Such assumptions are flawed. In the Tang, for example, international links in diplomacy and trade were extraordinarily wide. Temples and monasteries were built in China for Buddhists, Christians, Muslims and Manichaeans. On the Silk Road, manuscript finds have been made in Persian, Sogdian, Syriac and even Hebrew; in the other direction, in Japanese and Korean. Though, like all cultures, it knew periods of retrenchment, China, in fact, has always been a civilisation open to outside influences. During the Tang, the Silk Road extended west to the Mediterranean and east to Japan. Its influence on
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