Marco Polo has now become a big celebrity in China. The evidence is that only a few people in China are used as brands of goods, and Marco Polo is one of them. We have Li Ning brand sportswear, Jin Yuxi down jacket, Yu Zhaolin underwear, Maran ramen, and Marco Polo bread (Is it Italian bread or not). So here we just need to give the simplest introduction to this person, and I believe it is enough.
Marco Polo's father and uncle were Venetian merchants engaged in intermediate trade in the western half of Eurasia. In the 1260s, due to the war, the two of them wandered eastward from where they were doing business and finally came to China. The emperor Kublai Khan, who had just moved the ruling center south from the Mongolian hinterland to the grassland near the Han area. It is said that when he returned to his country, Marco Polo's father and uncle brought a letter from the Yuan Dynasty to the Roman Catholic Church. In 1271, after paying homage to the newly appointed Pope Gregory I, the two revisited China with the letter from the new Pope to Kublai Khan of the Yuan Dynasty. This time, they brought the young Marco Polo with them. In 1275, they traveled through Central Asia and Northwest China from the onshore Silk Road to Shangdu of Yuan. From then on, until he boarded the ship from Quanzhou in 1291, Marco Polo stayed in China for a total of seventeen years.
In the seventeen years in China, Marco Polo first stayed in Kublai Khan's court to learn the etiquette, folk customs, language, writing, etc. of the Yuan Dynasty. Then he was ordered by Kublai Khan to go to Yunnan (about 1280). After that, he was ordered to go on missions to various places, including working in Yangzhou for three years, going to Hangzhou for many times, and also visiting cities such as Fuzhou and Quanzhou. Between 1287 and 1289, Marco Polo may have traveled far away to India. In 1291, the Yuan Dynasty wanted to send a Mongolian princess to Persia to be the princess of the Mongolian king there, so Marco Polo accompanied the envoys who escorted the princess to sail on a boat to the Western Regions and then returned from there.
No direct records about Marco Polo were left in the historical documents of the Yuan Dynasty. Several "Boluo" or "Boluo Prime Minister" have been mentioned in Chinese historical materials. But those "Bolo" are Mongolians named Bolod and have nothing to do with Marco's surname Polo. Almost all of our knowledge about Marco Polo's activities in China comes from a famous book. It was written by Marco Polo, who was imprisoned in a military conflict between Venice and Genoa, collaborated with a legendary writer of the three-rate detention. It was probably in the late 13th century.
Marco Polo's memoir of traveling around the East did not have a special title at first. Later, everyone was used to calling it "The Record of Huanyu" or "The Record of Marco Polo". Since the beginning of the 14th century, this book has been repeatedly copied in Europe or translated into various texts, so many texts with great differences in content and text have appeared. Before the Jesuits came to the east in the 16th century, this book became the most important reference book for Western Europeans to understand the situation in the East, especially in China. During his famous voyage, Columbus carried a book full of annotations with him, "The Journey of Marco Polo".
As a Venetian celebrity who loves to tell people about their experiences in the East, the existence of Marco Polo is now a sure historical fact that no one doubts. Venice still preserves archival documents related to Marco Polo, including one of his wills. Marco Polo's trip to China has naturally been believed by people for nearly a hundred years, and no one raised serious doubts. In the 1960s, a very famous German named Herbert Franke, who studied Chinese history, spent about one page discussing the historical authenticity of Marco Polo's travels to China. He guessed that Marco Polo might not have been to China; the description of China in Marco Polo's book may have been copied from a travel manual that was popular in the Muslim world that day. Perhaps inspired by Fu Haibo, after this, the view that doubts about the authenticity of Marco Polo's trip to China gradually grew. These views are reflected in a book published in 1995 by Frances Wood, an expert on China issues at the British Library. This book was translated into Chinese in 1997 and was published by Xinhua Publishing House. The title is "Have Marco Polo visited China?" 》.
