The brothers returned to Italy, just as the Eighth Crusade had just ended and the Ninth Crusade was being planned. They received a letter from Pope Gregory X to Kublai Khan and left for China in 1271. This time Niccolò brought his son Marco.

They sailed from Venice to the southern shore of the Black Sea and landed overland to the capital of Yuan Shangdu (Kaiping) and then to Dadu (Beijing) in 1275.

Marco Polo's cleverness has always been very pleasing to Kublai Khan, and he has been appointed many officials and sent him to various places as an envoy to the emperor of the Yuan Dynasty. Marco Polo traveled to many parts of China and saw many cultural achievements that were more advanced than those of Europe.

Before Marco Polo left for Europe, the Franciscan priest Montovino was sent by Pope Nicholas IV to Quanzhou, China, by sea in 1291.

In 1292, Marco Polo and his father and uncle were commissioned by Kublai Khan to escort the Mongol princess Kokuozhen from Quanzhou to the Ilkhanate by sea to get married. Kublai Khan promised them that after completing their mission, they could return to China by a different route. In 1295, the Polo family returned to Europe.

Marco Polo's Travels

After returning to Europe, the Polo family settled in Venice. Locals love to hear what they have to say about their experiences in China, but most don't believe the strange things they say.

In 1298, Marco Polo took part in the naval battle between Venice and Genoa. Defeated and captured, he spent several months in prison telling his fellow prisoners about his experiences in China.

Rustician wrote a book in Provençal and was soon translated into other European languages. Because Marco Polo described his experiences in China and other places to his fellow inmates. He always said, "A million this, a million that", so he was called "Mr. Million", and this travelogue was called IlMilione (million).

In China, Japan and other places, it is called "Marco Polo's Travels", "Oriental Experience" and so on. The original book is now lost, and several translations are not quite the same. The book was very popular and was rare in Europe when there was no printing press.

Whether Marco Polo had ever been to China has been the subject of major controversy. Most modern historians believe that Marco Polo did indeed go to China, because he described many details of life in the Far East, such as paper money, the Grand Canal, the Mongol army, coal, liquor, asbestos, tigers, and the structure of the Royal Mail system.

He referred to the ancient Chinese name for Japan. It was the first time that Japan appeared in Western literature, and he described a bridge near Dadu that resembled the Lugou Bridge.

The last years of the Qing Dynasty. Influenced by the "Marco Polo's Travels", a British expeditionary archaeological team went to Xinjiang to investigate some villages mentioned in the Taklamakan Desert. After many years, the village has been buried in the desert sand, but the expedition team excavated the approximate location of the location described in the travel diary. Roofs, tent utensils, clothing, daily utensils and other items were excavated. It is confirmed that Marco Polo's account is not wrong.

However, some scholars believe that Marco Polo only met a number of Persian merchants in the Black Sea in the Middle East. He has heard stories of China, Japan, and the Mongol Empire, but has never actually been to many countries in the Far East, thousands of kilometers away from the Black Sea.

In 1995, Frances Wood, head of the British Library's Chinese literature department, published Did Marco Polo Ever Visit China?, noting that Marco Polo's travelogues never mentioned Chinese things such as foot binding, chopsticks, and the Great Wall. There is no record of Marco Polo's family having direct ties to China, and there is not even any Chinese property in his family's possessions, so it is presumed that he never visited China.

In 2011, Professor Petrella of the University of Naples in Italy presented new evidence that Marco Polo's travelogue was unreasonable in a number of ways.

For example, the account of Kublai Khan's two attacks on Japan in 1274 and 1281 is full of contradictions and errors, and obfuscates the details of the two attacks: Marco Polo claims that the fleet of the first attack was hit by a typhoon before reaching the coast of Japan after leaving the Korean Peninsula, but in fact the fleet was hit by a typhoon during the second attack.

Petrella questioned Marco Polo's personal eyewitness to the events and the impossibility of confusing the two events, seven years apart. Petrola also pointed out that Marco Polo's description of the Mongol fleet did not match the wreckage of the ships found by the archaeological team in Japan: Marco Polo claimed that the Mongols used five-masted galleons, but in fact the ships had only three masts.

Xiangyang's cannon offering is a fabrication that obviously violates historical facts, he claimed to have offered a stone throwing machine to help attack Xiangyang, and the cannon was donated by the Persian Yismain and Alao Wadin, as evidenced by their biographies in the Yuan history and other sources.

In addition, Marco Polo repeatedly used Persian to describe the names of places and objects rather than in the language spoken: for example, he said that the Mongols used bitumen called "chunam" to waterproof the hull of ships, but "chunam" is actually the Persian word for "asphalt", which is not found in Chinese or Mongolian.

In his book Marco Polo's Visit: New Evidence of Currency, Salt, and Taxes, Hans Fu, a professor of sinology at the University of Tübingen in Germany, explains that many of the descriptions of China in Marco Polo's biography are unique and accurate, and are sufficient to prove their authenticity.

For example, when questioning why he never mentioned the Great Wall, there has long been a consensus in Chinese and Western historiography that the ancient Great Wall before the Yuan Dynasty was completely dilapidated and no longer attracted attention, and that the world-famous Ming Great Wall had not yet appeared.

For example, when questioning why Marco Polo's account cannot be found in the extant Chinese literature, Hans Fu believes that it is a serious misjudgment of the nature and density of ancient Chinese documents, because even the envoys sent to China by Pope Ben XII during the same period never appear in Chinese historical documents.

According to Fried, Marco Polo's extensive and detailed descriptions of China's currency, salt production, and taxation system at the time, which could not be found in European, Arabic, or Persian texts at the time, suggest that these exclusive descriptions were indeed derived from his own experience.

Marco Polo said in his "Travels" that he knew four languages when he was in China, including their letters and writings, but did not specify which four languages, which caused speculation among later generations. In modern times, the French believe that Marco Polo knew Chinese, Uighur, Mongolian and Persian written in the Arabic alphabet.

However, the famous commentators of "Marco Polo's Travels", the Englishman Jade Ear and the Frenchman Gordie, denied that Marco Polo knew Chinese. It is believed that the four languages that Marco Polo knew were Mongolian, Persian, Arabic and Turkic (Uyghur), and there was no Chinese.

Although Marco Polo's family was not the first European to travel to China (the papal envoy Palham arrived in 1246 in Hara Horin, the capital of the Mongol Empire), Marco Polo's family is best known for his travelogues, which are the most detailed account of Europeans' travels to Asia at the time.

His experiences inspired Columbus and many other travelers. There is a lot of literature based on his travelogues. Marco Polo also influenced the making of maps in Europe, leading to the appearance of the Flamauro map.

Legend has it that Marco Polo brought many things to Europe from China, such as ice cream, pizza, pasta, cheese fondue, glasses, harmonica, wind flute, and devil sticks. Documentary and archaeological evidence proves that Europe existed before the time.

The airport in Venice is now known as Marco Polo International Airport. In 1989, the British Satellite Broadcasting Corporation launched two satellites, Marco Polo I and Marco Polo II. The business collapsed, and the satellite was sold and renamed.

In 1979, the Japanese animation "Animation Chronicle - The Adventures of Marco Polo".

Hong Kong Television broadcasts "Marco Polo", featuring Marco Polo from the age of 17 to 42, an animation and documentary are broadcast together, and the narrator dictates the legendary life of Marco Polo to which attraction he visited.

In 1982, the United States and Italy cooperated in a TV series "Marco Polo".

National Geographic Magazine exclusive photographer Michael Yamashita, based on Marco Polo's experience, published a photo book "Marco Polo" and produced three TV programs. (To be continued......)