This is Randi Hacker with another Postcard from Asia from the KU Center for East Asian Studies.

Those of you who have been paying attention to Postcards these past three years are already aware that China takes credit for many of the world’s firsts, including pasta, gunpowder and golf. Well, China can add another first to its list though it may not be as eager to take credit for it. Apparently, material goods such as silk and spices were not the only things Eastern merchants brought to the West along the Great Silk Road. No. They also brought the Black Death. Biologists have traced the three main outbreaks of the Plague in Europe back to an original strain that came from China along that same Great Silk Road. If Monty Python had known this, perhaps instead of Eric Idle shouting “Bring out your dead!” we’d have had Jackie Chan shouting “ba si ren dai chu lai!”

With special thanks to David Boyd for this text, from the KU Center for East Asian Studies, I’m Randi Hacker. Wish you were here.