As part of our discussion of East Asia we should observe Eurasia as a whole and become aware of how its western end (“the West”) and its eastern end (“the East”) became aware of each other.

We all have misconceptions about historical events and I want to start by mentioning a couple of mine, since I might not have been the only one with overly vague information.

Marco Polo? Some Italian guy, went to China, way back when. Informed them about European way of life, brought back information on aspects of Chinese civilization. Always pictured him clippity-clopping with an entourage on horseback out of Italy, across Eastern Europe and Russia, into Central Asia and China, then clippity-clopping back the same way. Maybe rode camels part of the way. And what was all that about Chinese noodles and Italian pasta?

Silk Road? My first reference to it was only a few years ago by my friend Jürgen in Germany, in the German form Seidenstrasse. Also called Silk Route, or Silk Routes. Involved China, Central Asia. Luxury train trip by GW travel connects those two regions with Russia, specifically Moscow, and is referred to as the Silk Road trip. Further details from the website “The Man in Seat Sixty-One…” suggest for the more adventurous a couple of Chinese trains per week from Beijing to the western border, then trains in Central Asia, with final connections, again, to Moscow. This was the limit of my knowledge of the two subjects.

I now know the Silk Road had nothing to do with Russia. Marco Polo on his trip didn’t set foot on a bit of European soil from the moment he left Italy until he got back. About half or more of his trip was by water, and he tried to get out of doing the half by land to go by water as well, but was unsuccessful. He had no entourage, just two relatives. He wasn’t the first to make the trip. So why is HIS trip so famous?

What if you go to a Chinese restaurant one day and eat lo mein, then go to an Italian restaurant the next day and eat linguini. Are you having a cross-cultural experience? I have good news and bad news. The good news is Yes, Chinese noodles are the ancestor of Italian pasta. The bad news is that the part about Marco Polo having anything to do with it is hogwash. Now have I whetted your appetite [pun intended]?

We need some reflection before we consider discussing travel on the Silk Road, or Marco Polo’s trip, and it involves today’s often much too frenetic pace of travel. We need to talk here of trips taking years, while today we are so frequently used to hops by plane. Hop here, hop there, hop home again. I’ll be doing that myself shortly: a hop from New York to Tokyo/Narita; another hop from Fukuoka to Taipei; then two hops home from Taipei via Tokyo/Narita to New York. Are we discussing flea-style travel here? I think so.

Travelers to Paris often notice that a flea market is a marché aux puces (some katagana would be handy now for the italics), a puce being a flea. From this I want to coin a new phrase, and it sounds best in French, to travel à la puce, or flea-style--a big hop here, a big hop there. We are now so accustomed to getting there à la puce, we have to think back now to a MUCH slower lifestyle on the Silk Road.

The Silk Road   The Silk Road was/is located exclusively in Asia and had/has nothing to do with Russia. Taking either of the train trips mentioned above will therefore include two important regions of the Silk Road, China and Central Asia, and admittedly, if you want to see those two areas on a train trip, connecting via Moscow is by far the most practical way to do it. This can be called the new Silk Road railway route, but one should be aware that it does diverge from the Silk Road itself, since the third major region of the actual Silk Road is the Middle East. So this is in sequence the route of the Silk Road, an exclusively Asian route: the Middle East (West Asia) via Central Asia to China (East Asia).

The reference to silk in the name implies a lucrative trade with China from early on. But that’s deceptive. While the Silk Road has existed for 3,000 years, the name is only about a century old. It was coined by a German geographer named Ferdinand von Richthofen in 1877 as Seidenstraße/Seidenstrasse, so it’s appropriate that I should first have heard of it in German from Jürgen.

No one is about to change an established name, but it also can be called the Silk Route, or even Silk Routes, since it isn’t one road, or even a road. It should be pictured as the varying road—and sea—possibilities of linking China and East Asia with West Asia (the Middle East). It should be considered a group of trade routes under one name. For 3,000 years it served as a conduit for cultural, commercial, and technological exchange and for the spread of art, religion, knowledge, ideas, and cultures—as well as disease, since the bubonic plague traveled along it as well. Few traveled it from end to end. Instead there were usually agents along the way who arranged for the transportation of goods from spot to spot. I find that hard to imagine happening thousands of years ago. At any rate, I am informed that in recent years, the Silk Road is again being used for its overland and maritime routes.

