Marco Polo did not come to China

There has been controversy in Europe about whether Marco Polo actually visited China. Francis Wood, director of Chinese at the British Library, published in 1995 Did Marco Polo Really Go to China? ", saying that Marco Polo probably never even visited the Black Sea.

Wood said that although the travelogue has a very detailed description of life in China, why does he not mention the "three-inch golden lotus" of Chinese women, and does not mention chopsticks, drinking tea or even the Great Wall? "There is a theory that Marco Polo borrowed from the accounts of Persian merchants," Wood says.

Only 18 sentences in the full text of the travelogue are told in the first person, and he never wrote the sentence 'I saw it with my own eyes'. ”

The International Marco Polo Studies, however, formed two opposing schools, namely the "affirmers" who affirmed that Marco Polo had been to China and the "skeptics" who doubted that Marco Polo had been to China. The two sides argued fiercely.

Marco Polo [1254-1324], world-famous traveler and merchant. Born in 1254 in Venice, Italy, to a merchant family, he was also a "traveling family". His father, Niccolò, and his uncle, Matteo, were both Venetian merchants.

At the age of 17, Marco Polo reportedly followed his father and uncle to China, where he traveled for more than three years, arriving in the capital of the Yuan dynasty in 1275 and establishing a friendship with the Great Khan Kublai Khan. He traveled in China for 17 years, visiting many of the ancient cities of China at that time, as well as Yunnan and the southeast in the southwest. After returning to Venice, Marco Polo was captured in a naval battle between Venice and Genoa, and his travels were dictated in prison, and Rustichello da Pisa wrote Il Milione.

But whether he has ever been to China has sparked controversy. "Marco Polo's Travels" (also known as "Marco Polo's Travels", "Oriental Observations") describes what Marco Polo saw and heard in China, the richest country in the East, which was later widely circulated in Europe, arousing Europeans' ardent yearning for the Orient and having a huge impact on the opening of new shipping routes in the future. At the same time, Western geographers also drew early "maps of the world" based on the descriptions in the book.

Some of the descriptions and accounts in the travelogue are consistent with the situation in China at that time, so I think Marco Polo must have been to China!

Marco Polo's Travels is evidence of his visit to China.

"The Travels of Marco Polo" is the first time for Europeans in the West to understand China. It is precisely because of the popularity of "Marco Polo's Travels" in the West that it has also shaped a perfect China in the hearts of Europeans, and it has made them more and more fascinated by China. Therefore, in the era of European exploration, the dream of those navigators was to reach the far East and come to China.

But a large part of the content in "Marco Polo's Travels" was made up by Marco Polo himself in terms of real history. Because according to the research of modern scholars, more people have begun to think that Marco Polo actually never came to China at all, and his descriptions in "Marco Polo's Travels" are all random things made up by him alone. Marco Polo was just an illiterate man in Venice, and the reason why he wrote "Marco Polo's Travels" was because Marco Polo's cellmates in prison told him.

Then Marco Polo added the oriental stories he heard from other places and his own imagination to finally write this "Marco Polo's Travels". <

Marco Polo once said that he was received by the Great Khan of Mongolia, but Marco Polo did not write about some of the characteristics of China in his travelogue at all. If Marco Polo really came to China, it would be impossible for Marco Polo to ignore these unique things in China. And Marco Polo's description of some of China's geographical locations is entirely Western.

If Marco Polo had really been to China and knew Chinese, he would not have written about China like this in his travelogue. And Marco Polo said that he had just returned to China, but with Marco Polo's return to China, none of the objects around him were from the East. If Marco Polo really came back from China, how did he manage to leave not a single Oriental object with him?

And the route that Marco Polo himself wrote in "Marco Polo's Travels" was later followed by people in the United States. But they found that it was not easy to walk this road with the current means of transportation, so how did Marco Polo get to China along this road back then?

1. None of them have been here at all.

Doubts and flaws in Marco Polo's Travels:

1.Marco Polo returned home without anything peculiar to China, and some of the gems he brought back were Persian specialties;

2.。There are some things with Chinese characteristics that are not mentioned in the book, such as the Great Wall, chopsticks, tea, acupuncture, Chinese characters, women's foot binding, etc.

In the United States, a scientific expedition was formed to retrace the path taken by Marco Polo by means of modern transportation. After the inspection, the members of the expedition team agreed that it was impossible for him to come to China that year!