Wu Fangsi's book has attracted many different opinions, and they are also concentratedly reflected in a book. The title is "Marco Polo in China". It was published by Nankai University Press in 1999. The author is Professor Yang Zhijiu, a famous expert in history of the Yuan Dynasty and history of the Sui and Tang Dynasties who had just passed away. Most of the knowledge I want to talk about today can be read in both of the above books. However, the debate about whether Marco Polo has been to China is very typical of how history can think deeply about a problem that originally seemed very general and therefore difficult to deal with through various specific and detailed studies. So today I still want to talk about the historical authenticity of Marco Polo's trip to China from this perspective.
People who suspected that Marco Polo had visited China mainly put forward four types of reasons to support their views. The first is that except for Marco Polo's own books, historical documents related to Chinese, Mongolian, Arabic, Persian and any other words in the Yuan Dynasty have not talked about Marco Polo's personal affairs. The second is that some of the plots described by Marco Polo clearly do not match the facts. For example, he said that he participated in the battle of the Yuan army to capture Xiangyang City of the Southern Song Dynasty, and made Hui artillery for the Mongolian army on the front line at that time (a giant stone thrower introduced to Mongolia from the Muslim world); he also said that he had been the chief executive of the Yangzhou area (called "Yangzhou Road" in the Yuan Dynasty), etc. The route he described in China was also often interrupted, and suddenly jumped to another endpoint and started again. So today those who are trying to follow the "Foots of Marco Polo" for investigation have painfully discovered that it is actually impossible to travel in the east of Persia "according to the route described by Marco Polo". Third, Marco Polo did not mention many of China's special features that surprised foreigners, such as tea, the Great Wall, chopsticks, Chinese characters, and women's feet. In other words, Marco Polo's knowledge about China is simply inconsistent with what he claimed to have experienced seventeen years of life in China. If all the above three types of reasons have the nature of "internal evidence", then the fourth type of reasons belongs to "external evidence" provided from a version perspective. This view believes that one of the "basic difficulties" in confirming the authenticity of Marco Polo's travelogue is the lack of that "original" manuscript. The two existing manuscripts about 1400 years old not only have a huge difference in content, but also have only sixty or seventy pages, including beautiful illustrations. If the text of Marco Polo is really the older the shorter the shorter it is, then the text we see today with huge content can only be the result of the continuous addition and rewriting of the original text in the later copying and translation process. This means that even if the original book of Marco Polo does exist, its content may be very thin; and many of the detailed descriptions in the book that we use to prove Marco Polo's trip to China are likely not present in the original text at all. Since there is a problem with the authenticity of the book, if the content in the book is used to prove the authenticity of the author's deeds, of course, there will be problems.
Does the four types of reasons mentioned above have enough power to deny the historical authenticity of Marco Polo's visit to China? I thought there wasn't.
Westerns who visited the Far East during the Mongol Yuan era, Marco Polo had visited Karbini and Rubluk, the capital of the Mongol Empire, before. After Marco Polo, two other two of the four major travelers in the West in the Middle Ages, namely the Italian Odoric (1274/1286-1331), and the Moroccan Ibn Batuta (1304-1377). Nicolo Condi (1395-1469, Italian), the fourth among the four major travelers in the West in the Middle Ages, may have visited southern China, but even so, it was in the Ming Dynasty, so I won’t talk about him here. All of these people, except for their own travel notes, left no clues in Chinese historical materials. But we cannot deny that they have been to China. Humboldt, a famous German scientist, said that there is no record of Columbus' victory entering the city in Barcelona, Spain, and there is no record of Ameriga voyage abroad under the orders of the emperor. But they are all undeniable facts. Therefore, the first type of reason mentioned above is not valid.
There are indeed many inaccuracies and even exaggerations in Marco Polo's memories. There are at least two reasons in between. One is routine memory errors. As mentioned earlier, if a person can recall the complicated journey of the past "just step by step" after more than ten years, wouldn't it become a confusing and strange thing? Secondly, there are some elements in Marco Polo's words that do belong to self-amplification and boastfulness, but we have no reason to regard his entire narrative as unreliable.
