Camino de Santiago Afterward: A Personal Silk Road
- cwang2384
- Jan 9
- 5 min read
The world originally had no roads, but as more people walked on them, they became roads. -- The famous Chinese writer and critic, Lu Xun (1881–1936)
How does each of us walk somewhere to turn it into our own road?
After finishing my Camino de Santiago — and blogging about it in seven parts, which felt just as intense and immersive if not more so — I began exploring lively Valencia. The two experiences felt like night and day — as if I were a 12-year-old suddenly pulled from Sunday Bible school and dropped into the world’s biggest amusement park.
Why Valencia? Just saying the name — it's so sensual and feels very Spanish and feminine. Madrid or Barcelona? They sound too masculine. I've been there, and they are!
In Valencia, I have formed a vibrant image of the city that includes an ancient story from 138 BC when the Romans founded 'Valentia Edetanorum,' the Gothic-style Cathedral from the 15th century, the most grand and bustling Market Central, its iconic paella (you think you know it?), and the variety of tapas: its artistic presentation wins your heart, and its freshness and richness delight the palate. Plus, a relaxed Mediterranean lifestyle with scenic views and warm weather, to name just a few of the treasures this historic city offers.
Coming from the Camino trail, where my mind had been completely still the entire time, meditating through countless villages, churches, and stone-paved roads that resembled ancient jewels frozen in time. Well, in Valencia, everything and everywhere looks and feels entirely different. I couldn’t – and wouldn’t want to – still my mind now. This should be another side of life I have always enjoyed.
Then, the question that has long nagged me has popped back to my head:
“Are you a tourist or a pilgrim?”
And the same thought has crossed my mind: How can people be "all or nothing"? If some individuals have personality traits and cognitive styles such as dichotomous, black-and-white thinking or polarized minds, it won’t be me.
My experience in Valencia following the Camino de Santiago has provided me with a much clearer picture of myself now: I’m a tourist as well as a pilgrim, thoroughly delighted by wandering in and around the mesmerizing metropolises and wholly immersed in walking the Camino.
Therefore, I’ve found a better way to describe myself: I’m a wanderer and a writer. As a wanderer, I let my feet carry me aimlessly and endlessly through the streets, and as a writer, I allow my eyes—intently and intuitively—to catch sights and scenes that spark my mind and intentionally put my thoughts onto blank pages.
Today, strolling through Plaça de la Reina, the heart of this historic city, I stumbled upon something that paused my feet – and my heart. Inside a large window, Silk Art on display showcased the exquisite fusion of Eastern and Western eminent essences, an ensemble of radiating beauties beyond imagination. I wish I could touch it, but I knew how it must feel: smooth and soft, delicate and warm, bringing an artistic sensibility to every facet of its intrinsic feature and quality, not just its celebrated appearance.
This seemingly accidental find sketched a more historically sensual and artistic side of Valencia from its millennia past, a side rarely mentioned or largely forgotten today. The Lonja de la Seda (the Silk Exchange) of Valencia was included on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1996. However, when the Silk Road routes were designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2014, the designation encompassed 33 sites, including Xi'an in China, as well as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and many others. Yet Valencia was not included on that long list. However, in its heyday, starting in the 15th century, Valencia served as the primary entry point and manufacturing, processing, and design center for silk in Europe — and even remains so today.
Here's the thing: The significance of the "Silk Road" was not — and is never — just about silk; it symbolizes and promotes the exchange of ideas, religions, cultures, and traditions among different civilizations. Valencia Silk Art, in front of me, best exemplifies this. While preserving its core as the original Eastern beauty and elegance, it has been infused with the most magnificent, indescribable, and unique impressionistic motif by Valencia artists — it’s about how people, the trailblazers, have been constantly transforming their creative minds.
While all the original inventions have gone through this similar progressive cycle, I wonder why Silk Art has resonated with me more deeply and personally than anything else I have seen.
Growing up in China, I’m familiar with silk processing and its products (just open my wife’s closet to find some); however, seeing silk being produced and hand-painted in Valencia in such a way is entirely different: a cultural hybridity where Valencia silk designers blend original principles, techniques, and rich sensualities, resulting in an unmatched harmonious fusion of Eastern traditions and Western aesthetics.
Seeing silk being transformed this way has led me to contemplate my own making. Traversing back and forth between the East and West over the past four decades, learning, unlearning, and relearning, while maintaining my Eastern core along the way, I feel like a completely different person now. I can’t see the color and pattern of what's inside me the way I can in Valencia, where Silk Art is practiced. Still, I could feel the difference — as if I were a tiny bug, a silkworm, feeding on mulberry leaves and growing its own protein fiber to make a cocoon. That fiber happens to turn into “something” that silk is made of. That piece of silk has become something unrecognizable but highly appraised halfway around the world, in Valencia.
A vivid metaphor comes to mind: how one Maoist soldier and “Educated Youth” in China during the 1970s has become a culturally crossing wanderer and writer today, evolving from a single-minded focus to a multifaceted human being, with countless nuances involved along the way.
Then the idea of “My Personal Silk Road” comes to mind. However, it is only through writing — not before it, not while my boots were on the Camino trail, and definitely not by scrolling endlessly on smart devices — that I have connected with this Silk Road experience on a personal level and gained a clearer understanding of my past to the present, which continues to inspire a personal journey moving forward.
While Valencia Silk Art has reminded me how the Silk Roads have shaped and reshaped world history and global civilization, my question has become: how has an interconnected world influenced and changed each of us when we choose to be part of it?
In today’s world, the ‘all or nothing’ mentality is a fallacy for anyone who doesn’t live under a rock. The right question for most of us may be:
How far are you willing to go on your own personal ‘Silk Road’ or your Camino de Personal?
I’d love to explore my Silk Road journey to feel – even look – like that Silk Art in Valencia someday, knowing that most of my dreams might stay just dreams. But this feels so right for me and is something worth striving for.
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