Original subtitles

[orchestral music]

[narrator] The 13th century:

In Venice young Marco Polo is about to embark on a voyage to China.

However, to this day doubts persist as to whether he ever arrived there.

The sheer scale of his adventures continues to defy belief.

[punching] [yells]

His account becomes the bestseller of the Late Middle Ages.

Today, scholars the world over are seeking facts and answers.

Is there reliable proof of Marco Polo's presence at the Imperial Court of China?

They are searching for clues.

In Marco Polo's own words:

"In Chinese sources and by applying state-of-the-art technology."

Even on his deathbed Marco Polo maintains

that he has told only half of all he had seen,

otherwise, he says, no one would have believed him.

[dramatic orchestral music]

[narrator] In 1298,

In the course of a naval war between the Republics of Genoa and Venice,

Marco Polo, a Venetian merchant, ends up a captive prisoner in a Genovese jail.

There he encounters one Rustichello of Pisa,

a prolific author of chivalric novels.

An imaginative writer and a well-travelled man,

imprisoned and cut off from the outside world.

A chance encounter... with fateful consequences.

Marco Polo entertains his fellow prisoner with tales of an arduous journey

to faraway kingdoms.

He tells of strange customs,

immense riches and of a highly civilized culture

of most wondrous achievements.

[orchestral music]

[narrator] Rustichello is fascinated by this exotic panorama,

he becomes an instant admirer of his cellmate,

this man who claims to have seen all this in person.

In their Genovese jail the two men put the tale of these travels to paper.

They will make Marco Polo a household name to this day.

But what if these tales are all woven from hearsay?

We meet Frances Wood of the British Library in London.

In her book, Did Marco Polo Go to China?

she questions the myth of the Venetian traveller.

I would believe that he probably didn't travel

much further than Constantinople,

where we know that a Polo family had business and so on.

And there it would... That's a great entrepot

where he would have met many other people who had travelled further.

[narrator] This would make Marco Polo a plagiarist.

But does this verdict hold?

Those who are convinced

that the Venetian did, in fact, reach China

have a strong argument in support of their views.

[speaking in German]

[voice-over] What speaks in his favour is the simple fact that his descriptions,

of all manner of things, are very precise,

and that most of his observations can be confirmed by Chinese sources.

[narrator] The dispute surrounding Marco Polo

has continued unabated for centuries.

When he returned, after 24 years, his tales strained the belief

of even those among his contemporaries, who readily believed in miracles.

They call him "Il Milione", the braggart, a mere teller of tall tales.

And to this day the place

where Marco Polo's house is said to have stood,

is called "Corte Milione", the braggart's court.

Literary scholar Marina Münkler

is about to search the Venetian archives hoping to get nearer the truth.

In her view:

[voice-over] Doubts about Marco Polo ever having been to China,

are based largely on the magnitude of his descriptions,

which makes it hard to imagine that one man alone could have seen all that.

In Marco Polo's times Venice had amassed great wealth as the western terminus

for goods from central and eastern Asia.

Ornamentations on the palazzi of Venice

still bear witness to the interaction with the Muslim world.

But in terms of fame,

none of its merchants ever got close to that of Marco Polo.

[mandolin]

Of the man himself we know very little.

But at least the date of his departure seems reasonably well established.

He was a rather green young man of seventeen

when his father and his uncle allowed him along on a voyage to Eastern Asia.

The youngster very likely felt as though he were embarking

on an adventure to the end of the earth.

For Niccolo Polo and his brother Maffeo, however,

this is not a venture into the unknown.

Years earlier they had penetrated deep into the heart of Mongolia

and had reached the court of the mighty Kublai Khan.

As merchants they had been among the first foreigners to cross

the empire of the dreaded apocalyptic horsemen,

they are aware of the dangers in store.

[orchestral music]

The Mongols, also known as Tartars at the time,

were notorious for their cruelty,

and people in the West regarded them as harbingers of doom.

Under Genghis Khan and his successors, they even forayed well into Europe.

Their bloody campaigns forged a Mongol Empire that stretched

from China in the East to the Black Sea in the West.

Entire peoples were subjugated, or annihilated,

in the course of these tumultuous events.

Marco Polo relates that, after a long journey,

his father and his uncle reached the court of Kublai Khan in Shangdu.

There, according to his account, things took an unexpected turn.

