Opening of The Silk Road

Chinese and foreign historians appraise highly the role played by Zhang Qian of the Western Han Dynasty in Opening up the Silk Road. They believe that he promoted economic and cultural interflow between East and West that was beneficial to the progress of mankind.
Since ancient times there had been acute conflicts between the Xiongnu,a northern nomadic nationality, and the Hans, who had settled in the yellow River Valley and engaged mainly in agriculture. Up to Hand Dynasty times the slaveowners'military bloc of the Xiongnu had invaded the Central Plains many times, plundering people and livestock and undermining production

Emperor Wu Di (156-87 BC) of the Han Dynasty learned that the Darouzhi (Indoscythiae) people, who once lived in the Dunhuang area at the west end of Gansu, had been driven by the Xiongnu all the way to the Amu Dar'ya River west of the Pamirs and for that reason, bore and old grudge against the Xiongnu. So he decided to send an envoy to the Darouzhi to form and alliance and attack the Xiongnu from east and west.
Zhang Qian valiantly responded to the summons. In 138 BC. He departed with more than a hundred men, but on his way he was detained by the Xiongnu in Hexi ( in present-day Gansu Province) for more than ten years. Although he married there and had children, his determination to fulfill his mission did not flag, Later he fled west and reached the Darouzhi. By that time the Darouzhi had settled in the Amu Dr'ya River Valley, abandoned their nomadic life and become accustomed to farm work, they did not want to return to the east again. Zhang Qian lived among the Darouzhi for more than a year, then made his way back to the Xentral Pain, On the way he was again detained by the Xiongnu for a year or more. He managed to escape, but did not arrive in Chang'an ( present-day Xian) until 126 BC.

Zhang Qian's first trip as an envoy to the Western Regions lasted thirteen years. When he returned, only two men out of the original hundred or so remained. Indeed, it was an unusual experience. Although he did not fulfill his intended mission, he acquired a wealth of firsthand information on the history, geography, and political and economic conditions of different places in the Western Regions and indirectly earned about Anxi (Persia, or modern Iran), Tiaozhi (Arabia) and Li Xuan (the Eastern Roman Empire).
In 119 BC. Zhang Qian again went west with more than three hundred men. Each member of the large exploratory expedition had two horses and ten thousand head of cattle and sheep plus large amounts of money, silk and other merchandise to establish friendly ties with the Western Regions.

Serving as an emissary twice, Zhang Qian traveled across the eastern section of the Silk Road- the most strenuous section-linking the long miles between the Yellow River Valley and the Mediterranean into an ancient highway. In the following years, the Han court successively sent emissaries to what are now Iran, Iraq, India and Pakistan, They returned in three to five years from regions near China, or in eight to nine years from more distant countries. When an emissary from Han Emperor Wu Di reached Persia, its king sent twenty thousand cavalrymen to welcome him on the eastern frontier. The emissary arrived in the capital after passing through a dozen cities. Many people turned out to see him and his party all along the way. A spectacular scene! Meanwhile, envoys and merchants from various nationalities in the Western Regions and Central Asian countries came eastward to the domain of the Han Dynasty. Traffic on the Sikl Road began to flourish as never before.
In 60 BC. The Western Han Dynasty began to supersede the Xiongnu slaveowners rule in the Western Regions. The imperial curt selected Bugur, or Chadir (present-day Luntai County in Xinjiang), as its political center and established the Protector-general's Office of the Western Regions there. Representing the court, the office exercised state sovereignty over the region east of Balkhash Lake and the Pamirs. From then on, traffic on the Silk Road went unhindered. Although between the Western Han and the Sui and Tang dynasties the road was temporarily blocked several times, it remained historically the main artery for economic and cultural interchanges between East and West over the centuries.