The bustling ancient Silk Road, which flourished from the Han Dynasty (206 BCE - 220CE) to the Tang Dynasty (618-907), has already been buried by the sands of time. But there are concrete evidences that Chinese silk actually went through this route to the west. Archaeological finds and studies also reveal that western music, which we can no longer hear today, was also introduced into China by the same route.

The ancient Silk Road was in fact more than one, and the routes had changed or branched out over the centuries. As a result, there are different views regarding it stretched and branched out in time. According to the famous Japanese musicologist, Kishibe Shigeo, there were at least three main routes through which music had come into the east, and he names them the southern, middle and northern routes. Mural paintings, relief sculptures and the relics excavated prove that the area to the west of Yangguan and Yumenguan in the Gansu Province, including the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, the Asian region of Russia and India, was an important area where western music was brought into the east. Now rather than simply 'passing through', western music, on its way to China, had mixed with Chinese culture in the cities along the route and evolved into a unique music culture. Indian and Persian music had stayed, developed and evolved in these cities, then passed into Chang'an and further east. Accordingly, the three music routes form three east-west bands of different musical cultures, with important cities on each of the bands.

The northern route is closest to the Gansu Province. The ancient capital of Gaochang, which had been in existence since the Han Dynasty, was an important music hub on this route. Like the nearby city of Dunhuang, Gaochang abounds with traces of ancient Chinese music. Crossed with the Kucha culture from the west and the Huihe (Ouigour) culture from the north, the culture here evolved into a unique form. Concrete evidences of the introduction of western music into the east include a thorough study of a picture of a person playing a four-stringed instrument depicted on a piece of cloth excavated near Gaochang. The instrument was considered native to Turkey at the time of the Sui (581-618) and Tang periods or even earlier. This was an instrument of the Hui people. Its Chinese name during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) was a transliteration of 'Qubuz', its name in Turkish. Further research shows that even the Chinese three-stringed plucked instrument appearing in the late Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) was probably developed from the Persian instrument setaru (in the Iranian language, "se" means "three" and "taru" means "strings") passed through here into China. This then went to the Ryukyus and became jabisen and, later, the shamisen of Japan.

The most important among the three routes of the Silk Road is the middle one. Qiuci, the ancient capital of Kucha, was the hub of music of the Western Regions. Archaeological finds and mural paintings in nearby caves and temples show the close relationship between the lute, flute and harp from the west and the five-stringed pipa, dizi and upright konghou in China and from the collection of the Shosoin of Japan (but the reclining konghou should be a long established instrument in China).

The southern route, with the ancient capital of Khotan as its centre, was also more important than the northern one in terms of the eastward migration of western music. Its development also started earlier than the middle route with Kucha as the centre. In addition to the flute and the harp, the four-stringed lute, rare in Kucha, was also found here. This is very similar to the four-stringed pipa depicted in ancient Chinese drawings and collected in the Shosoin of Japan.

In fact, it is known from ancient Chinese records that foreign music was brought into China or even into the Chinese imperial court through these three routes in Xinjiang in as early as the Northern and Southern Dynasties (420-589), Sui Dynasty and Tang Dynasty. The various cities on the three routes also developed their unique culture. The mural paintings of Dunhuang are an example. In the even earlier Jin Dynasty (265-316), Hexi music, which blended the style of the Han and other nationalities, also appeared in Hexi (west of the Yellow River).

Evidence has also proved that the western music coming to the east through the Silk Road influenced not only China but also Japan and Korea in East Asia. It can be said that the destinations of the music travelling through the ancient Silk Road were China, Japan and Korea, totalling three. In other words, by going eastward, western music has spawned a music with multicultural elements.