The fearsome Mongol ruler had expressed a genuine interest in Christian religion

and sent the Venetians home to return with a hundred learned priests.

To ensure their safe passage,

the Khan had allegedly provided them with a set of so-called courier tablets.

Prior to their departure, Marco's father Niccolo Polo

shows one such golden tablet to Marco.

Niccolo Polo tells his son how he, and his brother Maffeo,

time and again had made use of it on their long journey home.

In his Travels, Marco Polo gives a detailed description of these tablets,

and quotes their inscription:

"By the power and grace of the great God

and by the Grace he vouchsafes on our Empire,

the name of the Khan be blessed,

and let all such as disobey suffer death and utter destruction."

So, the bearer of such a tablet was treated as a personal courier,

or ambassador of the Grand Khan,

traveling under his official protection.

The Mongols called this passport a Paiza.

For the Polos it would have been a priceless possession.

But what became of their set?

[orchestral music]

Venetian State Archives may hold a first clue.

A document from the Polo files, dated 1310,

does indeed mention the courier tablets of the Grand Khan.

[muttering in Italian]

In his testament, Marco's uncle Maffeo bequeathed to his nephew

"half a gemstone and three golden tablets, "

manifestly stating that they had once belonged

to the Grand Khan of the Tartars.

Yet a further document confirms the existence of the tablets:

The dowry list of Marco Polo's daughter, Fantina.

[Marina speaking in German]

[voice-over] We know that this kind of golden tablet

served as ambassadorial passport within the Khan empire,

meaning they did exist.

Why else would they be mentioned in a testament, or a dowry list?

[narrator] Spring 1271.

For the first leg of their voyage the Polos board a Crusader ship

bound for the Holy Land.

Its destination: the port of Acre.

Here they met, as Marco would later claim, the newly elected Pope, Gregory X.

Marco tells Rustichello that the head of the Church had supplied them

with everything they would need to accomplish their mission...

a letter of recommendation, addressed to the Grand Khan,

and permission to present him with a few drops of oil

from the lamp said to have burned above the grave of Christ.

However, concerning the 100 priests requested by the Khan,

there would be only two monks to accompany them.

[suspenseful string music]

A 14th-century manuscript highlights the importance of their mission

and the issuing of the papal order.

But did all this really happen?

There isn't a Pope at the time,

and they cross with someone who then does become pope.

But, of course, as we've said, there is no proof of any of this,

there is no record,

and the Vatican is full of letters to and from Mongol leaders,

but nothing which seems to fit with the Polos.

But I think it is part of the question of self-presentation...

they rather make themselves grander.

[narrator] But seemingly, the story is not garnered from thin air.

Marco Polo even provides the names of the two monks.

And there is another source which confirms that a certain William of Tripolis

lived in Palestine at that time,

a monk who was fluent in Arabic

and who had comprehensive knowledge of oriental matters.

In other words, an ideal choice for the venture at hand.

[breathing deeply]

The travellers set out for Armenia

where they find themselves in the midst of a local war.

Fearing for their lives, the monks turn back.

The Polos, however, continue their journey...

facing eight thousand kilometres of danger and hardship

along the Silk Road to the court of Kublai Khan.

[stirring orchestral music]

They have been traveling for months now.

The nearer they get to China

the more intimidating everything around them becomes.

Granted, there is the Pax Mongolica,

a kind of official protection for merchants,

but what is this worth out here?

Bandits regularly prey on caravans plying the trade routes,

attacking and plundering.

[wind blowing]

The constant pervasive threat produces

an atmosphere both sinister and uncanny.

But there are also moments of sheer magic and amazement,

yet they always intermingle with fear spawned

by the gruesome legends told and re-told around flickering campfires.

[haunting oboe melody]

Two and a half decades later Marco Polo was to relate them

in his sober, matter-of-fact style, often almost impassively.

He tells of bandits who would call upon the devil to darken the skies,

only to emerge from a cloud of black dust

charging side by side against traders, or merchants too poorly armed

to mount forceful resistance, who would be plundered, and often killed.

But then, Rustichello, as narrator, steps in.

[groans]

It seems as though his professional sense of drama

repeatedly places Marco Polo in the midst of the action,

making it difficult to decide where a mere account ends

and where Rustichello's imagination takes over.

At the end of this particular episode, his hero manages to escape.

All others are either slain, or enslaved.

