Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - Tourist attractions - Since Marco Polo mentioned his trip to China in "Travels", why didn't he mention chopsticks and other unique Chinese things?

Since Marco Polo mentioned his trip to China in "Travels", why didn't he mention chopsticks and other unique Chinese things?

Marco Polo was an Italian businessman and a saint who bridged Eastern and Western cultures. In particular, he wrote "Marco Polo's Travels". Western countries learned about China's prosperity and wealth. According to historical records, the first Westerner to visit China was Marco Polo. He met Kublai Khan, the emperor of the Yuan Dynasty, in 1275. He traveled to many places in China and recorded many products in China. However, "Travel Notes" does not record things unique to China, such as chopsticks, tea, printing and other representative Chinese products. Therefore, many people question whether Marco Polo came to China. I think Marco Polo's failure to record anything unique to China is related to the following reasons.

The first is that because Marco Polo did not receive a higher education, what he dictated to the recorder was not complete enough. Because the setting for Marco Polo's book was a prison, there were relatively few people who could read in the prison, so the record could not be comprehensive. In addition, it might have been omitted when dictating.

The second is that Marco Polo did not mention tea because all the Mongolian and Semu people he met at that time drank tea, so it is possible that in his eyes, tea did not belong to Something unique to China. So when I dictated it to the recorder, I didn’t mention this on purpose.

Finally, there is Marco Polo. Because he has a relatively low level of education, he does not deliberately pay attention to the texts of other countries. Moreover, he had relatively few contacts with Han people during his travels, and he did not know Chinese characters, so he did not pay attention to the Chinese calligraphy and printing technology at that time.