In 138BC, Emperor Wudi (Liu Che) of the Western Han Dynasty (206BC-8AD) dispatched the diplomat Zhang Qian to the West Regions (referring to the west areas of the Jade Pass including today's Xinjiang and parts of Central Asia). This mission opened the pathway to the West Regions and created conditions for exchanges between China and Central Asia as well as India. Zhang Qian hence made great contributions in history. During the Han Dynasty (206BC-220AD), Iran was governed by the Parthia Empire, which was the most powerful country in West Asia, and the Han Dynasty was also in a period of great prosperity. Both countries wanted to develop friendly relationship in all aspects, hence important pathways connecting the two countries emerged, which was known in history as the famous Silk Road, originating from the Weishui River valley of China and leading to countries along the Mediterranean via ancient Iran, the key area linking the East and the West. Since the second century, the Silk Road has promoted intercommunions between China and countries to its west during a long period of more than 1,000 years, thus making great contributions to economic and cultural exchanges between the East and the West in the world.

Culture, science and technology, as well as many other aspects of the Han civilization were more advanced than that of other peoples. During the Western and Eastern Han dynasties, Chinese techniques of producing iron weapons and digging wells and channels were passed to Central Asia. In the second century BC, the Fergana tribe in now Uzbekistan learned iron-casting technique from the Chinese people, and later the technique was passed to Russia. The Parthia Empire imported iron weapons at that time from China, which was later introduced into Rome. Besides, the Persians learned that the Chinese could make copper mirrors and arrowheads with copper-nickel-zinc alloy, which was called Chinese Stone in Arabic. From the 7th century BC to the 5th century BC, people lived in today's Nileke County of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region began to exploit copper mine. According to archaeological findings, there were lifting tools used for pumping water from the pits, many of which were balancing stone sinkers composed of huge screes. Such stone sinkers were much alike as findings in ancient Tonglu Mountain mine during the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476BC) and the Warring States Period (475-221BC), which was located in today's Daye, Hubei Province. It is obviously proved that the technique was passed from the Central Plains (ancient China). The technique of digging underground channels was passed to the former Persia and Oman as early as in 146BC, and later to India.

At the same time, western arts were passed to China through the same pathway. For example, carving art of ancient Greece was first passed to Afghanistan and India of Asia, absorbing techniques of the Indian art, and formed the Gandhara Art, which features adopting Greek decoration techniques to describ Indian themes. Sometimes it directly imitated Roman themes which were applied to drawing, carving, industrial arts and architecture, creating arts of Indian styles. People in Xinjiang learned artistic characteristics of ancient Greece and Rome from it. The carpets woven by people from Xinjiang contained cloud and thunder patterns of Chinese style as well as border decoration patterns of Roman style of Greece.

In terms of the art of stone carvings, external influence and more and more new themes increased. Both contents and forms of stone carving art of the Western and Eastern Han dynasties were enriched. Themes and styles of animal patterns changed a great deal. For example, animal images of garden carving gradually disappeared, and developed into large stone lions, stone horses and kylin. While garden carvings and carved animal patterns and carved sculptures were influenced by themes and expression styles from the Western Regions. Garden stone carvings of lions and winged beasts came from Persia, indicating that China adopted such novel art styles through exchanges with these countries. There were still images of camels, tiger-eating deer, and fighting between tiger and camel. Since it was the Ship of Desert in Central Asia, the camel had far reaching significance to the Silk Road and transportation in the northwest, hence it became a new theme in decorative art. Famous stone relief figures of the Han Dynasty included themes from the Western Regions such as lions, elephants and camels. Eagle-headed beasts of the Parthia art and giraffe images of Ethiopia and Somalia were also absorbed by the Han stone-relief art. There were also findings of feathered immortals and naked portraits, which, in artistic conception, had the same techniques with those of Greece and Rome. Also this indicated that a new artistic style combining Chinese traditional art and foreign art was formed in the Han Dynasty.

During the Western Han Dynasty, Emperor Ming Di sent 18 people to India to learn Buddhism, and got a portrait of Sakyamuni drawn on cotton cloth by King Udayana, which was the first Buddhist painting introduced to China. During this period, honeysuckle patterns of Greece and Rome became popular in China, and later became China's folk decorative patterns with vivid images, precise designs and lucid colors.

Ancient music in China was well-developed, and Chinese ancestors made a large number of different musical instruments and found the 5-tone scale of gong, shang, jue, zhi and yu, and the 12-tone swing of huangzhong, dalu, taicou, jiazhong, guxi, zhonglu, ruibin, linzhong, yize, nanlu, wushe and yingzhong. After the reign of Emperor Wu Di of the Western Han Dynasty, music of the Western Regions was introduced to the Central Plains, with compositions and musical instruments, which undoubtedly greatly enriched Chinese music. Chinese musicians, adopting music from India and Central Asia, created new melodies. Foreign musical instruments such as pipa, konghou, bili (a wind instrument), jia, di (flute) and hujue joined the Chinese band during the Han Dynasty, which enriched and changed the contents and styles of Chinese traditional music and dances.

Dances and acrobatics of the Western Regions were also introduced into China during the Western and Eastern Han dynasties. In Chen Yang's work The Book of Music, which recorded all kinds of music and dance skills, were handed down to the Tang Dynasty (618-907). Some still exist nowadays. Dances of the Western Regions expressed jumping and writhing actions with the help of nimble poses.

The introduction of acrobatics made traditional fighting drama develop into an art with many kinds of programs such as playing with swords or animals, etc. During the reign of Emperor Cheng Di of the Western Han Dynasty, people from the Western Regions performed circus act such as human fighting with beasts in the Changyang Palace, and were offered prizes of becoming officials and enjoying the rank of nobility.

During late Eastern Han Dynasty (the beginning of the third century), cultural exchanges among Central Plains, West Regions, Central Asia, and Europe reached the climax. In Luoyang, the capital at that time, fashions like garments, beds, meals, flutes and dances from the West Regions were very popular in the upper classes and became inseparable parts of their luxurious lives. Cultural fashions from West Asia, Central Asia and India were also gradually merged into Chinese culture, and became social customs of the Yellow River valley at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty.