered a defeat at Baideng in 200 BC. The Baideng Zhizhen saw Han Gaozu invade Xiongnu lands only to be soundly defeated. The emperor himself narrowly missed being captured. The upshot of all this was that in order to keep the peace the Han court agreed to send a Han princess to the Chandu as well as other tribute items such as silk, rice, and wine. This Heqin system was kept up until now. Now the mighty Han Wudi felt that they could give up this Heqin system and seek a military solution instead. But alliances needed to be built up first and now Han Wudi knew there were plenty of kings out there to the west who sought relations with the great Han empire in China. As for our hero Zhang Qian, his career sort of peaked here. I liken him to Li Hongzhang in that he was a big hero and received lots of honors and then in the second part of his life it was sort of a up and down kind of a thing. He was made a marquis and given a honorary title and sent on two expeditions to deal with the Xiongnu. In one of the critical battles of this first expedition he was sent on the Han army suffered a bitter defeat and it was found that this loss was due to Zhang Qian and his army failing to meet at the rendezvous point as per the plan. And once this was learned Zhang Qian's honors were all stripped from him and he was demoted to commoner status. This penalty was a reprieve from the original sentence of death that he had been given but he was able to buy his way out. Later that year the brave general Huo Qubing led his forces against the Xiongnu and defeated them soundly. In 119 BC they defeated them again and kicked the Xiongnu out of China proper and far deep into the Gobi Desert and the Xiongnu at last had been dealt with and had been cleared from the area around the Silk Road. Now the Han dynasty had a direct and unobstructed route to the west into Central Asia. The Silk Road was safe and could be protected. Trade was now going to flourish like never before in history up till that point and with all this trade and wealth created with it would bring about all kinds of benefits to the economies of well everybody involved. Cities would spring up along these routes that are still around today. On this second and last journey in 122 BC the emperor sent Zhang Qian on a diplomatic mission this time. The first one being that military disaster. He was to make a deal with Kunmo the king of the Wusun people who had successfully broken away from the Xiongnu and established their own kingdom around the region north of Xinjiang and east of the Yuezhi kingdom. The idea called for a massive amount of gifts to be offered to the Wusun. The gifts were presented as an incentive for the Wusun to spread out to fill the vacuum to the west that had been created by the vacated Xiongnu. Once they did this the rest of the plan called for overtures to be made to the Daxia kingdom. The Daxia kingdom was the region around Bactria. The imperial court at Chang'an reckoned if they could conclude treaties with these two great powers all of the other power centers big and small would all beat a path to Chang'an to declare themselves vassals to the son of heaven. So the emperor calls up Zhang Qian again to service and puts him in charge of 300 men. Zhang leads the party to Kunmo king of the Wusun and this king prostrates himself before the emperor's representative and declares himself a vassal state of the Han. But when Zhang Qian tells him to move out and take over those vacated lands of the Xiongnu they were not so willing to do this. They feared these Han Chinese they were so far away and the Xiongnu they were so close. If they ever came back they'd have a bigger problem than ever on their hands. The Wusun also didn't know the extent of the Han Chinese might so Zhang Qian walked away empty-handed in Wusun. Besides king Kunmo had just suffered a huge internal crisis in his kingdom with his sons and grandsons and their proxies all fighting for control so it wasn't really a good time when Zhang Qian showed up and tried to cut a deal with them. Now came the time to visit all the various kingdoms to the west in the heart of central Asia. This included Daxia, Dayuan, Kangju, Dayueju, Anxi, Shandu, Yutian, and Yumo. These are the Mandarin names of these regions. He didn't get the treaty with the Wusun but they did provide him and his men with plenty of guides, interpreters, and support to you know get to all these other states. When Zhang Qian returned from this journey he came to Chang'an with a couple dozen envoys from Wusun who brought with them a vast number of horses presented to the emperor in exchange for all these gifts. And for the first time these Wusun people got to see up close the greatness and the might of Han China at its peak. Zhang Qian he had a happy ending and was made one of the nine most powerful ministers in the government with the honorific title of Grand Messenger. And then that's about it. About a year after his name is restored he dies in 114 BC. The emperor Han Wudi is still reigning in Chang'an at this time. Then the cherry on top to this whole happy ending for Zhang Qian was this. The Wusun envoys having seen how great and mighty China was went back to their lands and passed on all this information and so it was that there was a friendship treaty made. And remember Zhang Qian sent all these envoys out to other lands far to the west. He didn't accompany them they just sort of went out by themselves and they you know had spread out to the west and southwest towards what is now you know parts of modern-day Iran and Afghanistan. All of these kingdoms sent their representatives to the court of Han Wudi and relations were then established for the first time between China and these near and also distant lands. And about 50-60 years after Zhang Qian's death the traffic along these corridors he had been the first to explore brought something called Buddhism to China via India, Central Asia. The introduction of Buddhism into China was one of the immediate after-effects of Zhang Qian's travels and within a decade or two after Zhang Qian's second journey you found Chinese silks and Roman markets for the first time. And although Zhang Qian had passed from the scene no one could doubt the role he played as the tireless adventurer and canny diplomat who was able to deal face-to-face man-to-man with some of the most fierce people of their day. And he won their respect and laid the groundwork for all the alliances that followed between China of the western Han dynasty and all the various kingdoms and states north and west of Xinjiang and Tibet. And that's about it. He lived a long, long life living well into his 80s and he packed a lot of adventure into a life well lived. And I'm going to end it right here if you don't mind. I thank you for downloading and listening. This is Laszlo Montgomery once again coming to you from the Chinahistorypodcast.com. We'll see you next week I hope for another exciting episode of the Chinahistorypodcast. Take care everyone and I hope everyone's summer is off to a great start.