Ep. 77 | The Silk Road & Marco Polo

Hi everyone, Lozlumunka Marie here and my profoundest apologies for last week's goof uploading that Shanghai Massacre MP3 instead of the correct one. What was I thinking? Thanks to everyone who let me know. Today I wanted to look at Marco Polo and his trek along the Silk Road. I know most, if not all, of you. China History Podcast listeners know the story of Marco Polo. So today I'm not going to give some chronological review of his journey. I'm just going to give an overview of what he did and then bring Francis Woods, controversial book, did Marco Polo go to China into the picture and examine what she said and also look at what the naysayers had to say about Dr. Wood. I've been avoiding this topic, as you can see. We're 77 episodes into this little China History Podcast thing and we're only just now getting into this tired old cliche subject. But I thought, since we're doing this whole Silk Road overview, why not keep it going a little more and sort of mash up more interesting bits of Silk Road history with Marco Polo and see what comes out in the end. So to speak, one of my recent purchases on that last Hong Kong trip was a nice tone I've finally picked up. This one is called China Between Empires by Stanford Professor Mark Edward Lewis. This is a book about the Northern and Southern Dynasties, the Nain Bay Chow. We looked at this period in CHP episode 23. This was from 386 to 581. To put it in perspective, the Eastern Han fell into 20 AD then you had the fabled three kingdoms period followed by the Western and Eastern gene and we see the last of them in 420 and that's where we start off here. There was some more interesting stuff I mined that's worth mentioning before we jump into the Yuan Dynasty. Now as the name suggests, Northern and Southern dynasties, China is not a unified nation. You had a succession of dynasties in the North and in the South and later it's the Sui who come out of this on top and they unified China in 581 and like I mentioned before, they do all kinds of great things for China. But the Sui didn't have the staying power and they got swept away by the Tang dynasty which is sort of where we lingered last episode. So when bringing up the Northern and Southern dynasties we're going backward, I hope you don't mind. One interesting thing the author Professor Lewis said and I'll just quote it from page 157 of his book. "The most important forms of exchange between China and the outer world remained trade. China's foreign trade had begun as an adjunct to government policy because of government suspicion of merchants it was dominated by foreigners. During the early Chinese empires merchants from the Oasis towns of Central Asia obtained Chinese silk through purchase in frontier markets or tribute, traded the fabric to merchants and nearby towns who in turn traded at farther west. After passing through many hands along these silk roads it arrived in India, Persia and ultimately Rome. Wherever it was traded silk was a precious commodity that often figured into religious rituals. Lewis also mentions about red coral and how hot this product was in China. It came all the way from Rome or at least the Mediterranean. This was a true luxury in China and prized as an adornment and as a collectible just as paintings and calligraphy were collected and appreciated by all the royals and elites of the day. Red coral was one of the precious things in Buddhism known as the Seven Treasures. These were things that for one reason or another had become critical to many of the rituals that had developed in Buddhism. These Seven Treasures, none of these things could be found in China. They all came from somewhere else. In order for a king to be a king he had to possess these Seven Treasures. These Seven Things were gold, silver, lapis lazuli, quartz crystal, pearls, red coral and agate or regular coral. Now go on a Google or Baidu images and search for red coral. You'll see it as many uses for jewelry and as a natural work of art just displaying the red coral tree formations. And you've seen this stuff in a hundred gift shops almost anywhere. It's a China airport gift shop staple. Hongshan Hu. It had been treasured in China a long time going back to the Han. And it was precious because it was fragile and delicate and came from far away. Of these treasures the red coral came from the Mediterranean. Pearls came from India and Sri Lanka and for lesser quality pearls Persia was also a source. Central Asia was the source of the intense blue lapis lazuli, stones and all the incense used in the temples. All of it came from India. And I think the incense factories of India still have a lock on that commodity. So along with the Buddhism that hitched a ride on the Silk Roads, they're simultaneously developed a whole new branch of trade and all the paraphernalia that involved the commercial side of Buddhism. Of course a lot of great treasures and precious objects were donated to temples but this was a whole new market that developed. In the first Silk Road episode we looked at the trade end of the Silk Road. Last time we looked at Fashien, Shien Zhang and Buddhism. So before we move on to Senior De Polo, I just wanted to add this to our little Silk Road overview. So it wasn't this book