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Evidence from recently excavated elite tombs at Majiayuan, southeast Gansu province, reveal that foreign cultures had a greater impact on Chinese culture than previously thought. Among the finds from these tombs are chariots, which have decorative elements that closely relate to both a royal chariot of the Achaemenid Empire and textiles from the Altai region of southern Siberia, suggesting contact between the elites of these regions. Later wheeled vehicles and architectural elements from the Shaanxi province suggest that these exchanges continued well into the Qin dynasty.

Dr. Raphael Wong is Associate Curator at the Hong Kong Palace Museum. He received his DPhil in archaeology from the University of Oxford, focusing on China and the steppe of the 1st millennium BC. He worked previously at the Art Museum and in the Department of Fine Arts of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he was involved in exhibitions and catalogue projects, such as 'Radiant Legacy: Ancient Chinese Gold from the Mengdiexuan Collection'.