The Maritime Silk Road consists of two main routes, one is the East China Sea route from China to the Korean Peninsula and the Japanese archipelago, and the other is the South China Sea route to Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean.

Through these two sea passages, China's silk, porcelain and tea are sold overseas, while overseas countries' jewelry, spices and other products are continuously imported into China.

Among all kinds of imported goods in ancient China, the number of spices was the largest, so the Maritime Silk Road was also called "Spice Road", and all kinds of imported spices greatly enriched the connotation of China's fragrance culture.

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Historical background of the Maritime Silk Road;

The embryonic form of the Maritime Silk Road existed in the Qin and Han Dynasties. The earliest known historical record of maritime communication between China and foreign countries comes from Hanshu Geography. At that time, China was in contact with countries in the South China Sea. Unearthed cultural relics show that the exchange between China and foreign countries may have been earlier than that in the Han Dynasty. ?

Before the mid-Tang Dynasty, China's main channel to the outside world was the overland Silk Road. Later, due to the war and the shift of economic center of gravity, the Maritime Silk Road replaced land as the main channel for trade exchanges between China and foreign countries. In the Tang Dynasty, there was a sea route along the southeast coast of China called "Guangzhou Tonghai Island", which was the name of the earliest Maritime Silk Road in China.

With a total length of 14000 km, this route was the longest ocean route in the world at that time, passing through 100 countries and regions. During the Song and Yuan Dynasties, it was an important carrier of human historical activities and cultural and economic exchanges between the East and the West, covering more than half of the earth.

People's Network-Visiting the "Nanjing Heritage" on the Maritime Silk Road