[sustained musical note]

[Marina speaking in German]

[voice-over] Rustichello does expressly speak of "our book",

as though they were co-authors,

which, in a way, they actually were.

There are many passages in The Travels

where Marco Polo figures as a kind of presenter.

But he, in turn, is presented by Rustichello.

So, without Rustichello,

Marco Polo would be practically non-existent in the book.

[narrator] As a traveller, Marco Polo was far from unique.

Scholars have listed at least 33 men who, in the thirteenth century,

had set forth to China before him.

But his report dwarfs all others by the wealth of its details.

In 1253 a Franciscan friar, William of Rubrück,

had set out from Constantinople

for Central Asia and the Empire of the Mongols.

He left a vivid description of his impressions.

[Rubrück] "To be the first time among Tartars

was as if I had entered a new world.

On one occasion, literally hordes of Barbarians came galloping towards us...

Afterwards I really thought that we'd escaped the devil

by a mere hair's breadth."

[narrator] Rubrück definitely portrays himself

as the colourful hero of his own story.

With Marco Polo, there is always the impression

of a remote collector of facts,

which is, paradoxically, what later caused sceptics to doubt his veracity.

[Marina speaking in German]

[voice-over] I don't think the data-oriented exposition

in Marco Polo's book can be taken as a clue that he was not there in person.

I rather think that he refrained

from putting forth his personal experiences

because he was striving for objectivity.

I don't see this as an attempt to conceal

that he had merely worked with excerpts from other sources.

Most of the facts in his account can be verified,

and there is no other European source from this era

which provides us with more data.

[wind blowing]

[narrator] For instance: How many days does it take to cross a particular desert?

Where do you find food, water, adequate lodgings?

Pick up The Travels of Marco Polo, and you'll easily find a practical answer.

Its author has an eye for even the tiniest detail.

"For travellers from the West," he writes, "the Taklamakan, so hostile to life,

is the last great obstacle to the Middle Kingdom."

"If you try to cross it, from one end to the other," he tells Rustichello,

"the journey would take a whole year.

Only by navigating the narrowest stretch

could a traveller on horseback manage the crossing in about thirty days."

And he tells Rustichello of wondrous sounds

rising at night like the voices of spirits...

filling the air with strange music,

reminiscent of drum rolls that drive travellers almost out of their minds.

[eerie rush of air]

It was, Marco says, as if the spirits were calling his name,

and often they had lured travellers into the desert,

misguiding them to become lost forever.

The singing dunes, in China they call them mingsha shan.

When the wind raises millions of grains of sand,

and whirls them about, it creates a disturbing sonorous effect.

A fascinating spectacle of nature.

To the people of Marco Polo's times,

it must have sounded like melodies from another world.

[orchestral music]

At the western end of the Taklamakan the Silk Road divides.

The Polos follow the southern route.

Thirty days later they reach Dunhuang, an oasis as well as an important city.

In his account, however, Marco Polo barely mentions it.

This is the hub of several trade routes and the gateway to China proper.

Nearby are the Buddha caves of Dunhuang.

A mysterious site, from where Buddhism once spread to the Middle Kingdom.

Along the Silk Road from India

the new faith was carried over thousands of kilometres eastward.

Monks had carved hundreds of caves into the sandstone as places of worship

and adorned them with innumerable paintings and statues

to honour the founder of their religion.

So, why, Frances Wood wonders,

does Marco Polo seem almost unaware of the magnificence of the place?

[flute]

Dunhuang is world famous.

It's an amazing sight in the desert, this wonderful long cliff,

which has got about 700 little caves carved into it.

It's the most dramatic sight.

He just mentions the name of the place and then talks about some Muslim customs,

not a word about the cliff, the Buddhas, anything like that.

Which does seem to suggested it might not have been a personal visit.

[narrator] Up to this point,

Marco Polo's descriptions of places and cities

are in line with the caravan trail to Dunhuang.

But then there's a leap in his narrative

as though he had strayed from the plausible route.

[F. Wood] Here he makes another sudden sally northwards,

rather pointlessly to Khara-Khoto.

Now, I mean, this is a very kind of mysterious move,

because Khara-Khoto was the capital of the Tanguts,

the Tanguts had been wiped off the map in 1227,

so why anyone would go there is difficult to understand.

Then he comes back to Dunhuang.

[narrator] And there's another vexing detail in the pages that follow:

Why is there not a single line about China's Great Wall,

which stretches along the Silk Road once you leave Dunhuang?