Here's an excellent map of the main land routes—not sea routes—of the Silk Road (Map by Captain Blood, Revised by Kelvin Case). The yellow line is the principal route, splitting at one point around a desert, then joining again. The green lines at either end are connecting routes.

But it's the water routes that I never was aware of. Most connections from the Middle East to Europe were by water, mostly in the Mediterranean. In East Asia, there were extnsive routes Korea, Japan, and China around South Asia to the Middle East.

Now about the pasta business. Pasta as we know it did originate in China. A food similar to pasta was common in Palestine from the 3C to the 5C CE (Common Era). It seems reasonable to think it might have come down the Silk Road. Then, during the Arabs’ conquest of Sicily in the late 7C, they introduced pasta to Italy. This predates Marco Polo’s travels to China by about six centuries. As a matter of fact, Marco Polo described a food he encountered in China similar to pasta, but in terms indicating that he was already familiar with it.

This familiar urban legend describing Marco Polo as the importer of pasta to Italy is due to modern advertising ballyhoo. It originated with advertisements of a food industry association trying to promote pasta in the US, and Marco Polo was a familiar figure for them to use to convince the public. But advertising works two ways. Why do we know about Marco Polo and his trip in the first place? Because of his book, which “advertised” his trip to the world.

Marco Polo   Let’s place him in time. He overlaps two centuries, 1254-1324, and was a Venetian merchant and explorer. It is totally appropriate that Venice should honor him in the name of the Aeroporto di Venezia Marco Polo / Venice Marco Polo Airport. But talk about the irony of the speed of his travel in the 13C as compared to travelers in Venice coming and going hops à la puce.

Not only had other Europeans traveled to China earlier along the Silk Road, Marco Polo’s own father and uncle had done so just before him—and then with him. His father was Niccolò Polo and his uncle Maffeo Polo. They were merchants who traveled from Venice to Constantinople and elsewhere, where they established trading posts, and then proceeded further east to China, returning to Venice in 1269. This earlier trip is all explained in Marco Polo’s book.

After staying home a couple of years, they then left again for China in 1271, but on their second trip, they took along the 17-year-old Marco on what turned out to be a 24-year, 24,000 km (15,000 mi) trip, of which 17 years were spent in China. It was just the three of them on the trip, and they returned to Venice in 1295.

This is a map of the Travels of Marco Polo (Map by Historicair) that, oddly, leaves out Venice. They left Venice, not by land, but down the Adriatic, Venice being known as the “Queen of the Adriatic”, and sailed to Acre in the Middle East. Although much of their ride was indeed on horseback, in the Middle East they did ride camels to the Persian port of (H)Ormuz on the Persian Gulf, at the Strait of Hormuz. This is where they wanted to sail to China, but the ships they encountered were not seaworthy, so they decided to go overland after all at least one way. They backtracked to Central Asia to cross over to China, ending up in what is today Beijing, arriving 3 ½ years after leaving Venice, with Marco now at age 21. They returned to the court of Kublai Khan, who the father and uncle had visited on the first trip. The three were useful to him, since Marco knew four languages and the family had a lot of knowledge that was of interest to him. Marco may have become a government official, and a trip of his to Burma (today Myanmar) is shown on the map.

But by 1292, Kublai Khan was becoming elderly (he died in 1294). The Polos were ready to return to Venice and were not sure that a succeeding government would look kindly on Europeans at court with all the power they had. Fortunately, in that year a Mongol princess was scheduled to become the bride of Khan’s great nephew, ruler of Persia, and the Polos volunteered to accompany her, giving them an opportunity to leave China. The princess was accompanied by some 600 courtiers and sailors, and the party sailed on 14 ships from southern China. They stopped in Vietnam and the Malay Peninsula, as well as the island of Sumatra opposite, sailing through the Strait of Malacca, the “Strait of Gibraltar of Asia”. They stayed in Sumatra for some months to avoid monsoon storms. They stopped in Sri Lanka and sailed along the coasts of India and Persia before arriving again at Hormuz. They handed over the princess, not to the intended groom, who had died, but to his son (!!!). They then went overland to a Turkish port on the Black Sea, from where they sailed back via Constantinople to Venice, arriving in 1295.

