Cameron DeVries

Blog Post #2

October 2, 2025

The Travels of Marco Polo: Shang-Tu

Marco Polo goes on and on for a long time about the Great Khan and all of his palaces, cities, and places he stays during various seasons, and I could write about any one of them. I was most interested in this city of the Khan’s, called Shang-tu (or Shangdu), because I did some research and saw that it was also known as Xanadu in the West.  I remembered from my film class when we watched Citizen Kane that Kane lived in this very opulent mansion on a hill that was called Xanadu, and it seems that the word has derived from the times of the Khan and is still used today to represent places of great beauty and wealth. For the majority of this section, this seems to be what Marco Polo is mainly focused on.

Again, Marco Polo does not seem overly concerned with the details on himself, such as the dates of his arrival or the places he stayed in. However, he does note that the Khan stayed in Shang-tu during the Summer months of June, July, and August, and based on the ways in which he tells certain stories and makes descriptions, it can be assumed that Polo was there during these months, although I am not certain. Something else to be noted about Marco Polo before getting into specifics is the fact that he came from a merchant family in Venice, Italy, so he would not be a stranger to wealth or that sort of lifestyle. It could be for this reason that he seems so attracted by and appreciative towards the decadent structures and signs of wealth that he is seeing around him, and the Khan’s lifestyle in general.

We can kind of say that Polo was focused on the buildings and the environment here, because the environment seems to consist mostly of the works of Kubilai Khan and the ways in which he has formed the city to his liking. He talks about the Khan’s great palace with all its columns, rooms, and adornments, as well as the Khan’s huge park that contains (besides another palace of its own) multitudes of species of wildlife, such as stags, leopards, and falcons. This is also the section in which Marco Polo seems to show his great interest in animals more, or maybe it is just because the Khan has so many animals to be spoken of. Marco is impressed by the tens of thousands of pure white horses, and notes how the Khan leaves this city at the end of every summer in conjunction with the ceremony of throwing his mares’ milk on the ground before he leaves, in order to appease the spirits and gain protection over his lands and subjects.

Something that seems to shock him a little more is the presence of the Bakhshi, or the “enchanters” that are called in to dispel the rainy weather when it appeared. It seems like magic and enchantments are something that Marco Polo is a little wary of, because he says he believes their spells to be the work of the Devil rather than holy work as they claim. However, he seems to get past this shock quickly and become interested in their practices; even when he is saying that they live in squalor and look ragged, he is still just saying this in his matter of fact manner, and does not seem judgmental. Similarly, for the Sien-seng people that he describes, he just states that they are “austere” after talking about how they eat only flax, own virtually nothing, and sleep on mats. Going back to the Bakhshi and how they would levitate cups up to the Khan seemingly through magic, it was funny when Marco said “What I have told you is the plain truth without a word of falsehood”, like he was trying to just convince himself, accept it, and move on. Marco Polo continues to write respectfully and in a straightforward way, and is interested in but not judgmental of those with different practices, and is pretty enchanted by the great wealth of Kubilai Khan.