that I realized there was also an additional dimension to the Silk Road that combined religion and trade. That is, you know, the trade in Buddhist treasures and relics. The Buddhist temples, wherever they were, India, Central Asia, China, Korea, Japan, all over. Their hunger for silk was quite substantial. Not only for robes and ritual garments but for all these banners that were so part and parcel of the rituals carried out at every temple. And just like there were during the Middle Ages in Europe, so it was in these pre-tongued days with Buddhist relics. There were more than ten fingers floating around all of Asia that supposedly came from the hand of the Buddha. So Buddhism really turbocharged the trading systems and injected an entirely new kind of energy into the Silk Road that was absent before. This is how wealth is created, the old fashion way. In those days people mined stuff out of the ground, harvested coral from the seas and polished it, fished for pearls and sold them. The entire world financial system, as we know it today, had to begin somewhere. And this is an example of its humble beginnings. Here along the Silk Roads, where the earliest international commerce was finding its own way. Then once there was sufficient wealth accumulated in this macroeconomy, then it made sense to create a banking system which in turn allowed the velocity of trade to flourish on a grander and more international scale. So let me finish up here and move on. This period here, the northern and southern dynasties of 386 to 581. This is a good five to six centuries after Hanwu D and the Silk Roads are more developed and traders and travelers were a lot wiser now. Just as we say this sui laid the groundwork for the Tang, it was all the progress made in trade and commerce and the massive injection of Buddhism into China's world. It smoothed out the path for the sui. Anyways, I thought that was interesting and I encourage you to check this book out if you want to get the full and complete skinny on the northern and southern dynasties period. It's not the sexiest dynasty on the shelf. It's not the Han, not the Tang, not the Song or the Ming. But I regret I missed referencing this book when I did episode 74 and 76. So Marco Polo, where does one begin? Born 1254, died 69 years later in 1324. There were three of them. Marco Polo, his father Nicolo and his uncle Mafia. He's famous because of his book Il Milione, which goes by many names among them, description of the world or just plain old travels of Marco Polo. It's the story of his two decades of travels from 1271 to 1291. As written down, perhaps in 1298, by his partner in this storytelling, Ristikello de Pisa, it was a bestseller in its day, pretty much ever since. This was the West's first mass look at China. This book covers the travels of Marco Polo through the Middle East, Persia, Central Asia, China, Burma, and Indonesia. There were others besides Marco Polo who came from the West and visited the Courts of Kublai Khan. In fact, there were many others. This is already the 13th century and people are now moving around a lot more than in the early Silk Road days. People went overland either out of necessity or like Xinjiang, they just feared the see, by the time of Marco Polo, it's 200 years before Columbus discovers America, or to my good friend Vigor in Frederickstad, Norway, Amer 300 years before Leif Ericsson discovered America or Vineland anyway. This is a little more than 200 years before Vasco Degama and only 150 years before Prince Henry the Navigator. So the point is, the ships by now are big enough and see worthy enough, and captains and crews have figured out how to make the long voyage his work. So by the time of Marco Polo, the seven seas became smaller and less dreaded. This will have an impact on the importance of the silk roads. The Marco Polo name has become an icon that stands for travel, the exotic and adventure. At 17 he set off for China, 1271. His father, Nicolo and Uncle Mafio, they had already made the trip, and in fact, in 1266 actually got to meet Kublai Khan himself at Karakorim. They had initially set out in 1260 when Marco Polo was only six years old, so he didn't go. For the first trip made by Nicolo and Mafio, they took the northern silk road route. Marco Polo's book is a narrative of the second journey, the one he participated in with his father and uncle. They departed Venice by sea and then set off by land from Acre in present day Israel and trekked mostly overland to the great Khan's summer palace in Shangdu. He traveled the very same caravan routes of the silk road that by now, as I said, were over a thousand years old. By now everyone knew every safe mountain pass and how to skirt the deserts and wear to find water. I believe I mentioned this in CHP episode 10 on Kublai Khan. After Nicolo and Mafio met the great Khan in Emperor, one of the things asked of them was to go back to their homeland and return with a number of Christian scholars in some holy relics. On this return journey in 1271, the brothers Polo were able to get some sort of letter from Pope Gregory X who had only just been made Pope in September 1271. I don't want to repeat all the minutia of the journey. As I said, they left from the city of Acre and went east overland