On their return after 24 years, they were dramatically received by relatives, friends and neighbors who had all thought them long dead. After reflecting on this trip and the almost quarter-century it took, the reader should compare it to a contemporary trip à la puce from the Aeroporto di Venezia Marco Polo to say, Beijing.

But we are not finished. No one would be aware of the trip today (nor in the 13C) if it weren’t for the book, and the book wouldn’t have been written without time in a jail cell, and the jail cell wouldn’t have been occupied if it weren’t for a war.

On their return to Venice in 1295, Venice was at war with Genoa. Marco Polo, who would have been about 41, was put in command of a galley, was captured, and spent a year in a Genoese prison, 1298-1299. It was then that his book was written--except that he didn’t write it.

There was a fellow inmate named Rustichello da Pisa, who was a writer of romances. Here is where the accounts I’ve read differ. Some said he dictated the memoirs of his trip only when prompted by Rustichello, including stories of the wealth of Cathay, the might of the Mongols, the exotic customs of India. Others say that Rustichello, entirely on his own, compiled stories he’d heard from Marco Polo and then incorporated anecdotes of his own about China. Others imply that in either case, Marco Polo’s accuracy might be debatable, suggesting that he wasn’t really a court figure himself in China and was only repeating stories he’d heard. But given the times and lack of information on Asia, none of this makes any difference. The book was a medieval blockbuster.

It was originally written in French and appeared in 1298. Later, it appeared in Latin for the intelligentsia of the time. It was translated into many European languages even during Marco Polo’s lifetime. Its name varies wildly from Italian to French to English, but in English it’s referred to as The Travels of Marco Polo. It was essentially a travel book and was very popular, a rare success in an era before printing. Remember, it was a full century and a half until Gutenberg’s press was in operation in 1450; the Gutenberg Bible then appeared mid-decade (2005/17). After that, books became far more common. But in 1298, each new copy of a book was just that, a copy—it had to be painstakingly copied by hand.

It was one of the most popular books in medieval Europe, and had a tremendous impact. Manuscript editions ran into the hundreds within a century of his death. The book was recognized as the most important account of the world outside Europe available and is the most influential travelog of the Silk Road ever written, introducing Europe to Asia. He became the most famous Westerner to ever travel the Silk Road. Other less-known (a key phrase) European explorers had already traveled to China, but Polo’s book meant that the account of his journey became the definitive one. Its four volumes covered (1) the Middle East and Central Asia, (2) China and the court of Kublai Khan, (3) Japan, India, Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia, (4) the Mongol wars.

It is of interest that all the originals are now lost, and that later copies varied, sometimes widely, in describing the same subject. In modern times, a definitive version has been compiled from the remaining available copies.

The legacy of the book is momentous. It had a great impact on cartography, with many place names being added to maps of China and elsewhere based on accounts in the book. I find it most impressive that it was Marco Polo’s description of East Asia and its riches that inspired Christopher Columbus’s decision to try to reach Asia by sea, but westward. It is most impressive that, found among Columbus’s belongings was a copy of The Travels of Marco Polo, heavily annotated in the margins. Marco Polo had described India and Columbus wanted to reach it, thereby discovering the Americas and naming the inhabitants Indians. But it was Marco Polo who’d first set Columbus’s juices flowing.

The book came out in 1298, and Marco Polo was released from prison in 1299, returning to Venice, where he became a wealthy merchant, living until 1324. He financed other expeditions, but never again left Venice.

Internal Place Names   In East Asia we’ll find interesting variations in country names, so let’s first discuss the topic in general.

How about, when traveling in Europe, taking a sauna in Suomi? Eating gulash in Magyarország? Sailing among the islands of Elláda? (Hint: they write it Ελλαδα.) This is the world of internal place names, usually used just locally, as opposed to external names used internationally by other languages (technically endonyms versus exonyms).

