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- European Amber Coming to China via the Silk Road
China�s main foreign source for amber was Burma, but besides the ancient Chinese Burmese trade route, there was another ancient trade route which brought amber to early China. It was the Silk Road which originally linked ancient China to the Roman Empire. The Chinese were aware of the fact that amber was a popular commodity in the Roman Empire, but there are no early Chinese records which state that it was actually exported from the Roman Orient to China. However, there is mention in the Annals of the Former Han Dynasty by Pan Ku and Pan Chao that Ki Pin (Kashmir) produced amber. Kashmir probably didn�t have amber deposits, but was a staging stop for ancient trade caravans, who may have been trading amber from the Roman Orient like Syria or Iran, or possibly even from Burma.
During the Roman Empire, silk was known to come from China, which they called Seres, and it is from this word that silk is derived. From Rome to Changan (modern Xi�an) the ancient capital of China, was a matter of about ten thousand kilometres by pack animals. The Silk Road started from the Mediterranean coast ports through caravan cities in Mespotamia and Iran passed Samarkand in Turkestan, skirted the Taklamakan Desert, passing the oasis towns of Kashgar and Kucha, and finally reached Xi�an. The route was not an easy one due to geographical difficulties and fierce nomads along the route. Hence, only luxury goods of the highest value would pass along the route. Merchants, despite the risks, profited greatly by bringing silk from China to barter for goods from the West like gold, silver, glass, and semi precious gems like amber.
During the Tang Dynasty (618-906) in China, the Silk Route was reopened to heavy trade. In Tang China, the amber continued to be popular especially as ornaments for ladies and small expensive objects for the well-to-do. Tang poets wrote about amber and found amber a useful colour word signifying red-yellow and used it particularly as an epithet of wine.
After the fall of the Tang Dynasty in 906, there are a number of records which mention that amber was coming to China from Central Asian tribes. In 951, a Uighur tribe sent tribute to the Chinese court of Emperor Taizu of the Posterior Zhou Dynasty (951-960), which included jade as well as nine catties of amber and twenty pieces of great amber. In the following year, 952, the same tribe sent more tribute, among which was fifty catties of amber. In 965, the King of Khotan sent envoys to the court of Emperor Taizu of the Northern Song Dynasty with tribute, which included five hundred catties of amber. In 1010 it is recorded in the Song Shi that Khagan, the King of Kucha, a Silk Road oasis city, despatched an envoy, Li Yanfu, to bring tribute, which included amber, to the Chinese court. Since amber was not a product of Turkestan or Central Asia, it can be surmised that these amber tributes were
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