Marco Polo: travel writer fraud

by Kraig Becker on

As a child, I was fascinated by stories about Marco Polo. History told us that the 13th Century Italian merchant and explorer famously traveled to the Far East, where he witnessed the wonders of Chinese and Mongolian cultures, and even served as an ambassador to the court of Kublai Kahn. For more than 24 years, Marco wandered throughout Asia, where he traded with the locals and became intimately familiar with their way of life.

Eventually, Marco returned to Venice, where he mesmerized people with tales of his far-flung adventures. Those stories would later be documented in a book entitled Description of the World, a work that was incredibly popular, even long after Polo’s death in 1324. Many historians consider it to be amongst the first travel books ever written and it helped to cement Marco’s stats as a legendary figure in history. So much so, that 700 years after it was first published, we still revel in the tales of Polo’s fantastic travels.

But what if the famous merchant wasn’t exactly honest about his exploits? What if he hadn’t traveled as far and wide as he claimed in those tales? What if Marco Polo was a travel fraud?

That’s exactly what archaeologists have now come to believe after pouring through Description of the World and lining up what Polo described in the text with what we now know about historical events and places. In fact, according to a story published in The Daily Telegraph a few days ago, historians now believe that Marco Polo never even went to China. Instead, they think that he picked up his stories from Persian merchants that he dealt with directly along the Black Sea. Polo may have then taken those stories, embellished them a bit, adding in his own details for good measure.For example, when describing the fleet of ships that Kublai Khan used on his failed attempt to invade Japan in 1281, Polo claims they had five masts, when archaeologists know that they had just three. Something he could easily have forgotten or overlooked you say? Agreed. But his book doesn’t mention the Great Wall of China at all, nor does he make even a passing reference to drinking tea or using chopsticks while visiting that country. Marco also uses a variety of Persian words to describe locations in China as well, which also indicates that he may have been getting his stories second-hand.

Dr. Frances Wood, the head of the Chinese section of the British Library, also says that there was nothing from China ever found amongst the Polo family’s possessions and that throughout his book, Marco rarely mentions that he witnessed something first hand. She believes that he actually came across a Persian guide book on China in his travel and simply used that for the basis of his tales.

So, let me get this straight. Marco Polo not only helped to launch the travel writing industry, he also became one of its first writers to plagiarize and exaggerate his content? This guy really was ahead of his time.

Barbary Coast Sex: Satisfaction Guaranteed

by David Farley on
It’s not very often when a madam guarantees you’ll have the best sex of your life. Or at least so satisfying you’ll walk out of there thinking your twenty-five cents was very well spent. Such was the case in Barbary Coast-era San Francisco. Having walked from the Old Mint, the beginnings of the Barbary Coast trail, across wide Market Street (the city’s answer to the Champs Elysées), past the tourists queuing for a cable car on Powell Street, and, finally, across Union Square, I found myself standing on Maiden Lane. In the 1870s this narrow street, stretching from Union Square to Kearney Street, was the home of 1,000 prostitutes. Their houses of ill repute were called cribs.

I stood there trying to imagine the topless women hanging out of first-floor windows, yelling “Touch one breast for ten cents, two breasts for fifteen cents, or come on in for twenty-five cents.”

The men were encouraged to hang up their clothes in a closet. And once the they were, uh, preoccupied with their lady, a colleague from another room would remove the back panel of the closet and take the rest of the John’s cash.

I joined up with a walking tour on Maiden Lane. Sponsored in part by the San Francisco Public Library, San Francisco City Guides gives free tours throughout the city. This particular one, called “Bawdy & Naughty” focused on Barbary Coast-era prostitutes. Specifically, though, on Maiden Lane, today a posh pedestrianized street flanked by Chanel, Prada, Paul Smith, and Hermes shops.

The guide, John Ferriera, walked the group (of which there was a guy who bore a striking resemblance to everyone’s favorite news pontificator and Mexican immigration lover, Lou Dobbs) down the two-block street, regaling us with salacious stories of 19th-century San Francisco. As we stood in front of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed building at #140, Ferriera told us about Bertha Kahn, a famous Maiden Lane madam who coined the term “Satisfaction guaranteed.” If you weren’t satisfied with your amorous encounter, she’d give you a token to come back and try again.


Today, randy San Franciscans can go to the Tenderloin to pretend they’re in Barbary Coast-era Maiden Lane. It’s highly doubtful, however, that anyone there is putting a guarantee on satisfaction. And it certainly will cost you more than twenty-five cents.

Barbary Coast Food: The Search for Chop Suey

by David Farley on
The Chinaman. For as long as I can remember, the only Chinese restaurant in the suburban southern California town where I grew up was named for this racial slur. No one, including the Chinese owner, seemed to mind. I can’t remember if chop suey was ever on the menu, but standing at the gate to Chinatown in San Francisco, on Grant and Bush Streets still following the Barbary Coast trail, I couldn’t help but link the two. Kitschy and part of the old school food culture many of us have long abandoned.

A few nights earlier I was eating at Incanto, a stellar restaurant in the city’s Noe Valley and ended up standing in the doorway to the kitchen chatting with Chris Cosentino, the restaurant’s talented chef. That’s when he told me that chop suey was invented in San Francisco. “Some time during the Barbary Coast era,” he said.

Or was it? It would make sense that San Francisco would have birthed this kitschy dish. Chinatown boasts the first Asian temple in the United States (on Waverly Place). San Francisco was the first place Chinese immigrants flocked to, hoping to strike it rich in the rush for gold. It had to have been invented here. So, on a whim, I decided to find out.