USING THE SAME NAME Often all languages use the local name of a place, such as with Toronto, Denver, Wellington, Sydney. In Europe, everyone says Oslo, Madrid, Budapest. In Latin America, all languages use Buenos Aires, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, El Salvador without trying to translate them from Spanish, or Rio de Janeiro without changing the Portuguese. One exception of many, since we’re speaking here in sweeping generalities: Tierra del Fuego is used in English without translating it as Fire Land, but in German it DOES appear as Feuerland. Another is that while almost everyone says Portugal, Italian says Portogallo.)

MINOR VARIATIONS There are often minor variations, yet most local and external names for countries and cities are easily recognizable, being variations on the same theme. “Italia” is the local name for that place; the Spanish and Portuguese use it as is. Russian does as well, given the alphabet change: Италия / Italiya. But French, German, and English are only slightly different: Italie, Italien, Italy. These minor differences are merely variations on a theme, so with a little practice one learns to recognize España as being Spain, also Italian Spagna, German Spanien. It’s the same with cities, such as Paris, a word used by many languages. However Dutch Parijs (rhymes with “race”) needs extra care to recognize it, as does Italian Parigi (Louis:Luigi::Paris:Parigi).

For train (and air) travel in Europe, it’s essential to recognize internal and external variations, since trains are always marked with the local city name. A train going from Venice via Munich to Prague will be marked “Venezia – München – Praha”, so one has to learn to recognize the local names. Which brings to mind a story on myself and Beverly, told more completely in 2006/5, but here’s the quick version. In 1961 we were sending bags from Paris to Mainz for our year’s stay there. We told the baggage handler “Ces bagages vont à Mainz”, but he wrote Mayence on the tags. We protested “À Mainz!” and he said, “Oui, à Mayence, à Mayence”. And so the greenhorns wised up that, while English does use the original German version, Mainz, and we thought everyone did, we found out that the French have their own variation, Mayence. Live and learn.

We were much more aware about city names when driving in Flanders in Belgium (2004/14). We were headed to Lille over the border in France. While in Flanders, road signs continued to call the former Flemish city Rijsel (as in “[the] race’ll [be over soon]”), but French ethnic pride cut that short on crossing the border, where it was “Lille” and nothing else.

TOTALLY DIFFERENT NAMES But the more interesting situation is where the names aren’t mere variations on a theme—even greenhorns catch on about Mainz/Mayence—but where a totally different name is used, not related in any way.

That sauna we mentioned in Suomi—for that internal name we (and the Swedes) use the external name Finland, as do others in variations on a theme: Finnland, Finlande, Finlandia. Yet some languages have variations on the internal name, such as Estonian Soome and Latvian Somya. In addition, the Finns call Sweden Ruotsi.

Most languages do variations on the external name Hungary, but those people, the Magyars, call their country by the local name Magyarország.

There are many variations on the external name Greece, but locally, Ellàda is used. This becomes less of a surprise when you consider the related word Hellenic.

There are a lot more of this sort of thing than you think. Albania is locally Shqipëira, Wales is Cymru, Egypt is Mişr.

To best illustrate a multiplicity of totally different names, each with multiple variations, we have to use Germany as an example. It has six different names, and this is just a selection of the variations of each of the six: (1) The local name is Deutschland; Dutch/Afrikaans Duitsland, Swedish/Danish/Norwegian Tyskland. (2) French Allemagne; Spanish/Basque Alemania; Portuguese Alemanha; Catalan Alemanya; Turkish Almanya. (3) Italian/Romanian Germania; Russian/Bulgarian Германия (Germaniya); English Germany; Albanian Gjermania; Greek Γερμανία (Germanía). (4) Polish Niemcy; Czech Německo; Croatian/Bosnian Njemačka; Slovak Nemecko; Hungarian Németország. (5) Finnish Saksa (from Saxony), Estonian Saksamaa. (6) Latvian Vācija; Lithuanian Vokietija.

