DID THE ROMANS REACH CHINA? Marcus Aurelius equine statue The first foreigners to arrive on the Chinese coast were probably Indians and Romans.The earliest recorded official contact between China and ancient Rome was in A.D. 166 when, according to a Chinese account, a Roman envoy, possibly sent by Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, arrived in China. This is the only meeting between the great civilizations of Rome and China of which a record survives. The Romans referred to the people of the remote East as the Seres—the Silk People. The term may have referred to tribes in Central Asia not the Chinese. The Romans, by the way, thought silk came from trees.Romans are believed by some to have made it as far east as the Gobi Desert around 2,000 years ago. The people in Zhelaizhai, a village in Gansu Province in western China near the Qilain mountains, insist they are descendants of Romans and say the curly hair, straight noes, and light-colored eyes that some of them have proves it.The Romans th...
