The ancient Romans in China

Searching about the battle of Carrhae, i came across to this.

....Happily, I now have suddenly discovered the source for this account, thanks to an article in The Economist of December 18, 2004. The theory was originally that of Homer Dubs, a professor of Chinese at Oxford University, proposed in 1955. According to him, about 10,000 Romans may have been captured by the Parthians. Pliny the Elder said that some of these were used as guards on their eastern frontier. According to Dubs, some of these may have escaped to join the Huns (this probably means the Hsiung-nu, or Xiongn�). There we get to Chinese records. Dubs says that in 36 BC, a Chinese assault on the Hun ruler Zhizhi netted some prisoners, including 145 Romans. However, the Chinese records do not actually say that these were Romans, just that they fought in a "fish-scale formation," i.e. overlapping shields, which presumably only the Romans were using at the time. They were settled at a frontier post in Kansu (Gansu), called "Liqian," which at some point was the Chinese word for "Rome," now supposedly the village of Zhelaizhai. This theory has had enthusiasts in China, including local officials in Gansu, and a Chinese scholar, Guan Yiquan, who spent the last 20 years of his life (from 1978) writing an unpublished book on the topic. None of this is decisive as evidence, but there is enough local enthusiasm (for tourism) that a statue of a Roman soldier (or at least the local impression of what a Roman soldier would look like) stands in the nearby town of Yongchang. Some Chinese in the area now claim to be descendants of the Romans......

http://www.friesian.com/iran.htm

That's pretty interesting.  It also makes you wonder if the opposite might have happened at some point.  You know, Chinese soldiers captured by the Parthians, forced to fight the Romans, then the Romans capturing the Chinese soldiers.

Tales of Romans in China are wildly exagerated..

The pale skinned men defending a city in fish-scale formation are almost certainly Central Asian troops.

Other versions of 'evidence' have been Chinese ruins of a 'forum' (rectangular market place) etc...

This story initially come from some wild imagination of some self-declare history researchers, and was quickly adoptted by some stupid chinese historians and some local chinese officials from the counties in GanShu province in where those captured Roman soldiers were supposed to be settled embranced those nonsense, because, hi, it would be good for tourism ! If you want to believe those fantansy, from the same chinese source, JuliasCaesar actually faked his death in the Rome Senate, and retired to china, and even convert to budalism ! Not be outdone, some other chinese researchers claimed Jesus Christ was actually a chinese !

Originally posted by Scytho-Sarmatian O.K. Mars, don't get carried away.  No one on this thread is saying anyone was converted to "Budalism."  It's just that the evidence about the Roman soldiers in China is actually pretty credible and it has been mentioned in legitimate history texts.  At any rate, it is pretty well established that the ancient Romans had contact with China via the Silk Road.  That may not have been direct contact, but it was enough contact for the Romans to know that China existed (and vice-versa).

Exactly the opposite (in the question of the roman prisoners). There are a lot of threads in this forum proving the absolute lack of sources and facts for the hypothesis

i once saw the pics of those Romans on Chinese webset.www.sohu.com and Chinese media sent a group including historians and journalists to visit and make investigation in there,Chinese Roman was a big and interesting topic.They are absolutely european.

From various sources, we know the Han empire did acknowledge there was another big empire on the opposite end of the continent. This should be owe to the silk road. Large amount of Roman coins were unearthed in China in a Han nobles tomb decades ago. This is a solid evidence at least proved the indirect contact by both empires. And the Chinese had a special term for Roman in the records at that moment is another evidence. Naturally, the Han would inquire the source of those coins and, from the mouth of words of the central Asians, it would get pretty much information.  When the trade via the Silk road was prosperous, profits gained by the middlemen soared, which kept the prices up. The Chinese were pretty clear that businessmen from the West reign were not their goods final buyer. They were sent to a more remote area which the Chinese had no contact. The process was definitely lucrative. It is believed the envoys sent by the Han emperor to the west were carried the orders of finding the last buyer and avoiding the exploition of the middlemen. Historical records shows one of those envoy was very close to the Roman border, he was finally stopped by the Persia Gulf after a fatigue long trip. The companied local official cheated him that where he stood now was the west end of the world which finally made his return.