Hypothesis "New Evidence 1

Kublai Khan's invasion of Japan was met with a typhoon, and the timing was misplaced.

Marco Polo's account of Kublai Khan's invasion of Japan in 1274 and 1281 is grossly inconsistent with historical facts.

Hypothesis "New Evidence 2

Using a Persian name instead of a Chinese name is unconventional.

Marco Polo's Travels uses a lot of Persian terms to refer to the place names of Mongolia and China, and if he had been to China, how could he not have known the names of China? It's a bit unconventional.

Hypothesis "New Evidence 3

He was an official in the court of Kublai Khan, and there is no evidence to follow.

Marco Polo claimed in his travelogues that he had served as an official in the court during the time of Kublai Khan. The archaeological team consulted a large number of historical records about the court of the Yuan Dynasty, and the historical materials are very complete, but they just can't find a single word about Marco Polo. Therefore, the theory that Marco Polo was made an official by Kublai Khan can only be a hypothesis.

There is controversy as to whether Marco Polo ever came to China, but there is confirmation of the description in Marco Polo's Travels, which proves that he did come to the Yuan Dynasty.

I think I've been here, otherwise I wouldn't have been so conclusive.

He came in the Yuan Dynasty, and the description of ** and ** in the travelogue written after returning directly aroused the seafaring enthusiasm of Europeans.

I think if he hadn't been here, he would have been able to write it just by making it up?

Marco Polo had been to China. "Marco Polo's Travels" was dictated by him in prison and ghostwritten, and the ghostwriter made many changes to the content of his dictation, resulting in many loopholes and doubts in the content of the article, which made the academic community debate.

Since the publication of "The Travels of Marco Polo" 700 years ago, there have been doubts about the authenticity of its contents, especially whether Marco Polo himself actually came to China. In the existing historical materials of the Yuan Dynasty, there is no trace of Marco Polo. Although he claimed to have been a magistrate in Yangzhou for three years in his travelogue, his name could not be found in the Yangzhou County Chronicle.

Marco Polo lived in China for 17 years, but his travelogues fail to mention the unique flavors of Han culture that most arouse the curiosity of outsiders – the Great Wall, Chinese medicine, chopsticks, tea, calligraphy, and foot binding. All of this was used as evidence to deny that Marco Polo had been to China. However, if you read the book carefully, these doubts can be well explained.

No matter how much Marco Polo boasted about himself in his travelogue, he was still a small man, and it is not surprising that his name is not included in Chinese historical sources. The Great Wall was far less important in the Yuan Dynasty than it was in the Ming Dynasty, nor was it as majestic as it is now, making it a tourist hotspot. The Mongols did not use traditional Chinese medicine, and Marco Polo said in his travelogue that the imperial physician in Kublai Khan's court was a Greek.

Marco Polo interacted mainly with the Mongols and Muslims in the Western Regions in China, as they were the rulers of China, and he did not speak Chinese, so he was far away from the daily life of the Han people, which may be the reason why chopsticks, tea leaves, calligraphy, and foot binding are not mentioned in the book.

No! He also listened to what others said.

Didn't come.

Men love to brag, and they start to brag in prison, and the bigger the blow, the better, which is in line with human nature.

Seeing that none of Marco Polo's relics were Chinese, and even his clothes did not have Chinese elements, Marco Polo's own explanation was that he was robbed on the way back, but it was impossible to leave something at noon.

So, Marco Polo never came to China.

In itself, it is not important that he came to China, what is important is the strength of China at that time and its position in the world.

According to an article published in the British "Times" on April 14, 1982, "Marco. Has Polo ever been to China? by Gray.

Grunas was suspicious that Marco Polo had been to China, believing that the traveler had only visited the Islamic countries of Central Asia, and that the account of China in Marco Polo's Travels was only that of him and the Persian merchants or Turks who had been to China. In the conversation, hearsay cannot be used as evidence that he has been to China, and the author of the article also cites some examples, which are ominous here. But it's still a mystery.

According to research, Marco Polo did come to China. During the time of Kublai Khan in the Yuan Dynasty, he came to China and was made an official, and later returned to his motherland and wrote "Marco Polo's Travels", which made the West know China.

It's been here, it's the Yuan Dynasty, and it's an official, so it says in the history books.