Silk Roads and the British Museum

Not one Silk Road, but many paths criss-crossing the length and breadth of the Eurasian continent , Japan to Northumberland, Ceylon to Siberia, along which goods were traded together with ideas, religions, and skills.
   
This large ceramic horse was fired during the rule of the Chinese Tang dynasty about 1, 400 years ago. The Tang elite revered these steeds who ‘sweated blood’ and soldier/merchants would travel to the highlands of Ferghana far to the West to acquire them, either by duress or tribute or trade. Silk was often the currency they were exchanged for. Bolts of plain silk were folded tightly into thick narrow ‘ingots’ for ease of transportation. A horse might cost 22 ‘ingots’ of silk (and to give some perspective a good quality slave was only worth 4)

Living up in rural Cumbria, travelling to London to see a major exhibition is quite an adventure. In itself it is a journey highlighting cultural contrast and challenging self-definitions; rural to urban, local to global, country to capital. How much do I identify with this seething metropolis and the world class intellectual and artistic excellence of the museums I visit so rarely?
As a young person visiting over 50 years ago I remember feelings of connection and a shared British ownership towards our Capital and its and my place in the world. Now that feeling seems very remote.
I remember being welcomed by doormen and women into the museums and public events with a graciousness and friendliness that implied that as well as being a guest, being British meant I had in some way a shared ownership of the space and artifacts. Today, I am a tourist neither more nor less entitled to ownership or pride in the institution or event than the visitor from abroad I stand next to in the queue. My bag is searched by polite but impersonal staff, my ticket is scanned digitally, the survey at the end only wants to know who I am or where I come from for statistics.
True, I feel a sense of awe at the attention to research detail, the artistic spectacle, the effort that’s been put into the exhibitions to engage as wide a portion of the populous as is possible, and I have a sense of privilege that it is possible to see these things and be open to new interpretations but this is no different to other exhibitions in Paris, Shen yang, Sydney 
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But maybe this is no different to how those travellers, merchants, soldiers, pilgrims felt towards the places they lived in and passed through on the Eurasian roads they trod crossing east and west, north and south. The journey, lasting sometimes years, would invariably change their outlook, link them to other places cultures and ideas. They would change, home would change, until upon returning they might feel their birthplace less of home and their own, than the journey itself.