The third category of reasons is not difficult to rule out. Please think about the "Chinese characteristics" that skeptics complained about Marco Polo's failure to mention, such as tea, chopsticks, Chinese characters, the Great Wall, small feet, etc., do they have anything in common? It seems that the "imigination" of skeptics about China in the Yuan Dynasty has two characteristics that do not conform to historical reality. First, it has too many Chinese-speaking people and Chinese cultural characteristics, and forgets that the Mongol Empire was once a cosmopolitan dynasty or empire, and its territory spans most of the Eurasian continent. As one of the successors of the Mongol Empire, the influence of Mongolian and Central Asian nobles still had an overwhelming advantage in the upper class of the Yuan Dynasty, especially in the early Yuan Dynasty where Marco Polo lived. The truly trusted Han people speak Mongolian in large numbers and can talk to Mongolian monarchs and ministers without relying on "tongues". Some Han people's mastery of Mongolian language was so profound that even the Mongolian emperors were surprised. Some Hui people who came to China from the Western Regions had Turkic languages that were very close to Mongolian; some people's mother tongues were Persian, but because they were ruled by the Islamized Turkic people for a long time, they often spoke Turkic language. In this way, in the upper class of the early Yuan Dynasty, the most important communication language was not Chinese. It is not incredible that a foreigner living in such a circle has little understanding of the Chinese and Chinese culture.
Many details in Marco Polo's book do reveal that what he came into contact with in China in the Yuan Dynasty was mainly not Han people or Mongolians, but immigrants from Central Asia. Let me give you two examples to illustrate. Zhengding, Hebei Province was called "Zhending" in the Yuan Dynasty, and it is very famous because it was the fief of Kublai Khan's mother. The city is called Chaghan Baliq in Mongolian, meaning "Baichengzi". However, in his book, Marco Polo used neither Chinese nor Mongolian names, but used the Turkic translation of "Baichengzi", namely Aq Balaghasun to call this place. From the Tang Dynasty to the Ming Dynasty, some of the Dai ancestors in Yunnan have always been known as "Golden Tooth". Marco Polo called them zardandan. The name obviously comes from the Persian zar dandan, which means exactly "golden teeth". Marco Polo did not use Mongolian, but used Turkic or Persian proper names that translated from Mongolian, which strongly indicated that what he was exposed to in China was mainly the circle of Central Asian aristocrats. So although he was in China, in the specific historical environment at that time, he had little impression of the living conditions of the Han people, so there was nothing strange about it.
Another error of skeptics on Chinese images in the Yuan Dynasty was caused by the dislocation of concepts of the times. When did the Great Wall become a brick and stone wall building like today, and it is so complete and magnificent? This happened in the Ming Dynasty. Drinking tea has become an indispensable part of their daily consumption for today's Mongolians. But it is not a common habit of the Mongolians in the Yuan Dynasty. Rather than blame Marco Polo's narrative for missing such important information, it is better to say that they did not constitute an important landscape that attracted the attention of outsiders in Yuan Dynasty.
I want to say a few more words about the issue of foot binding in Chinese women. Foot binding is a cruel destruction of women. In fact, in order to achieve the effect of foot binding, there was no need to adopt such a cruel method. Modern people are much smarter at this point. Wearing high heels can achieve the effect of visually reducing the feet and making the person's body stand tall. Han women's foot binding should have begun in southern China during the Southern Song and Yuan dynasties. However, we actually don’t know very clearly how popular the foot binding trend was at that time. If we change our way of thinking, we can even think that Marco Polo did not mention the custom of women's foot binding, which would definitely make outsiders feel strange. Perhaps it can prove that the trend of foot binding was not popular at that time, and therefore it is not as easy to attract attention as we imagined. It not only does not mean that Marco Polo has not been to China, but it is beneficial for us to think more deeply about the time when foot binding customs have become popular in Chinese history.
Among the four types of reasons for doubting Marco Polo's trip to China, the last one is actually the most challenging. If the earliest Marco Polo books that can be seen now, such as the two texts and illustrations written in the first half of the 14th century and around 1400, only fifty or sixty pairs of pages, then where did the extra content in the later manuscript come from? In this regard, comparative study of various texts remains a huge and difficult subject that has yet to be completed. However, this reason itself cannot be considered too full and powerful. Because at least as far as a 1413 manuscript preserved by the French National Library, this travelogue, together with the eighty-four drawings, had already had 192 pages at that time, and its contents had more than 200 chapters. Comparing it with the synthesized content of the book of Marco Polo we see today, the difference is not too surprising. Even if the contents of it increase compared to the "original text", they should still be the unknown foreign travelers who traveled to China in the Mongols and Yuan dynasties.
