Oasis of calm, West lake in Hangzhou entranced Marco Polo, but despite his ardor for such cities, he became restless for Venice. After
several requests to leave China, the Polos won permission to escort a Mongol princess to Persia and set sail on a perilous journey home.
 
 
Not Yangzhou but Hangzhou, farther south, was Marco's favorite city. Until Kublai's army captured
Hangzhou in 1276, it had been the Song dynasty's opulent capital. In fact, Marco called it "Quinsai,"
a corruption of the Chinese word for capital-though, revealing his language handicap, he said
Quinsai meant "city of Heaven." Heavenly, yes indeed. It was "the best that is in the world," and
Marco, one text says, visited Hangzhou "many times." Everything he wrote there proclaimed
Hangzhou's wealth and pleasures. The "great quantity of rich palaces," for example, and the fine
baths where "a hundred men or a hundred women can well bathe."


To Hangzhou came ships from India, Persia, Java, and elsewhere, bringing spices, pearls, and jewels. "
Foreigners stayed in this district, which is still known by some people as the foreigners' dock;'said a
longtime newspaperman, Wu Pengting. We were walking in a neighborhood of narrow lanes with
laundry strung overhead, reaching across from balcony to balcony.

Hangzhou is rapidly throwing up a dragon's teeth skyline of shining office and apartment buildings,
so the days of this district are numbered. I felt fortunate to see, with Wu's guidance, a small stream
that may soon be erased. "It comes from the Grand Canal," Wu said." Marco probably took a boat
on that stream from the canal to here." Jewelry Lane parallels the stream, but its merchants today
are sellers of bicycle parts and an elderly cobbler sitting amid piles of soles and taps.

(text above by Mike Edwards, photograph by MichaelYamashita,
 from National Geographic Magazine)