In recent years, research on the Silk Road has become a popular subject in China, while receiving increasing attention from the world at large. Peking University's Institute of Area Studies (PKUIAS) held a New Buds Salon on the theme of “The Silk Road and Area Studies,” and invited Prof. Hsin-Kang Chang, former president of the City University of Hong Kong, an internationally renowned scientist and educator, to attend the salon and have a talk with students. Prof. Chang reviewed the early history of Oriental studies in Europe and area studies in the late 20th century in the US, and critically examined their experience and performance. He also shared his understanding and thoughts on academic frontiers from his long-term observation and personal experiences during his stay in countries along the Silk Road.

Prof. Chang pointed out that when people think of the Silk Road, they imagine it to be like a single, straight road, while in fact it consists of four different passages or routes. The first passage was used by people living in the northern frigid zone of Eurasia. The northernmost part of Eurasia is in the Arctic, and south of it is an uninhabitable permafrost area and a difficult-to-access forest area. Farther south is a huge expanse of grasslands having a width of 200 kilometers, which ranges from the Great Khingan Mountains, in the east, to the northern shore of the Black Sea in Ukraine, in the west. These grasslands consist of only shrubs and grass tufts, and few mountains. Early human interaction may have started when tribes passed through these grasslands. Farther south is a temperate zone with a lower latitude. Temperatures there were higher and the rainfall greater, which made the area suitable for people to settle down and plant. Eventually, this gave rise to a string of oasis communities connected by trade linking the cities of central Asia while bringing together the peoples of cultivated land and desert — this trade route was traditionally called the Silk Road. In addition to linking East and West, the interaction between North and South also contributed to form a transportation network; for example, the so-called southern Silk Road linked people living in temperate and tropical regions from the east of Shanhaiguan to the Yunnan–Guizhou–Sichuan region and then to Myanmar and Bangladesh. This was the road along which Zhuge Liang, in the The Romance of Three Kingdoms, was said to have caught and released Meng Huo seven times to subdue him. Early coastal people often used ships, and their trade routes formed a Silk Road near the coastal line. Around the 3rd century BC, Egypt, after the period of Alexander's rule, was controlled by the Greek-speaking Ptolemaic Dynasty. These Hellenic Egyptians found that they could enter the Indian Ocean from the Red Sea. Indian Ocean winds blow from south to north for half a year, then, for the remainder of the year, they blow from north to south. This is the monsoon, also known as the trade winds. From then on, maritime exchanges were no longer limited to ships along the coastline; they could now travel via deep-sea routes, which could be extended to farther areas with the help of the monsoon. The grasslands route, the oasis route, the southern coastal route and the maritime route together formed the transportation network known as the Silk Road.

In the 1st century BC, Zhang Qian of the Western Han Dynasty traveled from Chang'an (today's Xi'an) to today's Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. Cultural exchanges between the Han ethnic group and other ethnic groups were frequent, and the civilization of the Chinese central plain was quickly spread via the Silk Road. Seven hundred years later, Xuanzang made his way to India and further enhanced the influence of the Tang Dynasty in the western regions. Another 700 years later, the Moroccan Ibn Battuta traveled from home for the Hajj, then went on to pass through 44 countries on a 75,000-mile journey. Both Xuanzang and Ibn Battuta recorded their journeys after returning home. Their books, Traveling Notes of the Western Regions in Great Tang Dynasty and Travels of Ibn Battuta, were an important contribution for later generations to understand the Silk Road.

Prof. Chang explained that area studies originated in the US in the mid-20th century. Before then it was called Oriental studies. Our understanding of world history today is largely due to Oriental studies in Europe during the past 200 years, which can be said to have made six major achievements: the establishment of Egyptian studies, the exploration of the Mesopotamian civilization, the exploration of the Indo-European language family, the discovery of the Indus Valley civilization, the discovery of the grassland empires, and the re-emergence of the Silk Road.

Despite the great contributions of Oriental studies, after the US became the world's strongest country, in the mid-20th century, the field declined. As a result, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, and the Ford Foundation jointly supported the establishment of area studies disciplines in many well-known universities in the US. They were committed to cultivating a group of academics who were knowledgeable about a wide range of aspects of a given area, such as its customs, peoples, legal systems and social conditions, without necessarily focusing on one particular discipline. Although in the beginning this concept of training students was not accepted by some universities, as time went on, area studies gradually came to be accepted by academia.