After discussing the reasons for the four types of doubt, I also want to add some views from the perspective of positively affirming the historical value of Marco Polo's travelogue. The detailed descriptions of many Chinese things in Marco Polo are extremely specific and accurate. If it was not for the experience of the situation, or directly from the word of mouth in the ruling class at that time, but was far away from China, relying on travel manuals or hand-turning a few words, then this would definitely not be possible. You can find a few examples from his book. For example, he described in detail the yachts on West Lake and the Grand Canal flowing into Guazhou on the Yangtze River. He also vividly and clearly told the story of Kublai Khan's suppression of the Mongolian rebellion against Naiyan in the Northeast region.
The most vivid example in this regard is the plot of Marco Polo leaving China. According to himself, he set off from Quanzhou by boat with the Mongolian princess who married the Western Regions and the three envoys who escorted the princess. In the book, Marco Polo records the princess’ name Kuokujin, and the names of three envoys: Oulatai, Apuscah and Coja. Interestingly, in the "Yongle Encyclopedia" compiled in the Ming Dynasty, the official documents issued by the Yuan Dynasty to three envoys who went to the Western Regions in 1290 were retained. The names of the three envoys listed in the Chinese official documents are: Ulu, Abishihe, and Fire. There is no doubt that the two independent historical materials mentioned the same thing and the same group of people. What is more noteworthy is that when the mission arrived in Persia, two of the three above had died on the way. Therefore, when Persian literature talks about the local Mongolian kings welcoming Kuokuozhen, only one fireman who was still alive at that time was mentioned among the three escorts. If it weren't for indeed walking with Kuokuozhen and the three envoys, how could Marco Polo know the names of the three envoys, including the two who died thousands of miles away?
Based on the above reasons, I think that the historical authenticity of Marco Polo's trip to China should be unquestionable. By the way, similar to the authenticity of Marco Polo's book, a few years ago, someone claimed that another unprecedented travelogue in China was discovered. This time the visit to China was a Jewish businessman. Shortly before the Mongols attacked the Southern Song Dynasty in the 1270s, he arrived at Quanzhou, the first foreign port of the Southern Song Dynasty. The title of this book is "City of Light". According to the experts' identification results of this book, it is an absolute fake book. How is this result obtained? You can refer to "The City of Light" for the "City of Light" (5th edition of "Wenhui Reading Weekly" March 24, 2001).
China's foreign relations in the Yuan Dynasty were developed against the special background of the Mongols conquering most of Asia. The area ruled by the Mongols approaches the Eastern Mediterranean in the southwest and goes deep into Eastern Europe in the north. At this time, the old Eurasian continent formed the only "world system" before modern times. Under this situation, China has also established direct contact with Western Europe without any intermediary links. The rulers of the East and the West each had excessive expectations of such interrelationships that were incompatible with water and fire. The popes and secular kings in Western Europe were all determined to invite "God" to block the Mongols' advance westward, and then hoped to unite the Mongols to attack the Muslim world. From the perspective of the Mongolians, all the people in the whole world between "a starry sky and a turf land" and "from sunrise to sunset" are Mongolian subjects; Christian Western Europe has no special status in the Mongolian world concept. The 100-year diplomatic efforts between the East and the West have become a wishful "deaf dialogue" between the two sides. However, what is important is that direct communication and understanding between China and Western Europe have begun to develop after all. Marco Polo and his travelogues are one of the most vivid testimony of this mutual understanding.
In the Yuan Dynasty China, where multiple cultures complement each other, the capital (now Beijing), Hangzhou, Quanzhou, etc. are all veritable international metropolises that far exceed Paris that day. Among the foreign tourists who appear in groups between the streets and alleys of these cities, is there a man named Marco Polo? People’s views on this issue have not yet been fully consistent. But one thing is certain. Even if he had never visited China, there would definitely be some people or even some people named "John Polo" or "Marco Strauss" who had long and direct experience in living and operating in China in the Yuan Dynasty, thus becoming the basis or material for those specific and detailed records in Marco Polo's book. It is in this sense that "has Marco Polo been to China" has actually become a pseudo-question.
