The UNESCO Courier - Volume 2023, Issue 5, 2023

Usually attributed to the German geographer Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen, the term “Silk Roads” – or Seidenstraße – was used in the 19th century by German historians and geographers exploring connections that existed two millennia ago between the Mediterranean area during the Roman Empire and the Han Dynasty China. Silk caught the imagination of scholars because it was (and is) a luxury product that was easily transportable – and worn in imperial Rome.

I began my professional career in World Heritage research and conservation in 2002. I was invited by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage of China to conduct the assessment, for the Periodic Report, of the sites of Mount Taishan; the Temple and Cemetery of Confucius and the Kong Family Mansion in Qufu; and the Ancient Building Complex in the Wudang Mountains (inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1987 for the former and in 1994 for the latter two). Local authorities in China were very eager to inscribe their heritage sites on the World Heritage List back then, and we were thus under a lot of pressure. Concepts such as heritage routes, cultural landscapes and 20th century heritage were all still relatively new for China’s cultural relic protection field.

As Nelson Mandela once said: “It always seems impossible until it is done!” During its 38th session in June 2014 in Doha, Qatar, the World Heritage Committee inscribed The Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang’an-Tianshan Corridor on the World Heritage List. The serial property extends some 5,000 kilometres and encompasses 33 component sites in three countries, China, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

Samarkand, Bukhara, Herat... cities of dreams. Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Akbar... characters who marked history. Avicenna, Khayyam, Ulugh Beg... thinkers who transformed worldviews. These names were inscribed down through the ages on a territory that corresponds not to a specific region of the ancient world but to a permanent crossroads of exchanges between peoples: Central Asia. Since antiquity, Scythians, Hsiung-nu and Khitai roamed this area, from the Caspian Sea to the Chinese border, setting the foundations for the great civilizations of Asia and Europe.

Ancient annals describe how at the time of the eastern Zhou (770-256 BC) the Qi kingdom possessed many ships that plied through the Yellow Sea. Under the western Han dynasty (206 BC-24 AD) sea-borne trade became an official State activity, and Canton became a major port from which Chinese ships regularly sailed to trade with what is now Viet Nam, Malaysia, Sumatra, India and the Middle East. The return journey along this route took four years.

What idea do new gener a Silk Roads have of this legendary route? What are tions living along thetheir representations of it? What attracts their curiosity? It was to address these questions that UNESCO launched the international photography contest Youth Eyes on the Silk Roads in 2018.