to Mosul, then passed the town of Ticrete, where Sodom Hussein would be captured 732 years later. They kept going south, passed Samara and Baghdad and Iraq and then on to Bazarah and on to Hormuz and Persian Gulf. They set out to the straight of Hormuz by boat and then at Bandar Yabas, they docked and turned north and then east into the heart of Persia, past Kerman, famous the world over for their rug designs. It was somewhere near present day Azerbaijan by the Caspian Sea that Marco Polo observed this black liquid oozing up from the ground somewhere. He said of it that it was "not good to use with food, but it is good to burn. 750 years later, standard oil was drilling for this stuff." From Persia, they turned east into modern day Afghanistan, stopping in Shepirgan where Marco Polo delighted in their sweet melons and the next stop was the 2000 year old city of Balkh. You heard me mention this ancient city of Balkh. Today, this city lies in northern Afghanistan. It was the ancient capital of Buktria. Genghis Khan completely raised this place to the ground in 1220. If that wasn't enough, he had all the inhabitants killed too. Balkh had been this magnificent trading center that at times had no rivals. But after Genghis Khan, that was pretty much it. Until Timmerlain brought the city back to some of its glory, it had made a modest recovery when Marco Polo passed through, but Balkh was far from its glory days of past centuries. They also passed through Badakshan. This is northeast Afghanistan, southeast Tajikistan. Their Marco Polo got sick and they lingered for a full year until they were able to move on. By the time of Marco Polo's recovery, he spoke enough of the Persian and Mongolian languages of the region to get around and communicate. It was Nicolo and Matthew Polo, who were the first Europeans to visit Bukhara. For a couple of traders like the brothers Polo, this must have been the ultimate. At that time, Bukhara was one of the biggest trading centers in Central Asia. Silk, porcelain, ivory, spices, metalware, and all manners of luxuries and works of art that would fetch a fortune back home. Bukhara was the place to buy and sell these things. It was in Bukhara, by the way, that Nicolo and Matthew came into contact with a certain Mongol. It was supposedly this chance encounter that provided the brothers with that initial intro to the great Kublik Han. In his book, Marco Polo described Samar Khan in great detail. He describes it as a place where Christians and Muslims exist side by side, and there was a religious tolerance in the air. He noted this because by this time, late 13th century, the Muslims and Christians had been mauling each other for centuries. The sixth crusade had only just recently ended. So to see everyone hanging out communally without trying to tear each other apart, it was certainly something a Catholic Venetian like Marco Polo would have noticed. They passed the RLC and crossed the Pomer mountains. Famously, he described a certain sheep during this crossing of the Pomer mountain chain. And this animal today is known, at least since 1960, as the Marco Polo sheep. This was a perilous journey to say the least. From there, they passed through some pretty rugged terrain and then through the Wakhan corridor into present-day Xinjiang and walked northwards to Kashgar and then passed all the familiar oasis towns we discussed in episode 74 and 76, Yarkhan, Holtan, Lop, Dunhuang, and finally Talancho. Then, after an excruciating trek through the Gobi Desert, they made it to China's heartland and then, Antashandhu, Kashgar back in the days of Marco Polo was one of the biggest markets of its kind in the known world. Marco Polo said of this place, quote, "There are a good number of towns and villages, but the greatest and finest is Kashgar itself. Inhabitants lived by trade and handicrafts. From this country, merchants go forth about the world on trading journeys." Kashgar fortunately did not suffer the fate of its fellow Silk Road city of Baalk. Kashgar very much survives today and is still a great trading hub for Central Asia. As the story goes, they were greeted by the great Khan, warmly, who of course remembered these two Venetian traders. As far as the young Marco Polo was concerned, Kublai Khan was quite taken by him and he made the young Polo his personal diplomatic envoy. And for 17 years, he worked in the Khan's service. Kublai Khan was described to someone who loved foreigners. He thought they were great and he surrounded himself with them and found all kinds of uses for them to govern his empire that stretched from the China coast almost all the way to the European continent. In this book written by Marco Polo, I'm sure you all have heard of it. I don't know what the ratio is to how many know of it, to how many have actually read it. He observed and recorded everything. Well, not everything as we'll get to later, but almost nothing escaped his attention. Nature, weather, etiquette, trade, architecture, religion, Chinese customs and traditions, the splendor of Kublai Khan's imperial court, the dangers of crossing the mountains and the deserts, Marco Polo describes all of this. Asia from Armenia to the China coast, he saw so much and was one of the first. If you go on Google Books, there