The Silk Road Beckons To Us Again.
No, not that Silk Road, made infamous by all the Dark Web/Dark-Market shenanigans.
And ended up giving Bitcoin and all Cryptocurrencies a bad name.
In October 2013, the FBI shut down the Silk Road website and arrested Ross William Ulbricht.
Ulbricht was convicted of eight charges related to Silk Road and was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.
I suppose in any game of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,
Ulbricht would get there using the Genghis Khan connection.
No, this story is definitely not about Ulbricht.
This is about,The Silk Road, named by the German geographer and traveler,
Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen.
"Related to the Red Baron?"
"Yes. He was an uncle of the World War I flying ace Manfred von Richthofen, best known as the "Red Baron."
Richthofen called it "Seidenstrassen" or Silk Routes.
Image Courtesy of The independent
The Silk Road was a name given to any route that led across China to Rome.
It was a 4000-mile trip. At one end was China. At the other end was Rome.
The Silk Road Routes stretched out from China and went everywhere.
India, modern day Iran, Egypt, Africa, Greece, Rome and even the UK.
Silk, Spices, Paper and Gunpowder traveled up along the "Seidenstrassen" Silk Routes into Europe and changed our civilization forever.
Image Courtesey of Pixabay
Somewhere along the line the Ottoman Empire guys had a beef with the West.
And the Silk Road was boycotted and ended up a lame duck.
I wonder why?
The C.I.A wasn't around back then to mess things up.
So it must have been something we said;D~
The Persians and Mongols had horsemen delivering mail and messages riding the length of the Silk Road.
“There is nothing in the world that travels faster than these Persian couriers.
Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor darkness of night
prevents these couriers from completing their designated stages with utmost speed."
Image Courtesy of mongolschinaandthesilkroad
This famous creed was later adapted by the
US Postal Service.
The New version or Silk Road 2.0 is on railtracks.
Its a freight-line running from Yiwu in China and ending in Barking London England.
Yiwu was responsible for more than 60% of Christmas trinkets worldwide in 2013.
Barking was responsible for the English term "Barking Mad," or so the legend goes.
Either way, "Seidenstrasse is back on the menu Boyzz!
Of course it's no non-stop freight service, from Yiwu to London or Madrid.
Because of the various different gauge tracks used by each participating country.
All the freight has to be unloaded and loaded back on to different carriages.
But here is the big news. If you can freight a container from London to China.
You can do it with people to.
My kind of travel journey.
It would be up there with the Trans-Siberian Express.
There is just something about traveling by train that stirs the blood.
Even if we were sitting in the Caboose, on the end of a freight train of Metal Junk, heading for the furnaces of China.
The upside would be, you could come back on the end of containers loaded with the latest Smart Phones.
And it must make the world a safer place if we are traveling and trading direct with China by train.
The Silk Road is back as China train rolls into London
When the East Wind locomotive rumbles into east London this week, it will be at the head of 34 carriages full of socks, bags and wallets for London’s tourist souvenir shops, as well as the dust and grime accumulated through eight countries and 7,456 miles.
The train will be the first to make the 16-day journey from Yiwu in west China to Britain, reviving the ancient trading Silk Road route and shunting in a new era of UK-China relations.
Due to arrive on Wednesday, the train will have passed through China, Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany, Belgium and France before crossing under the Channel and arriving in the east end of London at Barking rail freight terminal.
Faster than a ship, cheaper than a plane, the East Wind won’t be quite the same train that left Yiwu on 2 January. Differing rail gauges in countries along the route mean a single locomotive cannot travel the whole route. But the journey still marks a new departure in the 21st-century global economy. The new train, which will start to run weekly while demand is tested, is part of China’s One Belt, One Road policy – designed to open up the old Silk Road routes and bring new trade opportunities, said Prof Magnus Marsden, an anthropologist at Sussex University’s School of Global Studies, who has been studying the trading patterns in Yiwu. China Railway has already begun rail services to 14 European cities, including Madrid and Hamburg. As a result, Yiwu’s markets are now loaded with hams, cheese and wine from Spain and German beer is available on every corner.
“It’s a new economic geography,” he said. “This is the first train to the UK, but very much part of a new type of commercial route.
Read the Full Article:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/14/china-silk-road-trade-train-rolls-london
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