[F. Wood] If you come along the Gansu Corridor,

you have flat plain between mountains

and then this great yellow wall in the middle.

It's unmissable and it's the most dramatic sight,

you would have certainly wondered what on earth it was.

But, there's no mention of it.

[orchestral music]

[narrator] This is one of the most imposing structures ever built.

For more than 2,000 years China's rulers ordered their subjects

to construct and renew this gigantic line of defence.

At first they used clay,

rebuilding long stretches with massive stone

bit by bit in later years.

That Marco Polo should have overlooked it entirely

seems rather improbable to a modern mind.

But then, there are other contemporary travel accounts

that fail to mention the Wall with a single word.

Even the first proper map, charted in 1385

and covering the whole of China, does not record it.

The Great Wall of China?

A complete blank.

This 16th-century map is the first ever to outline the Great Wall in its course.

So, Marco Polo did not overlook the gigantic wall of stone

as we know it today.

In his time it was a derelict line of crumbled clay which,

after centuries of neglect, had long lost any meaning

to the people who lived nearby.

Three hundred years would pass before work resumed on the Great Wall.

The question,

why his account more or less skips the sights of Dunhuang, however,

remains unanswered.

[haunting string music]

The Polos have finally reached China.

Yet there are still 2,000 kilometres ahead before they reach their destination,

the court of Kublai Khan, in Shangdu.

[orchestral music]

By then the Grand Khan had proclaimed himself the first Mongol Emperor of China.

In a series of hard-fought campaigns, the grandson of Genghis Khan had succeeded

in subduing all opposing Mongol tribes.

For the first time in 300 years,

the empire is once again united under a single ruler.

Kublai Khan becomes the founder of the Yuan Dynasty.

He is the most powerful man on earth.

Rustichello writes, asserting he would always adhere to the truth,

that when the Venetians arrived

the Khan had called for a magnificent welcoming spectacle

and ordered the entire court to participate.

This, Rustichello continues, was regarded as an exceptional honour for the Polos.

[orchestral music]

Three years after leaving Venice they have finally reached their destination,

an all important moment, one would suppose.

But Marco, now in his twentieth year,

omits to relate a single personal impression

of his first face-to-face encounter with the Emperor of China.

Whatever he might have felt, or thought, he kept to himself.

His story is the stuff of epics and film producers readily pounced on it.

Numerous stars have portrayed Marco Polo as a dashing hero, an adventurer

who overcomes any danger, gains the friendship of the emperor,

and returns home laden with riches.

[orchestral music]

But in his account, Marco Polo declines to seek centre stage.

For him, the true hero of his tale is the great Kublai Khan.

According to Marco, on New Year's day

more than a 100,000 magnificent white horses

were presented to the ruler.

An incredible number

that makes even the loyal Rustichello doubt his cellmate's sincerity.

But Marco's admiration for the Khan is boundless.

To him, he is a ruler who defies comparison,

be it in terms of power, or of wealth.

Each year on the 28th of September, Marco says,

the Khan would celebrate the date of his birth

by donning garments covered entirely with small plaques of gold.

In attendance were 12,000 nobles and knights from throughout the realm,

wearing gowns to match those of the emperor in fashion and colour,

displaying belts of gold indicating their rank.

Some of these garments, Marco insists, were embroidered with gemstones

and pearls worth more than 10,000 Byzantine florins.

[Hans speaking in German]

[voice-over] Marco Polo offers a very detailed description of the Khan,

for whom he has a near-sacred reverence.

We read of festivities, of ceremonies, of imperial hunts,

and he dedicates long paragraphs to dress regulations,

the bestowing of belts,

and the significance of certain brocade garments.

All this is confirmed by Chinese sources.

[narrator] Since the 19th century, scholars have scrutinised

ancient Chinese documents for traces of Marco Polo.

But there is only one name which bears a phonetic similarity

to the Venetian's surname Boluo.

This attribution, Boluo equals Polo,

is still in dispute.

But in 2010, Chinese historian Peng Hai struck upon something

that might substantiate the identification of Boluo with Marco Polo.

Peng Hai had dug deeply into the Yuanshe, the chronicles of the Yuan dynasty.

The Yuanshe relates that a certain Saman, a confidant of the Khan,

had issued a warrant ordering the arrest of another young courtier named Boluo.

