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The Silk Road

The Silk Road Travel Guide

There was no single "Silk Road," but rather hundreds of old routes and scores of trading posts that formed a vibrant overland trade network between China, Central Asia, and Europe. The current "Silk Road" received its moniker from the German scholar Baron Ferdinand von Richtofen in the mid-19th century. The Chinese section he noted stretched from Xian in Shaanxi Province through Gansu's narrow Hexi Corridor to Dunhuang. After passing through the famed Jade Gate dividing China from the outside world, it webbed out in three directions to several key cities in Xinjiang: Urumqi in the north, Korla in the center, Hotan in the south, and Kashgar in the west.

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