Zhang Qian

person

Han envoy sent west by Emperor Wu in 138 BCE to seek an alliance with the Yuezhi against the Xiongnu. He was captured by the Xiongnu and held for around ten years, escaped, reached Bactria, failed to obtain the alliance, and returned in 126 BCE with one surviving companion out of an original party of about a hundred. The mission failed diplomatically and succeeded in every other respect: his report gave the Han court its first detailed knowledge of Ferghana, Bactria, Parthia and the routes between them, and directly prompted the westward expansion that followed. Chinese tradition describes his mission as zaokong, the hollowing out or piercing open of the passage. He died in 114 BCE. A person, not a place.

A person is not a place. Drawing it on a map would assert something about the world that no stored fact supports.