China and the West on the Silk Roads

The term “Silk Road” (Seidenstrasse), coined by F. von Richtofen in the 19th century, refers to the network of land routes that, since ancient times, have facilitated not only the circulation of goods from one end of Eurasia to the other, but also, and above all, the movement of ideas. The need to refer to the “Silk Roads” in the plural has been repeatedly emphasised, including not only the continental routes but also the maritime routes that connected the southern coast of China with the Mediterranean.
The essays collected here, ranging from the Warring States period (4th century BCE) to the present day, present the often overlooked reality of contacts between China and the West from different angles: linguistic, literary, historical and religious. They certainly do not represent an illusory desire to provide an exhaustive historical overview, but can be defined as a series of glimpses into a constant phenomenology in the history of Eurasia.
All the contributions in the volume, however, share an essential aspect of intercultural contact and encounter: perception. As a true “cultural lens” that directs the gaze in a certain direction or hermeneutic path, the perception of the Other is inevitably a selective act that reveals not so much the integral reality of what is perceived as the cultural frame of reference of the perceiver.