28 China in World History
campaign, and in 134 bce began a series of military campaigns against
the Xiongnu nomads, ultimately pushing them far back into central
Asia and away from the Han centers of wealth and power. His suc-
cessors discontinued Han Wudi’s aggressive approach, but they suc-
cessfully maintained a chain of guarded defensive watchtowers far into
central Asia, and they refused to send tribute, thus depriving the Xion-
gnu court of its main source of booty. The Xiongnu gradually splintered
into several groups, including one that allied with the Han and settled
inside the Chinese walls.
Han relations with the Xiongnu were to have profound conse-
quences for Han relations with the outside world and for Chinese-no-
mad relations in subsequent ages. Even as the Han Chinese came to
defi ne their empire and their civilization in self-conscious contrast with
the “barbarian” nomads on their borders, they also absorbed many
aspects of that nomadic culture into the Chinese identity. Chinese meth-
ods of warfare were profoundly shaped by nomadic horsemanship and
archery. Several Han emperors became very fond of nomadic dress,
food, music, and dance, and such attractions spread to many in the
Han social elite as well.
Under the protection of Chinese forces in its western hinterlands,
trade fl ourished along a whole network of routes through central Asia
that became known collectively in the nineteenth century as the Silk
Roads. Some of the silks and precious metals the Chinese gave to the
Xiongnu as gifts or bribes eventually found their way, through many
intermediary hands, to Afghanistan, India, Persia, and eventually Rome.
Han Chinese, especially in the elite, developed a strong fascination with
“exotic” goods from beyond the western borders of the empire. They
imported many things from Central Asia, including carpets, clothing,
musical instruments, elixirs that promised immortality, new types of
fruits and dairy products, and white facial powder, dubbed “barbarian
powder,” which adorned the faces of aristocratic Han women and can
still be seen today worn by Japanese Geisha.^2
Parthian merchants frequently served as middlemen in the East-West
trade of the Han era, and Indian and Chinese merchants also developed
a growing seaborne trade southward from the southernmost Chinese
port city of Guangzhou, through the Southeast Asian lands of Malaya,
Sumatra, and Burma, and across the Indian Ocean to Ceylon and India.
By the late Han period, much of the Chinese silk that made its way to
Rome traveled by sea through many intermediate hands past India and
on to the Mediterranean. In turn, by the late Han, Indian merchants
and Buddhist monks carrying their scriptures, artworks, images, and