Did Marco Polo go to China? (English)

Today's topic is related to the history and I'm going to tell you about some interesting facts I learned at the history seminar.

Once there widely spread a "distinctive" fashion of binding girls’ feet in China, as tiny feet were considered a beauty symbol. Ancient Chinese women suffered to achieve these strange beauty ideals, making sacrifices and bearing a lot of pain. Even today we can see the influence of this strange perception of beauty from the very important part of women’s fashion: high-heels.

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I’ll go to the main topic now as you might be wondering whether there are connections between Marco Polo and high-heels. The fact that Polo had “forgotten” to report about the “distinctive” characteristics of our　Southern neighbor led many people to question whether he visited China or not. Surely, it is doubtful if someone who visited China wouldn’t mention about that “distinctive” foot binding fashion, tea, chop sticks, calligraphy and most importantly the Great Wall. Polo’s critics suspect that the famous traveler might actually did not go that far from Venice, but just cobbled together interesting stories heard from Arabians and Persians. Frances Wood, No 1 Polo’s critic, wrote a famous book named “Did Marco Polo go to China”

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So, did Marco Polo go to China? I’ll introduce here the explanations made by Prof. Folker Reichert, my German teacher. I did not know at first that he was a historian and Medieval European and Asian history, history of discovery, voyage and exploration was one of his specializations. He said he doesn’t have any suspicion in famous traveler’s visit to China, though doesn’t agree with the common belief that Polo was a trader.

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Professor Reichert emphasized the fact that Marco Polo had become one of the Mongols as a result of spending many years among them after　accompanying his father and uncle on the trip to Asia. Serving the Great Khan and belonging to the highest social layer of the Yuan Dynasty, Polo actually was secluded from the Chinese, who were in the lowest layer, becoming one of the Mongols who are not interested that much in Chinese culture. That explains a lot, Prof. Reichert said.

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As Polo started to live in a Mongolian way of life preferring horse milk to tea ,he might haven’t had a “need” to concern about foot binding fashion, that was limited only　among upper class women in Southern China . Besides, the Great Wall that we know today, was built later during Ming dynasty, [thus] definitely Polo did not have chance to see it. Very accurate description of　the Silk Road　given by Polo　is an important fact that confirms his travel. But　there is still one argument questioning the credibility of Polo’s ambitious travel notes, since Chinese records of that time don’t mention him.

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Considering the fact that the book that made Marco Polo one of the most famous people of all time was not written by Polo himself, but by someone else based on the accounts heard from him during time of imprisonment, [I’ll say] Polo was not that serious man. [Certainly, he became “Mongolized” kk] Anyway, the book was written and kept till our time, adding one more issue to argue over.

P.S: Whern I met Prof. Reichert yesterday, he said he had found my post of 8 May through Google, but couldn't read it, since he doesn't know Mongolian. So I translated it to Englsih. If you want to read the original one, please go to:

http://getsu25.blogspot.com/2008/05/did-marco-polo-go-to-china.html