Hi everyone, Lauslle Montgomery here and my profoundest apologies for last week's

goof uploading that Shanghai Massacre MP3 instead of the correct one.

What was I thinking?

Thanks to everyone who let me know. Today I wanted to look at Marco Polo and his trek along the Silk Road. I know most, if not all of you China History Podcast listeners know the story of Marco Polo so today I'm not

going to give some chronological review of his journey I'm just gonna give an overview of what

he did and then bring Francis Woods controversial

book, did Marco Polo go to China into the picture and examine what she said and also look at

what the naysayers had to say about Dr. Wood.

I've been avoiding this topic as you can see.

We're 77 episodes into this little China history podcast thing and we're only just now getting little we're doing this whole Silk Road overview why not keep it going a little more and

sort of mash up more interesting bits of Silk Road history with Marco Polo and

see what comes out in the end, so to speak.

One of my recent purchases on that last Hong Kong trip was a nice tome I finally picked up.

This one is called China Between Empires by Stanford Professor Mark Edward Lewis.

This is a book about the Northern and Southern dynasties, the Nanbeechau.

We looked at this period in CHP episode 23. This was from 386 to 581. To put it in perspective,

the eastern Han fell in 220 AD.

Then you had the fabled three kingdoms period followed by the Western and Eastern

Gene.

And we see the last of them in 420, and that's where we start off here.

There was some more interesting stuff I mind that's worth mentioning before we jump into the

Jern Dynasty.

...