China is the hometown of silk. Silk is one of the important characteristics of Chinese civilization, which has a lot to do with China's etiquette system, culture art, customs, science technology. The emperor used silk to show his authority, the officials used silk to mark his rank; the literati wrote poems to chant silk, the painters splashed ink on the silk made of silk; the common people offered sacrifices to all kinds of silkworm gods prayed for a high yield of silk, while the imperial court issued decrees to advise the silkworm, evaluated the local officials' achievements. Two of the four inventions are directly related to silk. The original meaning of "paper" is the deposit of hairy silk in the process of silk making. The invention of printing is directly related to the letterpress printing on silk. The printed silk fabrics unearthed Mawangdui Han tomb have been a large area of colorful overprint, nearly a thousand years earlier than the official Tang Dynasty woodblock printing. Therefore, it can be said that the embossed printing on silk is the ancestor of the engraving printing of later generations. In addition, the development of the maritime Silk Road has also directly promoted the practice improvement of the compass.

Silk is only a simple expensive clothing material, but also plays an important role in currency function in a long history. For China, "silk" is only a commodity, but also a currency. It can be used only to pay the salaries of soldiers, but also to pay for the purchase of bulk commodities such as horses. China uses silk to buy animal husbandry products of grassland tribes, while grassland people sell transport these silks to the west along the silk road. It is in this process that silk has realized the transformation currency to commodity. It also explains that Roman Byzantine gold coins are often found at the east end of the "Silk Road", while Chinese copper coins are rarely found in the west, because silk itself is the currency of the silk road.