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In Pictures: In the footsteps of Marco Polo

What can Marco Polo’s epic 13th century travels teach us about relations between East and West – then and now?

In the year 1271 AD, Marco Polo, a young Italian merchant, set out from Venice on an extraordinary journey from Europe to China. It is the starting point of everything that has happened between China and the West ever since
Published On 27 Sep 2014

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East and West – where does the power lie? Where does the future lie? How does China fit into the world?

These were the questions that Marco Polo, a young merchant from Venice, was asking when he set out to discover the unknown East.

His story, related in The Travels of Marco Polo, described a new world that the West had little knowledge of and shaped how the West viewed the East ever since.

Now, those questions about China seem relevant again. What would Marco Polo’s journey look like today?

In a contemporary retracing of Marco Polo’s 13th century journey, we explore the world he witnessed and contemplate East and West today – people, places, power and perceptions.

Polo(***)s aim was to establish trade links with Asia, to reach Xanadu, and to meet the great Kublai Khan
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Professor Qiguang Zhao, a teacher of Chinese culture, embarks on a journey to try and find Marco Polo in Venice. He is not the first historian to do so, but not many have come from China. (***)Marco Polo(***)s book. How many times have I read it? So many, I cannot remember. What an influence he(***)s had on me. Even when we were forbidden ... to read foreign books, I couldn(***)t let him go,(***) says Professor Zhao
Marco Polo(***)s writings were translated into many languages. But with each version, first the translator then the ghostwriter would add or remove something. Each version was customised for whoever commissioned it. But the whereabouts of the first book are unknown
Professor Mark Ceresa, a Chinese specialist and an expert on Marco Polo, says the young traveller was (***)the first to write about China in an interesting, original way. Everything that followed built on this account
Along the Silk Road, from the West came perfumes, ivory, precious stones and glassware, while from China there came silk and spices. In the East, Marco Polo took the southern Silk Road via Yarkand and Khotan, skirting along the southern rim of the Taklamakan Desert, a dangerous area where many travellers before him had lost their lives
Polo was the first European to record the Grand Canal, a huge waterway that Kublai Khan had opened up to ship grain to his new capital Beijing
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Yunnan, a remote Chinese region whose name means (***)Beyond the Clouds(***) is the first place Polo is sent to by the emperor. There are still people today who travel through the mountains of Yunnan in the same manner as Polo did, on the horse caravans
Lake Lugu is the historical home of the Mosuo, an ethnic minority with a population of 40,000 that forms one of the world(***)s last matriarchial societies
For 700 years before Marco Polo and the 700 years since, the Mosuos have honoured the goddess of love and beauty
At its height, Khan(***)s Mongol Empire was the largest contiguous empire in history. It stretched from the Sea of Japan in the east to the Carpathian Mountains in the west. (***)The Mongols were once proud rulers of the known world. Venice is long past its golden age, struggling to stay above water. And Marco Polo ... a kind of memory,(***) says Professor Zhao
Since the 1990s, nothing in history has matched the speed and scale of Beijing(***)s transformation. Just as in the time of Kublai Khan, a new Beijing is being built. And it is sending out the same message: a new power is marching to the centre of the world stage
"It(***)s not easy joining the modern world," Professor Zhao says. "We thought the only way was to chase the West. Are we losing what makes us Chinese," asks Professor Zhao
Polo left home to begin his travels at age 17. He returned 24 years later when he was 41, having travelled where no other European had ever been. Over the years, he learned to appreciate difference and he had made a discovery - that the West was not the very centre of the world