The Golden Peaches from Samarkand – like nothing else – stand pars pro toto for all exotic things that reached China during one of its most cosmopolitan and prosperous eras in history. Eminent scholars like Berthold Laufer and Edward H. Schafer masterfully demonstrated the earliest exchange of exotics between China and regions from across Eurasia by using linguistic, historical, and archaeological data. Beyond doubt, tremendous progress has been made in all these fields ever since.

With this series of lectures, we bring together scholars from across the world and from diverse fields to present innovative insights into the earliest relationships between China with Inner Asia and the Ancient Near East.