The charge: Boluo had violated the standing order

that within the imperial palace women and men must walk separately.

When the Grand Khan hears of the arrest, he orders Boluo to be brought before him.

Having heard his case, the Khan not only pardons Boluo,

he even entrusts him with an important mission

and sends him away to a distant province.

Once there Boluo shall act as the Khan's official collector of taxes.

[orchestral music]

[speaking in Chinese]

[voice-over] The Khan held a protective hand over Marco Polo.

Saman felt deeply humiliated.

He turned to alcohol and soon died an embittered man.

His death caused considerable discontent among high officials.

Marco Polo's standing at court, and even his life, were endangered.

This was the reason why the wise Khan

had sent him to a distant province and out of harm's way.

[narrator] In Marco Polo's account

we read nothing about the arrest of its protagonist.

The corresponding passage merely mentions the courtiers' general envy

and a mission to a remote corner of the empire.

By checking the place names of the itinerary,

historians have concluded that in 1282

Marco Polo's destination must have been Yangzhou.

[speaking in Chinese]

[voice-over] When we retrace his stages on the route to Yangzhou,

it becomes obvious that Marco Polo must have used the post road.

This indicates travel on horseback,

a privilege reserved for high-ranking officials,

which, in turn, reveals that he must have held a corresponding title.

[speaking in Chinese]

[narrator] Yangzhou is situated on the banks of the Grand Canal of China,

or the Emperor's Canal, as it was called in Marco Polo's time.

Back then, being the hub of the salt trade,

Yangzhou had grown into one of the wealthiest cities of the empire.

According to Marco Polo's own words, he spent three years in Yangzhou.

At the foot of the Venetian's statue,

Hans Ulrich Vogel meets historian Peng Hai,

a native of Yangzhou.

He has been searching for proof of Marco Polo's stay in his hometown.

Sifting through documents

concerning administrative affairs in medieval China,

Peng Hai has uncovered a number of striking similarities.

For him there is no doubt that Marco Polo held a high official post

in Yangzhou's tax and salt authority.

No one before had ever listed the 27 districts

of the Yangzhou province as precisely and correctly as he did.

Chinese sources confirm that this administrative division

was in practice for three years only, exactly matching the time span

Marco Polo claims to have spent in the region.

But could he really have held such an exalted position?

As a matter of fact, a European

in the service of Kublai Khan was no exception.

China's ruler is known to have drawn on foreign experts,

most of whom remain nameless and have left few traces.

And there is one irrefutable proof

that there were, in fact, quite a number of them.

In 1951,

excavations in Yangzhou unearthed a set of gravestones

bearing Christian symbols.

In the 15th century they had been re-used

as building material to construct the new city wall.

On one gravestone archaeologists discovered the name of a child,

Catarina Ilioni, who had died here in Yangzhou in the Year of Our Lord 1342.

Her family hailed from Upper Italy, as did Marco Polo.

[Hans speaking in German]

[voice-over] The inscription tells us that Catarina

was the daughter of one Domenico Ilioni, a merchant from Genoa.

Clearly, Ilioni had somehow settled in Yangzhou

and was conducting business.

This shows that in certain regions, it was conceivable to encounter an Italian

engaged in trade with the Chinese.

[narrator] From foreign merchant, to state official

in the service of the powerful salt authority,

a leap that is all the more credible

as Marco Polo reveals intimate knowledge of its workings.

To this day, scholars are amazed at the Venetian's detailed description

of the salt-making process.

In Xiangshan,

200 kilometres from the former seat of the imperial salt authority,

they still produce large amounts of China's white gold

by exposing sea-water to the sun.

But there are hints that somewhere in the region,

another, even older technique of producing salt is still in use...

a technique mentioned by Marco Polo.

Tips from the locals point Hans Ulrich Vogel towards Daxu,

the village of the salt men.

Until quite recently, a salt man's workday began with a prayer in the temple.

Zhang Bo was one of them.

Every morning they would perform the traditional ritual

to ask the gods for their blessing before beginning their day's work.

[greeting each other in Chinese]

[narrator] Zhang Bo tells of their prayers,

and how, to his regret, the times have changed so much

that the salt output of the village has dwindled to a near standstill.

Most of the old simmering equipment has been scrapped.

Xu Jianghao, the salt god, may have outlived his usefulness,

but is still accorded a daily bowl of fruit in time-honoured reverence

and to invoke his protection over the village.