are a couple full-view hits of the Trails of Marco Polo. They have both the Henry Yule Henri Cordier version with a million annotations as well as another one that I aspired online. So it's all there if any of the content of this episode titulates you enough to go read the details and there are a lot of details. Francis Wood, who I've mentioned before in episode 74, she wrote this book in 1995 called Did Marco Polo Go to China. It created quite a stir in the community of China history and Marco Polo scholars. Now, this whole debate has been raging for over 15 years and I think the contenders agree. In fact, he did make this trip, as he said he did, but the account he gave might have been exaggerated and not entirely written as Marco Polo might have actually dictated to Rooster-Chello de Pisa. There are dozens of versions of Marco Polo's travels, and to say, a lot of things got lost in the translation or just downright fabricated is an understatement. The signature facts that are spotlighted are the so-called omissions Marco Polo made from his book. There were many things he did not mention at all, yet one would assume these would be some of the most noteworthy things to say. Never does Marco Polo mention bound feet. The unique Chinese character writing system, he never mentions chopsticks, which to me, come on, this is worth telling the folks back home. And 17 years in China, he never mentions the Great Wall, but to me, the one thing that sort of makes me scratch my head and wander is that Marco Polo sort of makes you assume that he was close with the Great Khan. I mean, he was in his service for 17 years, met him many times, and of course his father and uncle had made that previous trip, so one might assume the Polos would at least be on the Mongol version of Kublai Khan's Christmas Card List. That's played up in the book quite a bit. How close he was to Kublai Khan. All those special missions, not to mention his final mission in 1292 when the Great Khan entrusts the Polos to escort a Mongol princess to Persia to marry the Argon Khan in Hormuz. It was this final assignment that brought them back to Venice in 1295. So it would seem to me with all that Marco Polo claims, you'd figure the way that Chinese and the Mongols sort of keep records of everything, no matter how trivial, you'd figure 17 years, 6200 days, you'd think wouldn't you that somewhere Marco Polo might have made it into the public record, like, you know, got a mention somewhere? Well, he didn't even garner an honorable mention. There's nothing. Nada, you can scour all of the source documents from the entire history of the Yern Dynasty and my friends, no Marco Polo. Now, I was once in a movie theater in Westwood where Tom Cruise was present. I didn't get to talk to him or swap business cards or anything, but you know how it is. I never took the story beyond it, but I just as easily could have, you know, scraped together ways to, at the very least, embellish this close encounter. So maybe Marco Polo wasn't Bobo's with Kublai Khan and didn't actually do anything to warrant a mention in the official record, but that doesn't mean he never met the Khan. It doesn't mean he never performed any services for the government and it certainly doesn't mean he never made that trip to Cathay. Yes, for the omissions, this has been explained away by dozens of experts and researchers using all manners of plausible scenarios. For example, why didn't he mention the Great Wall? Well, maybe he never saw it. Besides, what need did the Mongols have for a Great Wall? They were at the tip top of the food chain and they were already in. There was no need for a wall to keep them out. But most significant of all was that the Great Wall is we in the 21st century know it was mostly built during the Ming Dynasty well over a century or two after Marco Polo's death. So, you know, I'll cut him some slack there. Chopsticks, why no mention. Well, again, you could say he mostly hung out with foreigners and central Asians and certainly Mongols. After all, this was the Yuan Dynasty. Chinese were laying low and these guys, Mongols and, you know, other central Asian peoples, they didn't use chopsticks. So, I'll look the other way, but if it was me, I definitely would have put chopsticks in the book. There is no original manuscript of this book. It's in a way a bit like the Bible. You're reading words that were written long after the fact by men who made poor translations from translations that were chalk filled with errors and maybe erroneous information. Most of the manuscripts of Marco Polo's travels and there were a lot of them and no two were the same. They were mostly written between 1400 and 1550. He died in 1324. So, you do the math. When Marco Polo dictated the story to Rusticello to Pisa, Rusticello was writing it in French. It's not the end of the world, but all the Chinese and central Asian terms were written in Persian as dictated, I suppose, by Marco Polo. You really have to dig deep to get any Mongol or Chinese terms or expressions. And again, there wasn't even a mention about how cool Chinese characters are. Say what you will. This book had quite an impact throughout the years. Christopher Columbus was known to have read it. Look what he did. It's impact on the whole