Silk Road in the Song dynasty (960-1279)

By the early 10th century, trading activities conducted along China's long northern and western frontiers faced greater military obstacles than did Southwestern Silk Road or South Sea trade. The southern ports of Nanhai (modern-day Guangzhou) and Thăng Long (modern-day Hanoi) offered products prized since the Han Dynasty, such as "incense, drugs, elephant tusk, rhinoceros horn, tortoiseshell, coral, parrots, kingfishers (and) peacocks." Numerous local chieftains throughout Southwestern China approached the Song shortly after the dynasty's founding because control of trade contacts with the larger courts of the region would be an important aspect of their political authority. Rulers of the Song preferred trade in the Southwestern Silk Road region, where vassal kingdoms displayed much less aggression than did their northern counterparts, and rare commodities could be obtained in the course of observing tributary protocol.

The Dali kingdom lay at the center of regional trade in the Song dynasty. By the late Tang period, travel from the Burmese Pyè kingdom to Dali took approximately 71 days and travel from Dali to Chengdu took 75 days. Merchants travelled mostly on foot while goods were transported by mules oxen, or horses Traders likely did not travel the entire length of these routes, as evidence from later periods demonstrates, but instead focused their trading activity on particular circuits, selling their goods in prominent market towns to others who continued to forward these goods along other set routes. Tansen Sen writes that the earlier Nanzhao kingdom had kept the region at peace and its trade flourishing through the mid-9th century. In the Song the Dali maintained trade ties with its southern neighbors such as Bagan, which offered gold and cowries to continue trade links. Dali, in turn, supplied horses through Guangxi to the Song court, with which the Yunnanese kingdom also engaged in salt trade. This trend toward trade-centered ties would have a dramatic impact on imperial Chinese relations with these emerging frontier kingdoms. The Chinese leadership revived relations with Dali shortly after the fall of Kaifeng to the invading Jurchen and the establishment of the Southern Song capital at Hangzhou. The commodity that drew the Song court to Dali was horses, and at its height, this trade supplied around 1500 horses annually to Kaifeng from Yunnan. In sharp contrast to the once prevailing view that the Chinese court pursued relations with its neighbors through a "one size fits all" tributary system of ritual ties, it is important to note that trade shaped the Chinese empire's relations with the emerging kingdoms of Southeast Asia at the same time that debates about border security informed the court's policy toward its northern neighbors. When we take into account the Song's relations with kingdoms and smaller polities along the Southwestern Silk Road, we more easily see the Chinese empire in this period as flexible and adaptable in its relations with its neighbors, contrary to the inwardly-focused depiction of the Song in early Chinese historical literature.