PICTURING THE PAST

A new series of picture books for children will teach the history of China and the Silk Road, Yang Yang reports.

"More than one hundred years after the collapse of the Han Dynasty (202BC-220), the Roman Empire, which favored the Chinese silk trade, gradually began to fall apart and eventually split into two halves. The eastern part, which became known as the Byzantine Empire, continued to trade with China. Archaeologists have since found that there was a novel thing that people from Byzantine sold to China. It was glass cup."

This is an excerpt from a volume about commerce and trade from a series of picture books about Chinese history. Below the Chinese text is a vivid picture showing a busy spot on the Silk Road, depicting people dressed in the style of the Tang Dynasty (618-907). Among them, a Chinese man can be seen observing a glass cup being presented to him by a foreign businessman from the Western Regions outside Yumen Pass.