Spanning Thousands of Miles and Years: Political Nostalgia and China's Revival of the Silk Road

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lina Benabdallah
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Sand Dunes ◽  
Silk Road ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Politics Of Memory ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Positive Experiences ◽  
Ancient Silk Road ◽  
The Silk Road

Abstract The study of international relations (IR) has paid increasing attention over the last decade or so to the politics of memory, trauma, shame, but to a less extent to the political instrumentalization of positive experiences of the past. Indeed, IR theory rarely engaged the concept of nostalgia and its place within foreign policy making despite its potential for providing a powerful theoretical lens to explain hegemonic power dynamics. Sitting at the intersection of time and space, of time and affect, and of past and present, political nostalgia enables state leaders to move back and forth in time bringing back the past not for the past's sake but for the promise of a prosperous future. This article examines Chinese government's nostalgic borrowings from the Ancient Silk Road in order to associate Xi Jinping's new grand strategy, the New Silk Road to notions of inclusivity and prosperity. Reviving stories about fifteenth-century Chinese admiral Zheng He and reconstructing the history of his maritime navigations through stories and images of camel caravans crossing sand dunes are illustrations of political nostalgia.

scholarly journals International Scientific-Practical Conference “Russia, China, the Great Silk Road: A History of Cross-Cultural Contacts”

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 168-172
Author(s):  
Iuliia A. Azarenko ◽  
Xinhui Bi
Keyword(s):  
Silk Road ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Confucius Institute ◽  
Joint Project ◽  
The Past ◽  
Road Development ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scientific Practical ◽  
The Silk Road ◽  
Practical Conference

The scientific and practical Conference on China and countries along the Silk Road development issues in the past and modern days. The Conference is held annually in the ‘NSU Confucius Institute / Class’ and the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography SB RAS joint project framework. In 2019, among participants were experts and professors from Novosibirsk, Barnaul, Krasnoyarsk, Moscow, Omsk, Almaty, Nanjing, Urumqi.

Zheng He’s Seven Voyages into the Namoli Ocean–the Indian Ocean

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-125
Author(s):  
Wan Ming
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Silk Road ◽  
Clear Understanding ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Specific Meaning ◽  
Historical Issues ◽  
The Silk Road

In the history of the development of human civilization, the Silk Road has been an important route of traffic and exchange between the East and the West. From Zhang Qian’s 張騫 opening up of the Silk Road across the Western Regions (Xiyue 西域) to Zheng He’s 鄭和 sailing to the Western Oceans (xia xiyang 下西洋) more than 1500 years later, China had a continuous desire to explore beyond its borders. At the time of Zheng He, the term “Western Oceans” (xiyang 西洋) had a specific meaning. As shown by the account of Ma Huan 馬歡, who personally joined Zheng He on the voyages, the people of Ming China considered the “Western Oceans” to be the Namoli Ocean (Namoli yang 那没黎洋), later called the Indian Ocean. Thus, it could be concluded that the Western Oceans where Zheng He’s fleet went meant the Indian Ocean. Even today most scholars still divide the Eastern and Western Oceans at Brunei, with no clear understanding of where the Western Oceans to which Zheng He sailed were actually located. It is therefore important to make clear that the Western Oceans in his time referred to the Indian Ocean, before moving on to investigate the purpose of the voyages and related historical issues. Even more important is to point out that Zheng He’s expeditions in the early fifteenth century reflected that Chinese people took to the seas on a scale larger than ever before and joined the maritime and overland silk routes together. The place where this occurred was the Indian Ocean.

scholarly journals THE SILK ROAD AS A COMMON PART OF THE HISTORY OF IRAN AND KAZAK

2021 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sohrab Asgari ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Communication Channels ◽  
Silk Road ◽  
The Other ◽  
Common Part ◽  
The Past ◽  
Royal Road ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Silk Road ◽  
Different Parts

Each country has its own history in which the events and ups and downs of that country are recorded. But countries also have parts of history that they have in common. An international incident or a transnational incident in the past caused countries to have common ground in parts of the history. The Silk Road and trade at that time are common points of history between Iran and Kazakhstan. The Silk Road, which started in the east of China, went west, and divided into two major international routes, one passing through Iran and the other passing through Kazakhstan. The Silk Road in Iran and Kazakhstan had structures that facilitate the passage of caravans, including caravanserais. Iranian cities had an acceptable performance in this particular case. One of the most important tools needed to create an efficient administrative structure and oversee the country's affairs has been to build communication channels. The royal road is an example of this communication route that was created in the Achaemenid period to connect different parts of the country.

Introduction: The Bodhisattva Path and the Christ Path

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
S. Mark Heim
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Geographical Area ◽  
Silk Road ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Theology Of Religions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Buddhist Teaching ◽  
The Silk Road

This book is an experiment with the conviction that there is a comparative dimension in confessional theology. This chapter briefly reviews the case for using sources from other religions in the work of Christian theology. It then describes the particular aim of this text to reflect on the reconciling work of Christ in light of Buddhist teaching. Another section reviews the history of Buddhist-Christian engagement, with special focus on the geographical area of the Silk Road in Central Asia and on the case of Manichaeanism as a tradition overlapping with both Buddhism and Christianity. It also reviews the author’s previously published constructive proposal in theology of religions, as the framework for this work. A final section outlines the plan of the book.

scholarly journals Implementing EjtM3 (European Journal of Translational Myology, Mobility, Medicine) along the silk-road

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paola Arslan ◽  
Barbara Ravara
Keyword(s):  
Muscle Wasting ◽  
Clinical Medicine ◽  
Silk Road ◽  
Journal Title ◽  
Focus Attention ◽  
Seminal Paper ◽  
Marco Polo ◽  
Ancient Silk Road ◽  
The Silk Road

Two main novelties will appear in the second 2018 Issue of the European Journal of Translational Myology demonstrating that the journal is vital and in expansion, one novelty is that the journal is implementing its authorship and readership to broader clinical fields from muscle myology and mobility to clinical medicine and surgery. Consequently, the Editorial Board is also expanding to allow a broader expert evaluation of Authors submitted typescripts. The expanded Editorial Board recently evaluated the option to change the name of the journal from Ejtm to EjtM3 (Myology, Mobility, Medicine), in order to expand the original journal title meaning. Another important novelty is the first BAM Seminal Paper by Damraurer et al. 18 (5): 139-148, 2008. It is now reprinted (with Basic and Applied Myology permission) in this Ejtm 28 (2), 2018. The topic (chemotherapy-induced muscle wasting) was up-dated by one of our Editors stressing the relevance of the BAM 2008 paper to focus attention not only of myologists, but also of oncologists. From 2008, BAM (renamed from 2010 European Journal of Translational Myology) went far beyond the limits of pure Myology. Al last, but hopefully not at least, a series of Rapid Reports from Iranian Authors are paving the pathway Venetia–extreme Orient, along the ancient silk-road. Ejtm will enthusiastically publish clinical activities from surrounding and extreme Orient. The Marco Polo tradition and his bravery seem successfully continuing.

The Orchard of Syon: An Introduction

Traditio ◽  
1958 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 269-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sister Mary Denise
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Medieval Literature ◽  
Devotional Literature ◽  
Critical Research ◽  
The Past ◽  
Spiritual Climate ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

By some inexplicable accident of literary history, The Orchard of Syon, in the nearly five hundred years of its existence, has not found its critical editor, nor is there any study of it available to readers. The first to rescue it from oblivion was Sir Richard Sutton, steward of Syon Monastery in the early sixteenth century, who, as Wynkyn de Worde informs us, found it ‘in a corner by it selfe’ and deemed it worthy of costly publication. Although it belongs to a body of medieval literature which has been in recent years the object of much critical research by medievalists, the work has, so far as modern readers are concerned, continued for over four centuries to lie ‘in a corner by it selfe.’ The energetic surge of vernacular devotional prose in the fourteenth century, not only in England, but in Italy, Germany, and Flanders — countries whose spiritual climate must have been especially favorable to mysticism — did not recede in the fifteenth century. Following upon the age of Chaucer, this century may seem to some present-day scholars literarily poor and unproductive, but it was a great age of English prose; an age, that is, when translations and experiments with original prose in the vernacular were building on the past, borrowing from other languages to meet the needs of the present, and shaping the prose of the future. The Orchard of Syon is an important specimen of this emerging prose, as well as of current devotional literature. Its connection with Syon Monastery, renowned in the history of England and of the Church, gives it added prestige.

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