Marco Polo: Description of Hangzhou (1298)
Marco Polo’s Description of Hangzhou is the longest and most famous section of the book The Travels of Marco Polo, which Polo dicated to his cellmate Rustichello da Pisa, an Arthurian romance writer, while they were in a prison in Genoa, Italy, in about 1298. The book details the approximately twenty-four years (including travel time) that Polo and his father and uncle spent in China working for Kublai Khan, the Mongol emperor during China’s Yuan Dynasty (1279–1368). Historians contest whether Marco Polo actually visited all the locales that he wrote about, and the reader cannot be sure which parts of the book are in his voice and which represent Rustichello’s embellishments or various copyists’ additions or revisions. There are approximately 150 slightly differing versions, none of which is the certified original version. The consensus, however, is that Polo did work as a tax collector and administrator for Kublai Khan, while his numerous visits to and enthusiastic...
