I. HISTORICAL INTERLUDE
1. Marco Polo Visits Kublai Khan
The incredible travelers—Adventures of a Venetian in China—The elegance and prosperity of Hangchow—The palaces of Peking—The Mongol Conquest—Jenghiz Khan—Kublai Khan—His character and policy—His harem—“Marco Millions”
IN THE golden age of Venice, about the year 1295, two old men and a man of middle age, worn with hardship, laden with bundles, dressed in rags and covered with the dust of many roads, begged and then forced their way into the home from which, they claimed, they had set forth twenty-six years before. They had (they said) sailed many dangerous seas, scaled high mountains and plateaus, crossed bandit-ridden deserts, and passed four times through the Great Wall; they had stayed twenty years in Cathay,* and had served the mightiest monarch in the world. They told of an empire vaster, of cities more populous, and of a ruler far richer, than any known to Europe; of stones that were used for heating, of paper accepted in place of gold, and of nuts larger than a man’s head; of nations where virginity was an impediment to marriage, and of others where strangers were entertained by the free use of the host’s willing daughters and wives.1 No man would believe them; and the people of Venice gave to the youngest and most garrulous of them the nickname “Marco Millions,” because his tale was full of numbers large and marvelous.2
Mark and his father and uncle accepted this fate with good cheer, for they had brought back with them many precious stones from the distant capital, and these gave them such wealth as maintained them in high place in their city. When Venice went to war with Genoa in 1298, Marco Polo received command of a galley; and when his ship was captured, and he was kept for a year in a Genoese jail, he consoled himself by dictating to an amenuensis the most famous travel-book in literature. He told with the charm of a simple and straightforward style how he, father Nicolo and uncle Maffeo had left Acre when Mark was but a boy of seventeen; how they had climbed over the Lebanon ranges and found their way through Mesopotamia to the Persian Gulf, and thence through Persia, Khorassan and Balkh to the Plateau of Pamir; how they had joined caravans that slowly marched to Kashgar and Khotan, and across the Gobi Desert to Tangut, and through the Wall to Shangtu, where the Great Khan received them as humble emissaries from the youthful West.*
They had not thought that they would stay in China beyond a year or two, but they found such lucrative service and commercial opportunities under Kublai that they remained almost a quarter of a century. Marco above all prospered, rising even to be governor of Hangchow. In fond memory he describes it as far ahead of any European city in the excellence of its building and bridges, the number of its public hospitals, the elegance of its villas, the profusion of facilities for pleasure and vice, the charm and beauty of its courtesans, the effective maintenance of public order, and the manners and refinement of its people. The city, he tells us, was a hundred miles in circuit.
Its streets and canals are extensive, and of sufficient width to allow of boats on the one, and carriages on the other, to pass easily with articles necessary for the inhabitants. It is commonly said that the number of bridges, of all sizes, amounts to twelve thousand. Those which are thrown over the principal canals and are connected with the main streets, have arches so high, and built with so much skill, that vessels with their masts can pass under them. At the same time carts and horses can pass over, so well is the slope from the street graded to the height of the arch. . . . There are within the city ten principal squares or market-places, besides innumerable shops along the streets. Each side of these squares is half a mile in length, and in front of them is the main street, forty paces in width, and running in a direct line from one extremity of the city to the other. In a direction parallel to that of the main street . . . runs a very large canal, on the nearer bank of which capacious warehouses are built of stone, for the accommodation of the merchants who arrive from India and other parts with their goods and effects. They are thus conveniently situated with respect to the market-places. In each of these, upon three days in every week, there is an assemblage of from forty to fifty thousand persons. . . .
The streets are all paved with stone and bricks. . . . The main street of the city is paved . . . to the width of ten paces on each side, the intermediate part being filled up with small gravel, and provided with arched drains for carrying off the rain-water that falls into the neighboring canals, so that it remains always dry. On this gravel carriages continually pass and repass. They are of a long shape, covered at the top, have curtains and cushions of silk, and are capable of holding six persons. Both men and women who feel disposed to take their pleasure are in the daily practice of hiring them for that purpose. . . .