Some people have criticized area studies specialists as being jacks-of-all-trades but masters of none. In this regard, Prof. Chang pointed out that such an evaluation is not scientific. That is because those who are engaged in area studies must have one arena in which they are the expert, while, at the same time, they need to know about other related knowledge, just like the line in Wang Wei's poem that reads: “A plume of smoke hangs straight up-and-down over the vast desert; the ball of sun sets on the long river.” In other words, an area specialist needs to “know everything about something, while knowing something about everything.”

The perspective of area studies is very broad and its research methods are diverse. For example, when comparing the modernization processes experienced by China, India and Iran, and their respective cultural characteristics, China can be regarded as a continuous civilization. It is neither a nation state, nor an empire. No matter whether you consider the ancient Chinese classics, such as the Zuo Zhuan and the Spring and Autumn Annals, or the belief systems of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism—and no matter what political power has ruled—Chinese civilization has existed in the land of the Yangtze River, the Yellow River and the Pearl River basins for thousands of years. It is our common spiritual home. India can be seen as a religious society that has been reborn several times but never successfully transformed its genes. No aspect of Indian life can be separated from religion, and the religious identity of Indians remains strong. However, Iran is different from the former two. Persia has always been a very important part of Asia. Located on the east side of Mesopotamia, it quickly learned from the civilization of Mesopotamia. Similar to China, Persia was also equipped with the duality of farming and animal husbandry, with nomadic life and agricultural life coexisting in its culture. Persia's culture has had great influence on human thought. Many branches or aspects of Persian religion have had a major impact on world religions, such as Zoroastrian cosmology, the worship of the sun god Mitra, Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism and Nestorianism. It is worth noting that Islam did not enter Persia until 650 AD. After 650 AD, the Persian Sassanid Empire was wiped out by the Arab armies, and the Persians were all forcibly converted to Islam. Today, around 98 percent of Iranians believe in Islam. Although scientific works of mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, medicine and many other fields were written in Arabic, their authors were all Persian, and many social systems in the Arab world are a continuation of Persia's. It can be said that the Arabs assimilated the Persians religiously, but the Persians assimilated the Arabs systematically and ideologically.

Regarding the relationship between academic value and utilitarianism, Prof. Chang expressed his belief that today's Chinese scholars have both the need to serve a certain purpose and a personal love of academics and the pursuit of truth and goodness, just as did many scholars of Oriental studies in history. As was written in the Book of History, “Only by meticulous observation and whole-hearted concentration can we stick to a fair and just way.” If we only regard area studies as a utilitarian academic field instead of pursuing truth, goodness and beauty, we might fail both in our academic research and our effort to serve a certain purpose.

In France, for example, the earliest university was the Collège de Sorbonne, which was founded in 1253 to serve the church. Around the time of François I (r. 1515–1547), the French Renaissance began. François I believed that the college was too utilitarian and served only the church rather than academics, so he built Le Collège de France near the Sorbonne to encourage creativity in academic research. From then on, the scientific exploration and creativity of Europeans began its ascendance, which saw the development of such fields as anatomy in the 15th century; double-entry bookkeeping in the 16th century; Newtonian physics and calculus in the 17th century; cytology, physiology, and the steam engine in the 18th century; the theory of evolution and electromagnetism in the 19th century; and quantum theory and the theory of relativity in the 20th century, among others. However, during the same period, countries in East Asia made little contribution in related fields. Was it because of insufficient economic strength, or lack of talent, or other reasons? For area studies specialists, this is worth thinking about.

Prof. Chang went on to say that, in the new era, it is necessary to re-examine the new Silk Road and generate some new ideas. China is both a landlocked country and a maritime country. As a country short of energy resources except coal, China needs to import large amounts of energy resources. This requires that China's energy strategy take into full consideration the safety and reliability of both land and sea transportation. Regarding the maritime route, especially in strategically important areas, it is necessary to coordinate with the maritime powers to ensure our right of navigation. In the “greater Central Asia” area, China also needs to cooperate with relevant countries for mutual benefit and make the “New Silk Road” stable and peaceful.

In terms of the New Silk Road and area studies, Prof. Chang raised several questions. First, Chinese people's current understanding of the Silk Road is insufficient, and talent in related fields is also lacking, while carrying out the Belt and Road Initiative requires that the cultivation of talent be accelerated. Second, some countries considered as China's “natural partners” actually have an insufficient understanding of China. Their reasons for joining the “Belt and Road” may be to address certain needs, but at the same time they are somewhat wary. Third, current projects mainly involve the construction of infrastructure, including seaports, airports, railways, highways and power plants. However, now the world has entered an era of network economy, and it is necessary to increase the number of cooperative projects in e-commerce and big data or artificial intelligence that are related to the “Belt and Road.”