Marco Polo: Description of Hangzhou

Context

Marco Polo was not the first Christian European traveler to write a book about Kublai Khan and China during the Yuan Dynasty. Friar Giovanni da Pian del Carpini, a contemporary of Polo’s, was sent by Pope Innocent IV to meet with the Mongols (referred to as the Tartars) to analyze their military power as well as to convert them to Christianity. He wrote The Story of the Mongols Whom We Call the Tartars in about 1248, although very few medieval Europeans ever read his book. Later, in May 1330, the Franciscan missionary Odorico da Pordenone wrote that during his stay in China he visited Quinsai (another variant spelling for Hangzhou), which he described as the largest city in all the world. In certain respects these and other accounts are in contrast with the extremely popular Travels of Marco Polo, which was copied and recopied by hand in the time before the invention of the European printing press.

The predominant Christian sect in China and western Asia during Polo’s time was the Nestorian Christians. In the fifth century, Nestorius, the Greek patriarch of Constantinople, was condemned as a heretic by the Greek and Latin Catholic churches. This condemnation was the result of his belief that the Virgin Mary should be considered the “mother of Christ” instead of the “mother of God.” He and his followers established churches in the Middle East, central Asia, and Africa, and by the eighth century there were Nestorian churches in Turkestan and China. Some historians speculate that it may have been along the caravan routes of Asia that in 1141 the victories of a ruler of the partially Christianized Khitans (from the north of China) over a Muslim king and a Seljuk sultan started the tales of Prester John. Prester John was rumored to be a rich and successful Christian king, who in some stories was able to defeat Muslims and in some stories was able to live peacefully with Muslims. From the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries in Europe the legends of Prester John inspired papal missions as well as individual and group treks in search of this mythical Christian king who was imagined in many different places, including India, central Asia, China, and Africa.

China’s Yuan Dynasty was founded by Kublai Khan, grandson of the Mongol leader Genghis Khan. Genghis Khan was able to conquer the northern part of China, but it was not until 1279 that Kublai Khan conquered the southern part of China as well and fully established the Yuan Dynasty. During this dynasty, the Mongol administration of the Han Chinese was something less than beneficent. Han Chinese constitute 91 percent of the population of China today, and during the time of Kublai Khan they likewise vastly outnumbered the Mongols. The Mongols did not trust the Han Chinese and turned to fellow Mongols and non-Chinese, including Muslims and outsiders from central Asia, the Middle East, and even Europe—among them Polo and his father and uncle—to fill important governmental posts. This was one reason, apart from the trade opportunities offered by the vast and rich country, that Polo and his family spent almost a quarter century in China. China was more advanced than Europe in many ways during Polo’s time. Most Europeans had not heard of paper money or of burning coal for heat, and they dressed in rough homespun clothing in contrast to the silks and finery of many of the Chinese. Among other achievements, Kublai Khan’s Yuan Dynasty accomplished one of the hallmarks of a successful Chinese dynasty, upkeep of and improvements to the Grand Canal (or Da Yunhe) between Beijing and Hangzhou, the city described using the name of Kinsay in The Travels of Marco Polo.

Debate continues even to the present day about whether Polo truly was a traveler to the court of Kublai Khan or was merely a teller of tall tales and merchant stories who never made it to China. The few historians who disbelieve that Polo visited China cite several of his omissions, including his lack of reference to the Great Wall, to using chopsticks, to drinking tea, or to Chinese women’s bound feet. He also fails to mention fishing with cormorants, Chinese characters, acupuncture, or Confucianism. In turn, there are no Chinese sources referring to Marco Polo. Still, the vast majority of historians believe that Polo did spend time in China and that the Mongol Yuan Dynasty’s propensity to mistrust Han Chinese made him valuable as a trusted administrator who yet may not have had a great deal of contact with the Han Chinese who bound their daughters’ feet, ate with chopsticks, and drank tea.