feeling of wanderlust has for centuries inspired travelers the world over. Whether 90% or 50% or 10% of what Marco Polo says is true or not, the book had a huge impact and it's a great story no matter what. Everyone agrees a lot of, you know, what he says doesn't add up and there's nothing that isn't suspect. But he describes things in detail like West Lake in Hangzhou. Maybe he heard of it from someone probably not. I mean, he was there. He traveled to and described Yangzhou, Tibet, Burma. He sailed on the Grand Canal. He sailed on the Yangsa. Marco Polo's descriptions of Persia were dead on. Some might argue about how much of Marco Polo's travels was truth and how much was fiction. It is what it is. Australian National University professor Dr. Igor Derrachewilts, a scholar of Mongol history and culture. He wrote the definitive rebuttal to Francis Woods book. Anyway, plenty of stuff for you to read if you're so inclined. Well, let me quickly finish this off. The three Polos arrived back in Venice in 1295. Their return created a sensation and they came back with riches that boggle the mind. But within three years, they were overwhelmed by the tide of history. And in 1298, Marco Polo was captured in a battle off the coast of present day Croatia. The fleet of Genoa, the Batonoir of Venice, caused a disastrous defeat which really spelled the end of the Venetian Republic as a mighty regional power. This was the Battle of Cursola. So Marco Polo fights in this battle and gets captured and thrown in prison. And it's in this prison, the Palazzo San Giorgio, that he meets Rousticello de Pisa. Now, Rousticello had already been in this prison for almost 15 years. He was a writer of some repute, but he has been written into the history books as the co-writer of Marco Polo's travels. Now, Marco Polo dictated this story to Rousticello de Pisa. And in less than a year, he was released. He moved home to a family compound bought by Nicolo and Mafio. And Marco Polo lived out his days based there. He never took another adventure and just hung out in Venice mostly. He remained emergent and became very wealthy in the process. Sometime between January 8th and 9th, 1324, Marco Polo died. And with that, we're going to end it here. Now, I've been threatening to do this for a long time, and I finally carried out my threat. If you go to my website at ChinaHistoryPodcast.com, you'll see I've added a page to my website called CHP Reference Library. You'll see I have listed in order of published date the entirety of my China History Podcast Reference Library. I also provided links to purchase the books at either Amazon or Burns and Noble. And don't buy anything on my account because I don't get anything. Just a free service here at the China History Podcast. And if you go to episodes 2, 3, and 4, you'll see I've already commenced putting in all the terms used in each podcast. Anything Chinese, a name, place, or whatever. If it's in Chinese, I wrote it out in the pinion as well as Chinese characters along with a quick and dirty explanation. So I'm hoping to do one per day. But in the past six days, I've only done three, so I'm not doing very well. I just got back from an overnight or to Vegas. Kind of fantastic time. Went out there to meet my friend, close, who was in town from Stockholm for the "Lugged Show." That was nice. Even though it did delay this episode a little. Well, here I go again. Ronald Reagan would probably say, "I'm going to plug them again because they're the bomb." The Cynica Podcasts from March 1st and March 6th, two fantastic shows, Kaiser Gauw and Jeremy Goldcourt. And they spoke to Jeremy Arbar May and Jeffrey Wasserstrom, who, both of them in the worldwide brother and sisterhood of respected China experts, figure pretty high. I know I keep talking about the Cynica Podcast, but for me, listening to these guys in Beijing, who have their fingers right on the pulse, and they're fluent in Mandarin, inside and out, and they bring all these amazingly brilliant guests on and talk about what's going on in China and offer so much value packed insight into what's going on there. Anyways, go check those two episodes out. They were more superb than usual. Well, I guess they have it for now everyone. There's so much out there if you want to learn more about the Silk Road. I'll tell you, my appetite has really been wedded and I am determined to get out there soon. I've never been west of Chengdu in China and Xinjiang is a place high high on my list and after doing these three little Silk Road episodes I am sure anxious to go visit Dung Huang, Kashgar and all those other towns. I'm planning a nice long trip to China next year and after I get that last kid safely inserted into some university here in California I'm out of here. Well next week there will be an invasion. I am not happy to say I will have to take a ride with my peoples to Boston, New York and Fort Lauderdale. So there might be another in a long series of delays. Okay enough of this filler material. Boy the things some narrators and presenters will do to hit that 30 minute mark. This is La Zlemon Gummary wishing everyone the very best every day all the time. Join us next week, won't you for another perhaps exciting episode of the China History Podcast. Take care all.