Marco Polo is familiar with all this.

He describes in detail the leaching process,

exactly as it is still practised by the salt men of Daxu.

Salt is leached from mineral-bearing soils by adding water.

When the concentration of a solution is high enough,

it is poured into large pans and boiled until the salt particles crystallize.

Just the way Marco Polo described it more than 700 years ago.

The annual salt tax from a single district, he says,

was worth almost six million saggi in gold,

around 27 tonnes by today's standard.

[speaking in German]

[voice-over] The data that Marco Polo has left us

concerning the imperial salt authority, is surprisingly detailed,

precise, comprehensive and systematically chronicled.

When we compare this with Chinese sources,

we find that it corresponds almost 100 percent.

And the most amazing fact is that these sources date

from an era long after Marco Polo's time.

So, he could not have made use of them for his account.

He must have had an insider's knowledge, meaning he saw all this with his own eyes.

[orchestral music]

[narrator] As a tax official,

and as the ever-curious wanderer between two worlds,

Marco Polo experiences the China of the Grand Khan

as a country replete with a spirit of revival and invigoration.

Wherever he goes, new buildings are under construction,

old ones are being enlarged or renovated.

The Venetian is awed by the achievements of Kublai Khan.

He sees a highly civilized state

with an administration honed to perfection,

and a road system unrivalled anywhere else.

Time and again, scholars stumble upon seemingly marginal details in his account.

"On either side of public roads, wherever possible,

the Khan demands that trees be planted three paces apart,

that they may serve to indicate the road surface

when covered with winter snow,

and to afford summer shade to travellers and their horses."

Observations like these leave little doubt

that their author had first-hand knowledge of such matters.

While scrutinizing documents of the Yuan dynasty's postal system,

historian Dang Baohai has found three sources

that confirm the details related by Marco Polo.

They expressly state

that Kublai Khan was the first ruler

to order the planting of trees along the post roads.

[Dang speaking in Chinese]

[voice-over] Many foreign travellers were abroad throughout the Yuan Empire.

But it is only with Marco Polo

that we find the kind of marginal details and footnotes

that match historical documents.

[narrator] The imperial palace in today's Beijing,

built along the lines of its predecessor from the times of Kublai Khan.

Back then, the ruler ordered an entire city to be built from scratch

as a symbol of his power,

and in 1264 made it his new main residence.

To Marco Polo, its chequer-board layout is a masterpiece of town planning

and "a most magnificent sight to behold."

Adorned with paintings, marble, silver and gold,

the likes of which Europe has never seen…

he is enraptured.

To control his vast empire,

the Grand Khan must rely on dispatches from his roaming officials.

These he sends on countless missions

to report on anything that might have a bearing on the affairs of state.

It is on his tours of inspection

that Marco Polo memorises his huge wealth of details,

thus becoming one of the foremost authorities

on what, back then, was modern China.

The hinterland of Khanbaliq, the Khan's city,

as Beijing was then called,

would comprise 200 individual cities, he relates.

"From there people flock to the capital and bring their produce and merchandise.

No fewer than a thousand carriages

and pack horses loaded with raw silk arrive daily."

It appears that Marco Polo had developed a passion

for China's imposing stone bridges.

In his account, the Lugou Qiao bridge in Beijing takes pride of place.

Back then, it was sixteen kilometres from there into the capital.

The river spanned by the bridge would take merchants

and their goods all the way to the sea.

In the 17th century a flood wreaked havoc with the Lugou Qiao.

It had to be rebuilt.

But the measurements Marco Polo quotes still apply:

300 paces long and 8 paces wide.

There's no other bridge in the world like it,

he would tell Rustichello.

[piano]

[Hans speaking in German]

[voice-over] We still find construction elements

from Marco Polo's time.

For instance, these parapets which he describes in great detail.

He talks of stone pillars, each one topped by the statue of a lion.

Between the columns are horizontal stone slabs, he explicitly states,

that prevent people from falling into the river.

Marco Polo, it may be important to add, is the only non-Chinese author

who left such an elaborate description of this particular bridge.

[narrator] In the harbour of Quanzhou

Marco Polo makes special note

of the unusual construction of the pylons of the local bridge.

Both ends are tapered like the bow of a ship,

facing upstream and downstream.

"Because, " he writes,

"at very high tides there is upstream flooding from the sea to the interior."