Also belonging to group (3) but worth pointing out separately are the Polynesian names for “Germania”. In Hawaiian it’s Kelemania, and you can see the G-to-K and the R-to-L changes, plus the extra vowel added after the L to form an additional syllable. In Tahitian it’s Heremani; review how that comes about.

As we now segue into our three East Asian languages, we can as an aside mention that their names for Germany are all based on group (1).

The Japanese name for Germany in katakana (it being a foreign name) is ドイツ, but thankfully we also have the rōmaji, Doitsu. It’s very recognizable, but apparently isn’t exactly German Deutsch, but Dutch Duits. Remember, it was the Dutch who traded with Japan centuries ago in the open (to trading) port of Nagasaki. Here’s some fun: ドイツ人 in rōmaji is Doitsu-jin and means German person, German people. Inspect it carefully, and you’ll see that the katakana is combined with one of the hànzi symbols you know, the symbol for person.

The Korean name for Germany is not so obvious. It uses the hangul 독일 (notice the circle), pronounced Togil but Romanized as Dogil. I’m told it derives from the Japanese Doitsu, but it’s hard to see. Still, just the D is recognizable as connected to Deutsch/Duits.

The Chinese name for Germany in hànzi, both simplified and traditional, is 德意志. In pinyin that becomes Déyìzhì (remember ZH=CH). But commonly, the name is shortened to the first syllable, Dé, to which is added the syllable guó (“country), resulting in 德國 (traditional) and 德国 (simplified) or Déguó. Try reading that with the two indicated rising tones.

We have reviewed how place names can vary widely, found an extreme example with Germany, and, as a segue, reviewed how East Asian languages handle the situation. Now it’s time to move from West to East, where we find separate internal and external names for all three, Korea, China, and Japan.

NAMES FOR KOREA There was a period in Korean history from 918 to 1392 when the Goryeo Dynasty ruled the country. That was then removed by the Joseon (Chosŏn, Choson, Chosun) Dynasty in 1392, which lasted until 1910, when Korea was annexed by Japan.

The older name Goryeo apparently traveled with merchants down the Silk Road and appeared in the West as Korea (Corea, Corée). Today, North Korea calls the entire peninsula by the later name, Chosŏn, while South Korea calls the whole peninsula Hanguk.

NAMES FOR CHINA When we look at the internal name for China, you’re going to see an old friend, both in the simplified hànzi (left) and traditional hànzi (right):

In pinyin it’s Zhōngguó (ZH=CH) and in Wade-Giles it was Chung¹-kuo². We already know that first character, which in Mandarin is zhōng, as representing the concept of “middle”, which can logically also be “central”. The second character, guó, we saw above means “country”. So China, or Zhōngguó, is the Central Country, which, given it’s location in Asia and its cultural influence on all the countries around it, is a logical name. It is also rendered in English as Middle Kingdom, but that seems too poetic a name to be of practical use. Try once again to say Zhōngguó with a HIGH & level tone first, then a rising one.

But the western names (plural) are entirely different, and where else should we start but with Marco Polo?

There had been a Khitan people who conquered North China, Manchuria, and Mongolia in the 10C. It’s their name Marco Polo adapted in the Italian form Catai, but just referring to Northern China. The name obtained wide currency In Europe, also in Central and West Asia, after Marco Polo’s book was published. It appeared in Spanish as Catay, in Portuguese as Catai or Cataio, and in English as Cathay. In these languages it was later supplanted by versions of “China”, and remains, at least in English, a poetic alternative name. It continues to be used, quite notably in the five-star Cathay Pacific Airways out of Hong Kong.

But that name has not disappeared. No newer name ever replaced Китай / Kitai in Russian (or Ukranian or Bulgarian), and the traditional name remains the only name for China in those languages.

In his book Marco Polo had a separate name for South China, Mangi, from the Chinese Manzi “southern barbarians”. The word did reach the West, but has not survived. However, knowing that the sinitic languages (called “Chinese dialects”) are clustered in southern China opposite Taiwan, and that that’s the region Marco Polo sailed from on his departure, it’s possible that the non-Mandarin languages he heard there convinced him it was a separate country.