I went into the first restaurant I encountered. The young female servers in the Utopia Café had dystopian looks on their faces when I asked if they had chop suey on the menu. “Chop suey?” a woman repeated in a tone of such befuddlement, as if I had suggested we defecate on the floor together and then invent a dish out of it and call it “Chinese food.”

Which is one story how chop suey was supposedly invented. Well, sort of, minus the excrement. In author Herbert Asbury’s “The Barbary Coast,” which I happened to have in my bag, he claims chop suey was invented in New York City, created at a banquet for Chinese and non-Chinese. The chef, he wrote, threw together some meat and vegetables and doused it liberally with soy and fish sauce and created something he thought seemed vaguely Chinese but would suit the American palate as well. Chop Suey was, apparently, born.


In New Asia restaurant no one would talk to me. Or they didn’t speak English (or were pretending not to). It didn’t help that I was holding a journalists notepad and a pen. When I asked about chop suey I only received blank stares in return.

Finally, at Yee’s on Grant St., a lead. A young waiter new exactly what I was talking about. “Yes, it may have been invented here,” he said. “I’ve heard this story. But we don’t make it anymore. No one wants this dish.”

“It’s cheap stuff,” barked an old man sitting at a cash register. “Cheap stuff.”

He was right. Chop suey reeked of a dish that consists of leftover ingredients. It’s a combination of indistinguishable products – vegetables and meat and sauces – that somehow contains hints of Chinese cuisine for the naive palate.

Everyone at Yee’s shrugged when I asked where I might find it and, more importantly, if they know where it was invented.

I was ready to give up. I put my notepad back in my pocket and started walking back toward the Chinatown gate, ready to resume my Barbary Coast trail journey.

And then I spotted it: above the door of New Woey Loy Goey on Jackson and Grant Streets, two words: chop suey. I descended the stairs and accosted the first waiter I saw. Chop suey! I said. The waiter motioned for me to sit down. But I had a question: where was it invented? Sadly, he didn’t speak English. Neither did anyone at the restaurant. Instead, he just kept showing me the words “chop suey” on the menu. The fact is, I didn’t want to eat it. I just wanted to find out its origins, to find out if it was a product of the Barbary Coast.

Later that night at home, an internet search revealed new information: one source claims it really was invented in Barbary Coast-era San Francisco; a poor chef would take scraps and throw it all together for his own meals. Another story corroborated Asbury’s New York theory. And yet another said that it really came from China.

We may never know the answer to the origins of chop suey. Especially because it, like restaurants named “The Chinaman” have long faded from the American culinary landscape. For better or worse (probably the former).

Pyramids and monasteries among the many ancient monuments under restoration

by Sean McLachlan on


Around the world, ancient monuments are crumbling. As our heritage wears away through neglect, “development”, or simply the harsh treatment of time, some countries are doing something about it.

The pyramid of Djoser, the oldest of the pyramids of Egypt, will be the object of a major restoration effort. The government recently announced that funding has been earmarked for restoration after the people previously working on the site put down their tools, saying they weren’t getting paid. The money that’s owed to the company would be paid and workers would be assured their salaries, said Mohammad Abdel-Maksoud, Egypt’s new Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. The famous Zahi Hawass was let go during the recent revolution. Hawass was briefly replaced by Abdel-Fattah al-Banna, but al-Banna quickly resigned amid criticisms of his lack of credentials.

The Djoser pyramid at Saqqara was constructed from 2667 to 2648 BC and is a step pyramid rather than a true pyramid. It now suffers from numerous structural problems and a crumbling facade.

In Tibet, the Chinese government is investing almost $9 million to restore monasteries and homes of the 10th century Guge Kingdom. Among the attractions in the ruins are some colorful Buddhist murals, caves, palaces, and pagodas. BBC News has an interesting video showing of the site here.

It’s not all good news, though. Many treasures of the past are under threat. While Rome’s Colosseum is being restored, several structures in Pompeii collapsed last year. In Red Rock Canyon, Nevada, volunteers and experts had to clean away graffiti sprayed on Native American rock art. In England the Priddy Circles, a collection of Neolithic earthworks from 5,000 years ago, were half destroyed when someone bulldozed them.

It’s nice to see some governments working hard to maintain their monuments, but lack of funding and simple human stupidity are making their job difficult.

[Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons]

San Francisco to Finally Get a City History Museum

by David Farley on
San Francisco is one of the only major cities in the United States without a museum dedicated to its history. All that will change next year when the old U.S. Mint on Fifth and Mission Streets will be converted into a state-of-the-art museum showcasing the city’s rich history. It’s an appropriate building for such a place-its construction was the result of the Gold Rush, which, of course, has a strong Barbary Coast connection. It’s also where the Barbary Coast trail-the series of self-guided, sidewalk-implanted medallions-begins. Which is fitting because the mint is essentially a money factory. And that’s what brought the world here in the first place, one giant plea for a better, more comfortable life.

Prior to the Gold Rush, San Francisco was a small town that mostly used barter as well as Mexican reals, Dutch gilders and even Indian rupees, as a form of currency.


So the government built a mint in 1852 to start producing US currency. But the supply of gold and silver that was coming in from the hills was too much. That’s when this majestic mint was constructed. Built between 1869-1873, the new mint produced 59 percent of America’s gold and silver coinage in its first year of operation. It’s also worth mentioning, it is one of the few buildings to withstand the 1906 earthquake and fire.

The mint also happens to be my first physical stop on my search to find the remnants of the Barbary Coast. This is one of the more obvious markers. But there are others-more subtle indicators-along the trail that I’ll be following this month. I take my last look at the mint, as MUNI busses roar past me and morning commuters whisk by on their way to work, and take a step toward Market Street, knowing the next time I’m back the building will be transformed into a gleaming new history museum of San Francisco.