Opinion | How Marco Polo Missed China's Charms (Published 1996) (2024)

To the Editor:

Re Karl E. Meyer's "Revisiting Marco Polo" (Editorial Notebook, April 1):

The doubts of Frances Wood and others that Marco Polo reached China -- based on his failure to report the Great Wall, Chinese foot-binding, tea drinking and calligraphy -- arise from a misconception of the purposes of Polo's travels.

Polo made no mention of the Great Wall not because he was not there, but because it was not. The Ming Dynasty built the wall that we know mostly in the 16th century, while Polo visited China in the 13th.

Polo went to China to see not the Chinese but the Mongols, who had just completed the conquest of China and offered opportunities for foreigners, even Italians, to profit from commercial ventures there.

Polo's business and social activities were focused on the ruling Mongols and their non-Chinese associates in the upper levels of government rather than on their Chinese subjects, who served in low-level administrative positions.

Thus Polo banqueted with Mongols and reported on their beverages: fermented mare's milk and other intoxicants. He met Mongol women, and most likely Chinese women from the government brothel service for foreigners; they did not bind their feet. He would not have met the upper-class Chinese who appreciated foot-bound women and calligraphy.

JOHN M. SMITH JR. Berkeley, Calif., April 2, 1996

The writer is professor emeritus of history, University of California.