Scholars say only someone actually present

would be interested in information such as this.

To the Venetian, the empire of the Mongols is a land of wonders,

one being paper money, still unheard of in Europe.

With a piece of paper such as this, Marco tells Rustichello,

he had bought goods everywhere without the slightest problem.

The Mongols produced it from the bark of mulberry trees.

And he adds that anyone refusing to accept such a paper as legal tender

is liable to face the death penalty.

As a specialist in medieval Chinese finance,

Hans Ulrich Vogel knows the contemporary sources referring to paper money.

Some twenty years before Marco Polo, a monk compared its texture to cotton.

Marco Polo, again, provides an additional detail.

He describes the process used to produce the paper for their currency...

using mulberry fibre.

[tense electronic music]

Frankfurt, Germany.

Lab experts at Goethe University have been asked to examine

a priceless specimen of Chinese paper money,

issued in the 14th century, to ascertain its basic raw material.

Since the monetary system of the Yuan dynasty had worked so well,

it was adopted by its successors more or less unchanged.

It is the first time a detail from Marco Polo's account

is subjected to scientific scrutiny.

[violins]

[crescendo]

[narrator] Will he be faulted on his claim

that the Chinese used the membrane

between the bark and the wood of the mulberry tree?

A tiny sample,

1.5 millimetres thick, almost invisible to the eye,

is removed from one edge of the note and prepared for analysis.

The result is conclusive.

The membrane shows an irregular structure

and permits light to pass through unevenly,

a defining feature of mulberry fibre.

So, can it really be

that Marco Polo might have lifted all this from other sources,

or assembled it from hearsay, as sceptics continue to assert?

He goes on to state the size and the street value

of particular notes, their equivalent in gold,

of a three percent surtax for exchanging withered notes,

and he mentions inflation.

Scholars have put his data to the test,

comparing them with information from eight other sources.

[Hans speaking in German]

[voice-over] Marco Polo has dedicated an entire Chapter to China's paper money,

and if we analyse its content

against what other western, Arabian and Persian authors have written,

we see at first glance that it was Marco Polo who gave the most detailed,

precise and comprehensive data about old paper money

that has ever reached us.

[soft percussive music]

[narrator] Marco Polo experiences China as a modern country, a land of prosperity.

Details about local peculiarities and mundane curiosities

are as noteworthy to him as the consummate organisation

of the vast empire.

However, the wealth of details in his account are oddly counterbalanced

by much of what he omits.

For instance:

There is not a single line about printing, then still unknown in Europe,

nor of Chinese script,

the curious custom of binding the feet of noblewomen,

or the ceremonial ritual of preparing tea.

Such omissions still divide scholars into believers and detractors.

Yet even Frances Wood,

although she remains sceptical that Marco Polo ever did go to China,

acknowledges the importance of his account.

The good side about the whole controversy is

that it does allow people to carry on working,

looking in different ways, and looking at the medieval world

and that has really provoked a lot of study, which is great.

And, I think, what is important is that Marco Polo's book

really brought China to Europe.

And, really, that's all I've ever wanted to do

in this book and any other, is to bring China to Europe,

so that people can understand it better.

[solemn orchestral music]

[narrator] In Marco Polo's day

not only faraway China is a blank spot on the map of his European contemporaries.

Next to nothing is known about the countries east of Persia.

Marco Polo is the first who endeavours to fill the gap.

No one before has travelled so widely, seen so much,

and brought back stories that often border on the bizarre.

One day in jail he confides a tale from the province of Tibet.

He describes a most curious custom

the locals would transact with travelling merchants.

Initially, even trusty Rustichello is reluctant to believe this story:

Under no circumstances would a Tibetan man marry a virgin.

According to Marco, a girl was obliged to have had sexual intercourse

with a number of men, lest she be regarded as worthless.

Therefore Tibetan mothers would approach men of passing caravans

to sleep with their daughters,

assuring obliging men they could enjoy the tryst as long as they wished.

All that was expected in return was a modest trinket which,

strung up and worn as a necklace,

would testify to the girls' amorous skills.

In the eyes of Tibetans, the girl with the most trinkets

would make the most desirable bride,

and be blessed by the Gods.

This rather frivolous tale has been credited

to the fertile imagination of Rustichello who lets the episode end on that note.

In some versions of The Travels, however, it is missing altogether.

There are about 150 versions of the original manuscript.

