Some 200 years after the reign of Qin, it is reckoned that half the earth’s population lived under the control of either Rome or China, and there are reports of a few puzzled ambassadors travelling between the two capitals (not to mention all kinds of tall stories: Roman writers imagined the Chinese lived to the age of 200; Chinese writers in their turn claimed that Romans rulers lived in palaces with columns made of crystal and that the people were expert jugglers).
