Jade

node

Nephrite from the Khotan oasis on the southern Tarim route, collected as boulders and pebbles from the Yurungkash and Karakash rivers, the White Jade and Black Jade rivers that descend from the Kunlun. Jade moved east into the Chinese heartland long before silk moved west, and the corridor is sometimes called a jade road for that reason. It was valued in China as a ritual and funerary material rather than an ornament, which gave it a demand no substitute satisfied. Its presence establishes that the southern route was in use as an exchange corridor well before any of the events usually dated as the opening of the Silk Road. A traded commodity, not a place.

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