Some vary greatly in their content as well as in their wording.

[piano]

For instance, in the Latin translation by Pipino da Bologna, a Dominican monk,

the pre-marital custom is viewed very differently.

In Pipino's words it is a despicable habit that originated from idolatry.

[Marina speaking in German]

[voice-over] Pipino certainly altered many aspects of the text

to accord with the mores of his Dominican order.

He intervened with the basic structure of the account

and edited a number of passages,

such as the one about the so-called "Tibetan guest prostitution".

In the Franco-Italian version, this passage is told

with an unmistakable wink of the eye,

whereas Pipino adds a commentary stating that this custom was "utterly abhorrent".

[narrator] So, pious Pipino adapted the text

to suit his Christian morals.

Marco Polo, too, is a man of the late Middle Ages and their prevailing beliefs.

But his account shows him to be

surprisingly open-minded and ever-curious.

His attitude towards Buddhism, for example, is one of explicit tolerance,

and he admires the policy of Kublai Khan,

who had elevated the teachings of Buddha to be the prominent faith in his empire

whilst tolerating the worshipping of other gods.

Marco remains a faithful Christian, enjoying the Khan's individual protection.

But finally he senses that the time has come to depart.

The Grand Khan is now an old man.

And since no one could predict which turn events might take after his passing,

Marco's father and his uncle strongly argue for their departure.

This coincides with the arrival of three barons

from the far west of the empire,

who had arrived to ask the Khan to send a princess

as a bride for their ruler, Arghun.

Their names as Marco relates them, were Oulatai, Apusca and Coia.

He tells Rustichello the Khan had chosen young princess Cocachin

and asked the Venetians to escort her on a ship's passage to Persia.

And thus began their return journey home.

So, is the story of the bridal escort

the final touchstone of Marco Polo's credibility?

[muted orchestral music]

[narrator] It was only in 1913 that his account was translated into Chinese.

Since then Chinese historians have scrutinized the archives,

among them the National Library in Beijing.

And in a 15th century encyclopaedia, they found what they had been seeking.

The Yongle Dadian confirms the courtship of a Persian delegation

and lists the envoys' names.

They are: Oulatai, Apusca and Coia.

[Hans speaking in German]

[voice-over] The Yongle Dadian may not mention the name of Marco Polo,

but all the others are there,

and there's also a later Persian chronicle, by one Rashid al Bin,

which states the return of the delegation to Persia.

So, it all fits together and combines into a very plausible order of events.

This shows that Marco Polo's account is consistent with the facts,

and it's more clear evidence that he actually had been in China.

[flute]

[narrator] The voyage home was to take four years.

Shortly after his return, Marco Polo falls into the hands of the Genovese,

and, with the help of his cell-mate Rustichello,

begins to compose his account.

Two years later, Marco is released.

Rustichello, alas, vanishes from the records.

Marco marries into a wealthy family and sires three daughters.

But to his dying day he is denied recognition

by his contemporaries,

for his achievements as well as for their wondrous account.

Priests urge him to renounce his "fabrications".

Finally, facing his death, it was time, they say,

to admit that his Travels were a mere concoction,

invented as a bid for fame.

To the Venetians, Marco Polo remains Il Milione, the braggart.

Yet even on his deathbed

he maintains that he has told merely half of what he had seen,

otherwise, no one would have believed him.

He dies in 1324, in his 70th year.

He leaves a small fortune,

the account of his travels, and a sober last will and testament.

It contains not even a vague reference to his adventures.

[tense orchestral music]

[narrator] Marco Polo.

His name became synonymous with the quintessential traveller

who returned with fascinating tales of places that hold the lure

of exotic encounters and make us yearn to visit faraway countries and cultures.

But he also left a work of broad horizons,

presenting the world of Asia to the eyes of the West.

What's more...

168 years after Marco Polo's death,

Christopher Columbus sets sail determined to discover the sea route to exotic Asia.

On his desk in his cabin, a copy of The Travels of Marco Polo,

filled with annotations highlighting the most promising destinations.

Places where "Aurum in copia maxima" is said to be,

great amounts of gold.

In his time, few believed Marco Polo.

But his account heralds the age of great European discoverers.

To his dying day,

Columbus would believe he had come ashore on some islands off mainland China,

in the legendary realm of the Great Khan,

where, all the while, Marco Polo had actually already been there.

[orchestral music]