While China held the secret, silk was one of the most sought-after products of the ancient world; worth its weight in gold in imperial Rome. Silk production and trade was a key to China's wealth, cultural prestige, and diplomatic power, accounting for possibly a quarter of China's income at the peak of Silk Road exports.

The social importance of the connections these types of meetings may have fostered, could easily have been understood in spiritual terms and led to something like religious reverence for the locations of these events.