THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 29, 1996 TAG: 9603290044
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: JENNIFER DZIURA
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
THE YOUTHFUL illusions of our generation began to be chipped away when public health officials announced that eating raw cookie dough was bad for us.
Then we were told that Columbus didn't discover America and that Silly String destroys the ozone layer. And then there was that whole thing with Pee Wee Herman.
And now, yet another layer of childhood is being peeled away - the tale of Marco Polo.
In the 13th century, an age in which most people never traveled outside of their own area codes, which didn't yet exist, Marco Polo published a travelogue titled ``Description of the World.'' Thus, the West's miserable serfs were able to read about China and India and all of the other places that they would never go because they were bound to their land. Except, of course, that they were mostly illiterate, and the few people who weren't had much better things to do than go around reading travelogues to serfs.
Anyway, ``Description of the World'' sparked interest in the East, which led to increased trade, widened exploration and eventually, the proliferation of takeout Chinese places.
But skeptic Frances Wood, who administers the China Department of the British Library, doubts that Polo could even operate a set of chopsticks. In a study titled ``Did Marco Polo Go to China?,'' Wood points out several reasons why she believes he didn't go there at all.
Chief among these is that Polo failed to mention calligraphy. He also didn't write about tea or the bound feet of Chinese women. He did, however, know a heck of a lot about the Chinese money system, the layout of Beijing, the court of Kublai Khan and the even less popular cities of Yangzhou and Hangzhou. Wood, however, asserts that the missing details constitute holes in the story.
But consider this analogy: Say a traveler from a tiny village in Bhutan visits the United States. He writes all about the best places to shop in New York City, the inner sanctum of Bill Gates' house, and even, say, the completely obscure tourist attractions of Fargo, N.D. Would you argue that the writer had therefore never been out of Bhutan because he failed to mention the Roman alphabet, instant coffee, and (what is perhaps an inflated equivalent of Chinese foot-binding) the Wonderbra? I think not.
And besides, Wood hasn't contended that there's anything untrue in ``Description of the World'' she has simply pointed out things that she thinks are interesting about 13th century China that perhaps Marco Polo wasn't all that excited about. So maybe he didn't like tea and didn't care much about women's footwear. Why, exactly, does it matter where Polo got his information?
Asking if we can please just let dead Venetian travelers rest is like asking if we really care who wrote ``The Odyssey.'' So maybe it wasn't the blind bard Homer. Maybe it was a deaf Sumerian prostitute with a big imagination.
So what? Heck, maybe ``The Great Gatsby'' was written by Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Whoopee. Pass the cookie dough. MEMO: Jennifer Dziura is a senior at Cox High School. Her column appears
bimonthly. If you'd like to comment on her column, call INFOLINE at
640-5555 and enter category 6778 or write to her at 4565 Virginia Beach
Blvd., Virginia Beach, Va. 23462.
by CNB