The "Silk Road" has been on everyone's lips for some time.

Since China launched a gigantic infrastructure program called the “New Silk Road” ten years ago, it has appeared to some as a symbol of a “new world order”, to others it has provided “the founding myth of globalization”, and clever entrepreneurs have offered courses in the “New Silk Road Business Chinese” and German cities are scrambling to become “hubs” on the Silk Road.

In the midst of all this excitement, Thomas Höllmann's book comes across as pleasantly sober.

China and the Silk Road: The conjunction in the title already expresses that the Silk Road was never equated with China.

Not even her name is Chinese.

It goes back to the German geographers Carl Ritter and Ferdinand von Richthofen, so it reflects a Eurocentric perspective.

According to Höllmann, the "Silk Road" is a "construct (...) for which different phenomena and time horizons are brought together".

China was never the center of the branched trade routes that stretched in many stages from Europe to East Asia.

Chang'an, the capital of the Tang dynasty (618-907), was only one hub in this trade network, albeit an extremely important one.

The Pipa and the Dragon Dance

Höllmann directs his attention to this junction and thus to a high point in Chinese history.

Arranged according to subject areas rather than historically, the book reads almost like an encyclopedia of the Silk Road.

Höllmann describes the routes and regions, people and animals, religions and goods, languages ​​and customs of the Silk Road in a competent and detailed manner.

Eighty color plates, many of them images of archaeological finds, offer fascinating illustrations.

One is amazed at what can be seen there: a “Chinese man dressed in Central Asian robes”, a “young man with dark skin and curly hair”, the “portrait of an imperial concubine in European armour”, a “Tangutian inscription”, a Persian one Glass plates, Uyghur ladies, Manichaean priests, a "Jewish prayer of penance" and much more.

The Tang Empire was less Chinese than cosmopolitan: Sogdian, Persian, Greek, Mongolian, Chinese, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Old Turkic and other manuscripts attest to the linguistic diversity that prevailed at the eastern end of the Silk Road.

Messengers, traders and monks brought their religions to China: Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism and especially Buddhism.

Monasteries, pagodas, rock inscriptions and monumental sculptures bear witness to the extent to which Buddhism permeated medieval Chinese society.

At that time there was still no trace of the Confucian orthodoxy of later centuries.

Silk gave its name to the trade network, but it was merely the medium of exchange for a plethora of exotic goods brought to Chang'an by traders and envoys: seal skins from Korea, amber from Japan, "golden peaches" from Samarkand, leopards from Bukhara , carpets from Persia, gold from Tibet, elephants from Vietnam, rhinos from Cambodia, parrots from Sumatra.

The culture of the Silk Road shaped all areas of urban life.

The Chinese elite wore kaftans and leather boots, Uyghur topknots were all the rage, they drank spiced grape wine from Central Asia, set up Mongolian yurts, enjoyed music from Turfan, Kucha, Kashgar, Samarkand, India and Korea, and entertained foreign jugglers , acrobats, dancers and "bedmaids" entertained.