The clerk who took the road west. Thirty-six men at Shanshan, thirty years in the Western Regions, and the title Marquis Who Settles the Far.
I do not ask to live to see Jiuquan Commandery. I only ask to be carried out alive through the Jade Gate.Ban Chao's request to be sent home from the west, 102 CE; Hou Han shu, juan 47, Hereditary Biographies of Ban Chao and Ban Liang
Appears in
Relations
- Ban Gu brother — The elder brother wrote the dynasty's history at Luoyang while the younger wrote it in the Tarim with a sword, and neither lived long past the house they served.
- Ban Yong father — His son and heir in the western business, who took the road back up with five hundred men where his father had started with thirty-six.
- Gan Ying commander — He sent Gan Ying west in 97 with the order to reach Da Qin in person; the turning-back at the sea was Ying's own decision.
Myth vs record
On his deathbed Ban Chao made a farewell about the wife who had followed him beyond the passes, and told his son not to bury him with honours.
The words everyone knows are not deathbed words but a written request sent in 102 CE, and in the biography's version they name no wife at all — only the Jade Gate. It was his sister Ban Zhao's letter, not a family scene, that the memoir says shamed the court into bringing him back; he died within the year of getting home. The other polished saying put in his mouth, that he would rather have his own country's foxes and rabbits than foreign gold and jade, stands nowhere in his Hou Han shu biography.