Foreign Influences

The fabled Silk Road was both the mechanism and the manifestation of commercial and cultural exchange between China and the West. Material and intellectual wealth important to the development of numerous cultures traveled these routes from the Mediterranean to China. From the fifth to the tenth century the ideas, technologies, and religions that came into the country along the trade routes enhanced philosophical discourse and the arts, transforming China’s landscape with magnificent Buddhist cave temples and towering pagodas. The convergence of vibrant trade, nomadic warrior culture, Buddhism, and ancient Chinese traditions brought transformative and lasting changes to China’s political, religious, and visual culture.