This book is a meticulous work by renowned scholar, Liu Yingsheng who has spent years in the research of history of the Silk Road. The book consists of two parts as: the land Silk Road and the maritime Silk Road, which includes 14 chapters, totally. With the following words Liu Yingsheng offers a clear view of communications among civilizations when studying the history of the Silk Road: "Civilization centers of the world have both developed separately and connected with each other directly and indirectly. A number of ancient human communities are dotted among the aforesaid civilization centers and linked with each other like a chain. Geographically speaking, China was an isolated territory in Eurasia. But ancient Chinese knew that there were brilliant cultures in the remote West. The fairy tale on Xiwangmu (Queen Mother of the West) reflects ancient Chinese people's desire to other civilizations. Hence, despite of the remoteness and distance, humankind had travelled an arduous and long way for communications. Nomadic peoples living in the Eurasia Steppes had maintained a natural economic and cultural link with their neighboring Southern agricultural peoples, and meanwhile, relying on their fast steeds, played as a liaison the for East-West civilization communications for several thousand years."
In this book, Liu Yingsheng has reviewed the original valuable historical materials preserved, in China, also those historical materials written by close neighbours of China in the old history, like Hui, Uyghur, Mongols, Arabs, Persia and utilized many other researches made by Western scholars. The book includes, more than 1,400 direct and indirect references given by world famous scholars.
