Did Marco Polo make it to China? Does it matter? The Venetian explorer — and arguably the first Western “China writer” — supposedly traveled, between 1271 and 1295, through Central Asia to Kublai Khan’s capital of Khanbaliq, the forerunner of modern Beijing, accompanied by his father and uncle as traveling merchants. His book The Travels of Marco Polo is about as deep into the China archive as we can delve.
Many in China, and around the world, believe Marco made it. The Sinologist Frances Wood famously dissents. Most historians of China — like kids at recess debating the existence of Santa — fall somewhere on the spectrum between skeptical scoffers and true believers. But whether Polo made the trip or not, his account of the civilizations, cultures and states of Asia is one of the most influential books ever published in a European language.