Columnar in shape, falling from the shoulders to the ground, with sometimes a silk cord at the waist or under the bust, it is made from China silk that has been hand-worked into thousands of vertical pleats a process invented by Fortuny, and one that invests the silk with both iridescence and a springy eternal life.

WSJ: The Rich Pleasures of Pleats | Fortuny | Spanish Institute | By Laura Jacobs

Mr Thubron spent eight months travelling the 11, 300 kilometres (7, 000 miles) of the old Silk Road from Xian in the heart of China to Antioch (Antakya) in Turkey and, although he scrupulously admits in a note that his trip was broken by fighting in northern Afghanistan and that he was obliged to continue the following year, this interruption does not disrupt the flow of his narrative.

ECONOMIST: Travel writing

For most Chinese companies, the domestic market is already so big and dynamic, the additional revenues offered by investing in smaller markets in the Gulf fail to justify the difficulty of operating there, according to Ben Simpfendorfer, an economist and author of The New Silk Road: How a Rising Arab World is Turning Away from the West and Rediscovering China.

FORBES: Add Oil! Chinese Drill-Pipe Maker Ventures Into The Middle East