China

A magnificent earthenware horse with three-colour (sancai) lead glaze from the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE), representing the Silk Road culture of cosmopolitan Tang China. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

The Tang Dynasty, which ruled China from 618 to 907 CE, is regarded by historians as one of the highest points of Chinese civilisation, a cosmopolitan golden age of poetry, art, trade, and religious diversity.

In 221 BC, Qin Shi Huang became the first emperor of a unified China, creating the administrative framework of a country that has endured for over two thousand years and beginning the construction of the Great Wall.

The Silk Road was not a single road but a network of trade routes linking China to Rome, facilitating the exchange of goods, ideas, religions, and diseases for over a millennium.