We all ?know? that Marco Polo went to China, served Ghengis Khan for many years, and returned to Italy with the recipes for pasta and ice cream. But Frances Wood, head of the Chinese Department at the British Library, argues that Marco Polo not only never went to China, he probably never even made it past the Black Sea, where his family conducted b
Frances Wood is head of the Chinese Department at the British Library and author of A Companion to China and The Blue Guide to China, among many other scholarly works.
* Introduction * The Bare Details * Why Go at All? Missionaries Nose to Tail * Prester John and the Magi * Not an Itinerary * The Ghost Writer and the First Fan * The Language of the Text * Omissions and Inclusions * Ice-cream and Spaghetti * Walls Within Walls * He Missed the Biggest Wall * Not Unique and Certainly Not a Siege Engineer * Who Were the Polos? Was It China? A Significant Absence * Conclusions * Afterword
