Spice trader

A Malaysian restaurant in a hip Beijing shopping area savors a culinary tradition that goes back centuries, Mike Peters reports.

The phrase "Maritime Silk Road" evokes a heady period of Chinese history loaded with powerful imagery. While the overland trade route is most celebrated in lore and history, the sea route may have been more important.

That route took China's great seafarers such as Zheng He to Malacca (Melaka) and other great ports of the day, with their cargoes of silk, tea, lacquer ware and porcelain. In Malaysia, they were trading for spices like cinnamon and nutmeg, the very culinary treasures that took me to the restaurant Raya in Beijing last week.