There is an abundant quantity of game of all kinds. . . . From the sea, which is fifteen miles distant, there is daily brought up the river, to the city, a vast quantity of fish. . . . At the sight of such an importation of fish, you would think it impossible that it could be sold; and yet, in the course of a few hours, it is all taken off, so great is the number of inhabitants. . . . The streets connected with the market-squares are numerous, and in some of them are many cold baths, attended by servants of both sexes. The men and women who frequent them have from their childhood been accustomed at all times to wash in cold water, which they reckon conducive to health. At these bathing places, however, they have apartments provided with warm water, for the use of strangers, who cannot bear the shock of the cold. All are in the daily practice of washing their persons, and especially before their meals. . . .
In other streets are the quarters of the courtesans, who are here in such numbers as I dare not venture to report, . . . adorned with much finery, highly perfumed, occupying well-furnished houses, and attended by many female domestics. . . . In other streets are the dwellings of the physicians and the astrologers. . . . On each side of the principal street there are houses and mansions of great size. . . . The men as well as the women have fair complexions, and are handsome. The greater part of them are always clothed in silk. . . . The women have much beauty, and are brought up with delicate and languid habits. The costliness of their dresses, in silks and jewelry, can scarcely be imagined.3
Peking (or, as it was then called, Cambaluc) impressed Polo even more than Hangchow; his millions fail him in describing its wealth and population. The twelve suburbs were yet more beautiful than the city; for there the business class had built many handsome homes.4 In the city proper there were numerous hotels, and thousands of shops and booths. Food of all kinds abounded, and every day a thousand loads of raw silk entered the gates to be turned into clothing for the inhabitants. Though the Khan had residences at Hangchow, Shangtu and other places, the most extensive of his palaces was at Peking. A marble wall surrounded it, and marble steps led up to it; the main building was so large that “dinners could be served there to great multitudes of people.” Marco admired the arrangement of the chambers, the delicate and transparent glazing of the windows, and the variety of colored tiles in the roof. He had never seen so opulent a city, or so magnificent a king.5
Doubtless the young Venetian learned to speak and read Chinese; and perhaps he learned from the official historians how Kublai and his Mongol ancestors had conquered China. The gradual drying up of the regions along the northwestern frontier into a desert land incapable of supporting its hardy population had sent the Mongols (i.e., “the brave”) out on desperate raids to win new fields; and their success had left them with such a taste and aptitude for war that they never stopped until nearly all Asia, and parts of Europe, had fallen before their arms. Story had it that their fiery leader, Genghis Khan, had been born with a clot of blood in the palm of his hand. From the age of thirteen he began to weld the Mongol tribes into one, and terror was his instrument. He had prisoners nailed to a wooden ass, or chopped to pieces, or boiled in cauldrons, or flayed alive. When he received a letter from the Chinese Emperor Ning Tsung demanding his submission, he spat in the direction of the Dragon Throne and began at once his march across twelve hundred miles of the Gobi desert into the western provinces of China. Ninety Chinese cities were so completely destroyed that horsemen could ride over the devastated areas in the dark without stumbling. For five years the “Emperor of Mankind” laid north China waste. Then, frightened by an unfavorable conjunction of planets, he turned back towards his native village, and died of illness on the way.6
His successors, Ogodai, Mangu and Kublai, continued the campaign with barbaric energy; and the Chinese, who had for centuries given themselves to culture and neglected the arts of war, died with individual heroism and national ignominy. At Juining-fu a local Chinese ruler held out until all the aged and infirm had been killed and eaten by the beseiged, all the able-bodied men had fallen, and only women remained to guard the walls; then he set fire to the city and burned himself alive in his palace. The armies of Kublai swept down through China until they stood before the last retreat of the Sung Dynasty, Canton. Unable to resist, the Chinese general, Lu Hsiu-fu, took the boy emperor on his back, and leaped to a double death with him in the sea; and it is said that a hundred thousand Chinese drowned themselves rather than yield to the Mongol conqueror. Kublai gave the imperial corpse an honorable burial, and set himself to establish that Yüan (“Original”) or Mongol Dynasty which was to rule China for less than a hundred years.
