If you answer this quickly and correctly I will name youest so you get 5 EXTRA points

4. As you read in the introduction, there is a debate on Polo's writings actually being his experiences. It is recorded that on his deathbed he was asked to deny his stories. Polo responded, "I have only described half of what I saw." (TCI p 1.4D). What do you think? Could his writings actually be the result of his experiences? Give your opinion using the text to support your point of view.

Introduction

Marco Polo (1254-1324) was born in Venice, an Italian city-state, to a powerful merchant family with extensive trade

contacts. Marco Polo had the standard education for a young gentleman of his time—knowledge of classical authors

and the basic beliefs of the Catholic church, a good grasp of French and Italian, and skills in accounting.

In 1260, Marco Polo’s father and uncle traveled through the Mongol empire, all the way to its capital in China. There

they requested trade and missionary contacts. Tradition has it that on a second trip, taken in 1271, on which they

carried messages from the Pope, the elder Polos took along young Marco, who was then seventeen. Many years later,

Marco Polo, with the assistance of a romance novel writer, composed a book entitled The Travels of Marco Polo, or, A

Description of the World. If the book is to be believed, Marco Polo spent seventeen years in China, during which time

he not only conducted business, but also was hired by the Mongol Yuan emperor to serve as the governor of

Yangzhou, a large southern Chinese port city.

The veracity of Marco Polo’s account is hotly debated among scholars. Some uphold Polo’s claim to have been to

China, while others argue that he simply picked up tales of China from Arab traders and compiled them into a book.

None dispute, however, that the book does contain descriptions of Yuan-dynasty China, albeit with the

embellishments and inaccuracies that one would expect from text that has been copied and recopied since the

thirteenth century.

In the excerpts that follow, Marco Polo (or his Arab sources) describes the cities and urban life of Yuan-dynasty China