Similar to the real-life Silk Road that took a few years of planning and construction before the first Silk Road Revival Train arrived in Tehran on Monday, the cartoon version was two years in the making before it hits Chinese TV in the first half of 2016.
A brave young girl topbills the 104-episode cartoon series titled "Si Lu Gongzhu" or “Princess Silk Road.” She is the guardian of the old trade route that Chinese merchants took to sell Asian products to the West.
During the early part of the cartoon series, the girl battles four monsters who would eventually become her friends and sidekicks in protecting the ancient trade route, reported Global Times.
Among the Chinese channels that would air “Princess Silk Road” are BTV KAKU, a kid’s TV channel, and regional and provincial channels in Fujian, Gansu, Shaanxi and Xinjiang. This early, there is an overseas market interested in the cartoon series to broadcast it in Indonesia, Malaysia and Kazakhstan.
Explaining why a cartoon was made about the ancient trade route, Dong Zhigang, chief screenwriter, said, “The purpose of this cartoon is to let audience worldwide better understand the history, legends, culture and geography of the Silk Road through an adventure story.”
While the cartoon series would surely amuse Chinese children, the real $600-billion Silk Road will once more demonstrate China’s political and military might, worthy of its tag as the largest economic development scheme on the face of the Earth.