An Unexpected Battle Gave Birth to the Travels

The first Chinese translation of The Travels of Marco Polo was published in 1913.->

In 1291, the Polos were at last on their way home when Kublai Khan asked them to join an escort party in charge of delivering a Mongolian princess who was to marry the Persian king. This was their last mission for the Yuan emperor. They boarded at Quanzhou port, sailed via Persia and returned to Venice in 1295, after an absence of more than 20 years.

Back home, Marco Polo began to set up a business in Venice. A war unexpectedly broke out between Venice and Genoa, and he was taken captive in a sea battle while serving as a warship captain in 1298.

The dark Genoese prison was the birthplace of Marco Polo's The Travels. There he met Rusticiano,a romance writer from Pisa with whom he shared a cell. With plenty of time on their hands, the two began a collaboration that would astonish the world.

This is the house that belonged to the Polo family.However,after being away for 24 years upon their return none of the three Polos could even recognize it.                             ---->

Rusticiano's hand written copy was quickly circulated throughout Europe. So much in the book about the East - its history, geography and culture- was new to Europeans, and some quite hard to  believe. Paper bill that Chinese started to use as early as the Tang and Song dynasties, typography and powder were considered novelties. Coal, not yet discovered in the West, had been used in China since the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220), and the city of Hangzhou, with its 3,000 bathhouses and 100,000 households was simply unimaginable.

Thus the strange tales related in The Travels caused a great sensation in Europe, and although the book was attacked by some as a pack of lies, it still enjoyed great popularity. The Travels served as inspiration for both merchants and adventurists, who regarded Asia as a mysterious land full of promise.

It even fired the imagination of no less a person than Christopher Columbus, who treasured his well thumbed copy, In his diary, Columbus more than once referred to The Travels and how the book had given him ideas to plan his eastern expedition.

The Portugese adventurists Vasco da Gama and Henrique o Navegador, who discovered India,were also influenced by The Travels.