Starting in 778 BCE (Before the Common Era) there was a state called Qin, which eventually dominated and united China, and whose rulers became known as the Qin Dynasty. Now if you remember your pinyin, Q is now used for CH; otherwise, note the Wade-Giles form Ch’in for Qin.

The name Qin eventually reached India in the 5C BCE, where it appeared in Sanskrit as Cīnā, meaning “yellow barbarian tribe from the north”. A similar name also appeared in Persian. Eventually it was brought to Europe by Marco Polo and appeared in the various languages as variations of “China”.

However it was Latinized as Sina, which results today in the prefix sino-, such as in the Sino-Tibetan language family or in the word sinology, (and not *chinology).

It was later travelers who proved that Cathay and China were the same country. I think that the need to do that was an interesting turn of events.

NAMES FOR JAPAN We found an old friend when we looked at the Chinese name for China and the same thing will happen when we look at the Japanese name for Japan, only moreso:

The two symbols describing Japan mean “sun origin”, which gives us the sobriquet for Japan as “the land of the rising sun”. We recognize the first figure as the sun, but the second figure is also familiar as a tree with its lower extremity marked so that it indicates “root”. But now we see by extension that that image of “root”, the place the tree starts from, extends to the concept of “origin”. Therefore, we now recognize the kanji name for Japan in its entirety.

We also recognize the Japanese flag showing a red sun on a white background as representing the name of the country as literally as possible as “sun origin” or “sunrise’. But that really doesn’t make sense. Any area on an east coast gets the first sunrise, no matter what continent it’s on. Why should it be a particular issue with Japan?

It turns out that Japan was given its name by China. While China is on the east coast of Asia, it’s view of the eastern horizon is blocked by the island chain of Japan. From the Chinese point of view, Japan is “the land [that blocks our view] of the rising sun”. Seriously, when viewing the dawn from China, Japan’s mountains would be an integral part of seeing the rising sun, hence the name.

The question is now what words correspond to the symbols 日本. As it turns out, the name of Japan appears in two forms, Nippon, the more traditional one, and Nihon, the more everyday one. They are two versions of exactly the same name. Nippon is the more formal version that appears on currency, stamps, and at international sporting events. Nihon is the casual form used in daily speech. If you asked a teller at the Bank of Nippon where he’s from, he’d say Nihon. It would be my guess that Nippon is the older word, and might be in the process of dying out entirely in favor of Nihon, but that’s only conjecture.

The question is now what words correspond to the symbols 日本. As it turns out, the name of Japan appears in two forms, Nippon, the more traditional one, and Nihon, the more everyday one. They are two versions of exactly the same name. Nippon is the more formal version that appears on currency, stamps, and at international sporting events. Nihon is the casual form used in daily speech. If you asked a teller at the Bank of Nippon where he’s from, he’d say Nihon. It would be my guess that Nippon is the older word, and might be in the process of dying out entirely in favor of Nihon, but that’s only conjecture.

It bothered me that I couldn’t figure out the spelling differences, so I investigated, and this is what I found. Consult the hiragana symbols on the kana chart and ni.ho(n) is easy to find: ni is に, ho is ほ, and the single n is ん, with the result as above. This is the easier word to spell of the two.

There are two differences in spelling Nippon, and one is hard to find. In the spelling of Nippon look at the ho character and note the tiny diacritical mark in the form of a circle on its upper right: ぽ. This circle changes any H syllable to a P syllable. Then, the backwards-C character before it indicates a slight pause, giving the affect of doubling the consonant, and the result, as above, changes Nihon to Nippon. Now we know just a bit more about writing hiragana.

The Mandarin name for Japan, corresponding to the “sun origin” characters, was pronounced jih pun. Marco Polo recorded that name as Cipangu (C here = CH). It also appeared in the short form Cipan. A version of that went over time from China to the Malay peninsula and appeared as Japang, where it was picked up in Malacca (on the important trade crossroads of the Strait of Malacca) by Portuguese traders in the 16C, who brought it to Europe. The word was first recorded in England in 1577 as Giapan.