They departed from Xi'an, the starting point of the Silk Road, and crossed the loess
plateau and the Gansu Corridor in motor vehicles, on camels or by horse-drawn carts. They
trekked more than 3, 000 miles in the vast desert area and finally arrived in the ancient city of
Kashgar (present-day Kashi) at the foot of the Pamirs. Kashgar is regarded as a commercial
center on the old Silk Road.
This is the first international expedition permitted by the Chinese government to
conduct a survey along the heartland of the ancient Silk Road in Chinese territory. As a
Chinese member of the expedition, the writer has learned from on-the-spot investigations and
the symposium held in Urumqi that scholars from various countries have made many new
discoveries on the ancient Silk Road that linked China with central Asia, west Asia, south
Asia, east Asia and even Siberia. Studies of these new discoveries in connection with the
archaeological findings of scholars of various countries in their own countries provide new
grounds of argument concerning the directions of the Silk Road