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In the coming years, construction of China’s "Belt and Road" Initiatives, proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping during his 2013 tour of Central Asia, will proceed at full throttle. The aim is to revive the historic trade route; but in fact, the bond of the Silk Road was never really broken. Traces left by merchants from past centuries still remain in several places in China to this day. One is in the southeastern Chinese coastal city of Quanzhou. There lives a woman who bears the legacy of the Silk Road and whose fate is closely connected with the historic trade route.

I meet Xu-Shi Yin’e whilst enjoying a cup of black Ceylon tea at a tea shop on a busy shopping street owned by her friend Huang Yongjiang. At first glance, Xu-Shi Yin’e appears shy. With her hair neatly pinned up, she wears a flower-patterned summer dress, a fine white cardigan and a pair of snow-white ballerinas. The 51-year-old looks fragile at first glance, almost reminiscent of a timid schoolgirl. But she became animated and bubbly as she told her story. She has given many interviews over the past few years, but talked only to me about a secret that her family has closely guarded for centuries.

Ancestor Mysteries

During her childhood, Xu-Shi Yin’e learned from her grandmother that the family’s ancestors were not from China but another distant land. Xu-Shi Yin’e recalls how she tried many times to decipher the cryptic genealogical inscriptions in her family shrine, which were written in a foreign language. At that time, the young girl did not think much about it. She lived in a city where different cultures were constantly coming together and where the multicultural history of the Silk Road was showcased.

Centuries ago, many foreign merchants liked the metropolis – with its mild climate, business opportunities, harmonious society, and multicultural atmosphere – so much that they stayed. Some married locals and settled permanently. Many descendants of these dealers still live in the city. Strong Muslim influences are particularly apparent in Quanzhou today, telling of this glorious past.

But Xu-Shi Yin’e’s ancestors were anything but simple merchants. When she was 16 years old, her father revealed to her a secret that the family had concealed for generations. He enjoined her never to reveal it, not even to her husband.

In Xu-Shi Yin’e’s veins flows blue blood. She and her family are the descendants of the Sri Lankan royal family. One of her ancestors, the heir to the throne of Ceylon (today’s Sri Lanka), came to the imperial Ming Dynasty court (1368-1644) 500 years ago with a delegation headed by the famous Chinese navigator Zheng He as an envoy on the long and arduous sea route to China. While he was in the Chinese empire, his father died unexpectedly in his distant homeland. His return had become unthinkable and so the prince decided to stay in Quanzhou, then the No.1 port of the East. He later fell in love with an Arab female noble and localized his family name to Shi, the first character of the Chinese translation of his name. The Shi line continued for hundreds of years. But the 14th generation of the family produced no male heir, and a local man named Xu married into the family, so the clan adopted the compound surname Xu-Shi.

After his death, the Prince of Ceylon was buried in Quanzhou and for centuries his descendants guarded not only his tomb, but also the secret of the true origin of the family. Xu-Shi Yin’e would have continued this clandestine tradition had it not been for a large-scale renovation plan of Quanzhou. In 1996, local media reported a major archaeological discovery in the city: the grave of a prince of ancient Ceylon. Two years later, the old tomb appeared again in the media, however, this time in the context of an urban redevelopment project that was planned to be carried out on the site of the grave. "I couldn’t stand by and watch as the inheritance of my ancestors fell victim to the bulldozers," said Xu-Shi Yin’e. After much deliberation, she decided to break the promise to her father and make public the family’s true identity in order to save history from destruction. Since then, the 51-year-old has been in the spotlight.