Chanyu of the Xiongnu, who caught the envoy at the frontier and saw no reason at all to let him through — and who kept him for over a decade, gave him a wife, and never got the Han staff out of the envoy's own hand.
The Yuezhi lie to my north. How is Han to send an envoy through my land? If I sent one to the Yue in the south, would Han let him pass?The Chanyu's retort on taking the Han envoy, c. 138–137 BCE, in both histories; Shiji, juan 123, Memoir of the Peoples of the West; Hanshu, juan 61, Memoir of Zhang Qian and Li Guangli
Appears in
Relations
- Zhang Qian enemies — He took the envoy at the frontier, kept him ten-odd years with a wife and a son, and never got the Han credential out of his hand.
- Kunmo client — The Wusun had lived under the Xiongnu and their ministers feared them, and that fear is what answered the Han's gold when Zhang Qian came to the Ili valley.
Myth vs record
Zhang Qian's captors were a wandering horde without politics, and the man who held him is a nameless barbarian obstacle.
The histories give him a settled court with a named order of succession and a western administration that taxed the walled city-states through a Commandant of Bond Servants (Hanshu, juan 96a). The single clearest sentence about the geography of the age is spoken by him in both books, and it is argument rather than threat: an envoy cannot be walked through somebody else's country. He held the envoy for over a decade without confining him, and when he died in 126 BCE his own succession went to pieces — the Worthy King of the Left making war on the heir — which is the disorder Zhang Qian used to get home.