Originally Posted by Tom Yum

Howdy, John!

Hope no one was offended by the beautiful Persian woman performing the dance. Looks like a good workout for someone.

I've pulled up several maps of the Persian Empire from good old wiki to see its expansion during different time periods.

Here it is during 6th century AD (The Sassanid period)
Image:Persia 600ad.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The farthest eastward it approaches is the land of Kashmir.

Around that same time 7th Century AD to 9th Century AD, China's borders extended to the approximate tip of the Persian Empire just short of Kashmir.

Image:Tang Dynasty circa 700 CE.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

How did Persian-Sino cultures exchange goods and ideas?

The Silk Road.

Built in the 1st century AD, but re-opened during the Tang Dynasty when cultural trade flourished between China-Persian Empire-India-Japan-Korea-SE Asia. But what of the genetic diversity of the folks living between The Persian Empire and China?

In the next couple hundred years Genghis Khan and his direct descendants conquered most of China, a large part Russia, Persia and land all the way up to Baghdad. So if anything, the descendants of central Asia are of Arab-Mongolian-Russian decent, maybe with some Chinese thrown in.

9th Century AD
Image:Asia 900ad.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Looks like the Persian empire might have expanded into the northern states of India. The closest it may have ever gotten to China might be Tibet, but this isn't confirmed.

Back to the main subject -- Toas Nabbard? I think its more the case of a guy studying gong fu and making it his own.