Kublai himself was no barbarian. The chief exception to this statement was not his treacherous diplomacy, which was in the manner of his time, but his treatment of the patriot and scholar, Wen T’ien-hsian, who, out of loyalty to the Sung Dynasty, refused to acknowledge Kublai’s rule. He was imprisoned for three years, but would not yield. “My dungeon,” he wrote, in one of the most famous passages in Chinese literature,
is lighted by the will-o’-the-wisp alone; no breath of spring cheers the murky solitude in which I dwell. . . . Exposed to mist and dew, I had many times thought to die; and yet, through the seasons of two revolving years, disease hovered around me in vain. The dank, unhealthy soil to me became paradise itself. For there was that within me which misfortune could not steal away. And so I remained firm, gazing at the white clouds floating over my head, and bearing in my heart a sorrow boundless as the sky.
At length Kublai summoned him into the imperial presence. “What is it that you want?” asked the monarch. “By the grace of the Sung Emperor,” answered Wen, “I became his Majesty’s minister. I cannot serve two masters. I only ask to die.” Kublai consented; and as Wen awaited the sword of the executioner upon his neck he made obeisance toward the south as though the Sung emperor were still reigning in the southern capital, Nanking.7
Nevertheless, Kublai had the grace to recognize the civilized superiority of the Chinese, and to merge the customs of his own people into theirs. Of necessity he abandoned the system of examinations for public office, since that system would have given him a completely Chinese bureaucracy; he restricted most higher offices to his Mongol followers, and tried for a time to introduce the Mongol alphabet. But for the greater part he and his people accepted the culture of China, and were soon transformed by it into Chinese. He tolerated the various religions philosophically, and flirted with Christianity as an instrument of pacification and rule. He reconstructed the Grand Canal between Tientsin and Hangchow, improved the highways, and provided a rapid postal service throughout a domain larger than any that has accepted the government of China since his day. He built great public granaries to store the surplus of good crops for public distribution in famine years, and remitted taxes to all peasants who had suffered from drought, storms, or insect depredations;* he organized a system of state care for aged scholars, orphans and the infirm; and he patronized munificently education, letters and the arts. Under him the calendar was revised, and the Imperial Academy was opened.9 At Peking he reared a new capital, whose splendor and population were the marvel of visitors from other lands. Great palaces were built, and architecture flourished as never in China before.
“Now when all this happened,” says Marco Polo, “Messer Polo was on the spot.”10 He became fairly intimate with the Khan, and describes his amusements in fond detail. Besides four wives called empresses, the Khan had many concubines, recruited from Ungut in Tatary, whose ladies seemed especially fair to the royal eye. Every second year, says Marco, officers of proved discrimination were sent to this region to enlist for his Majesty’s service a hundred young women, according to specifications carefully laid down by the king.
Upon their arrival in his presence, he causes a new examination to be made by a different set of inspectors, and from amongst them a further selection takes place, when thirty or forty are retained for his own chamber. . . . These are committed separately to the care of certain elderly ladies of the palace, whose duty it is to observe them attentively, during the course of the night, in order to ascertain that they have not any concealed imperfections, that they sleep tranquilly, do not snore, have sweet breath, and are free from unpleasant scent in any part of the body. Having undergone this rigorous scrutiny, they are divided into parties of five, each taking turn for three days and three nights in his Majesty’s interior apartment, where they are to perform every service that is required of them, and he does with them as he likes. When this term is completed they are relieved by another party, and in this manner successively, until the whole number have taken their turn; when the first five recommence their attendance.11
After remaining in China for twenty years, Marco Polo, with his father and his uncle, took advantage of an embassy sent by the Khan to Persia, to return to their native city with a minimum of danger and expense. Kublai gave them a message to the Pope, and fitted them out with every comfort then known to travelers. The voyage around the Malay Peninsula to India and Persia, the overland journey to Trebizond on the Black Sea, and the final voyage to Venice, took them three years; and when they reached Europe they learned that both the Khan and the Pope were dead.*Marco himself, with characteristic obstinacy, lived to the age of seventy. On his deathbed his friends pleaded with him, for the salvation of his soul, to retract the obviously dishonest statements that he had made in his book; but he answered, stoutly: “I have not told half of what I saw.” Soon after his death a new comic figure became popular at the Venetian carnivals. He was dressed like a clown, and amused the populace by his gross exaggerations. His name was Marco Millions.13