The “Silk Road” is big news today. Both the U.S. and Chinese governments have initiated Silk Road policies. These policies, however, focus only on the “hardware” required, e.g., infrastructure- and capacity-building to streamline trade and commerce. Neighborly relations are implied but not specified. Accordingly, many worry about an emerging clash between the U.S. and Chinese hegemony in the region. These concerns, though understandable, distort the true legacy of the ancient Silk Roads (there wasn’t just one) and what they can teach us about contemporary world politics. We treat the Silk Roads as a metaphor. Seeing the Roads as a symbol of global mixing – e.g., politics and culture, learning and exchange, competition and oasis – opens up many more dimensions to what happened on the Roads and what these could mean for us today. For example, the ancient world has much to tell us about pre-colonial political economies, the “Asian” way of mediating differences in intercultural contexts, and the “ecumenical culture” of inter-continental trading relations. A revived Silk Road imagination also helps to articulate a new kind of globally engaged and non-hegemonic pan-Asianism, one more suited for the 21st century needs and aspirations. We must, in short, reassess the Silk Roads.