The Relevance of Marco Polo - Prof. Zhang Longxi Lecture

On April 11, 2016, Professor Zhang Longxi visited Yenching Academy to chat with Scholars over lunch at an event hosted by Professor Lu Yang. While enjoying lunch in a happy and relaxed atmosphere, Prof. Zhang talked about his research in comparative literature and his interesting encounters with world-renowned scholars such as Jacques Derrida and Qian Zhongshu.

Afterwards, he shared his unique understandings on a wide range of topics, ranging from classical Chinese literature to modern literature, from the dual identity among scholars and writers to the importance of standpoint in cross-culture communication. With his rich experience and engaging speaking style, Prof. Zhang offered students an insider’s view of literature and culture in China.

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On Wednesday, April 13th, Prof. Zhang Longxi presented a lecture entitled “The Relevance of Marco Polo” as part of the China Studies Lecture Series of Yenching Academy of Peking University. Prof. Zhang is currently Chair Professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature at the City University of Hong Kong. He was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities,in 2009 and a foreign member of Academia Europaea in 2013.

In his talk, Prof. Zhang focused on Marco Polo’s travel as an alternative model for cultural encounter, where one explores the foreign and exotic simply for the sake of knowing and understanding. In this way he contrasted Marco’s experience with the 19th century expansion of the West, which, largely as described by Edward Said, often featured orientalism and colonialism.

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Prof. Zhang opened his talk with the problem of veracity, namely the dispute over the question of whether Marco Polo ever really came to China. In Prof. Zhang’s view, Polo’s story was traditionally discredited mainly because European people did not find it easily acceptable that the Mongol emperor Kubilai was depicted in The Travels of Marco Polo as an ideal prince. Prof. Zhang himself sided with the view that Polo’s travels were real and legitimate by citing an important piece of evidence discovered by Yang Zhijiu. According to Yang, an event recorded in Yongle dadian, or Great Compendium Composed during the Yongle Reign, matches perfectly with a story narrated in Polo’s book.

Prof. Zhang then turned to the cultural concept of “Chineseness,” which transcends all racial and ethnic denominations, and which is more flexible and potentially all-embracing than other notions of Chinese national belonging. Such a concept of identity, just like Marco Polo’s travels, offers an alternative model of East-West encounter, where better understanding and mutual respect of different cultures are made possible.

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Marco Polo’s Legacy in Cross-Cultural Communication

Marco Polo’s journey to China holds extraordinary significance, as it provides an alternative model of East-West encounter. The idea of “Chineseness” demonstrates the willingness of China to embrace other cultures, and to incorporate foreign elements into her own. Prof. Zhang remarked, “The boundaries of China are so porous that the Chinese and the foreign, the civilized and the barbarian, do not form a mutually exclusive opposition.”

This notion relieves prevailing concerns about ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, a source of great debate and discomfort in recent international relations theory. Samuel Huntington, for instance, put forward in Clashes of Civilisation and the Remaking of World Order that the clashes among cultures were inevitable, and that post-Cold War conflict would most frequently and violently occur due to cultural rather than ideological differences. The theory of “clashes of civilizations,” however, unfairly deems Chinese and Islamic civilizations to be the opposite of the West. According to Prof. Zhang, Huntington misinterprets “Chineseness” by deeming it to be incompatible with its western counterparts. Unlike some forms of extremism, Chinese culture doesn’t persist in the “one-good-belief”; on the contrary, it attaches great importance to other beliefs. The structure of Chinese belief and knowledge is open and inclusive.

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In addition to this insight, the Marco Polo case shared by Prof. Zhang carries methodological importance with regard to cross-culture communication. First of all, to compare is inevitable. As Prof. Zhang pointed out, we compare all the time in order to differentiate, recognize, understand, make judgments or decisions, and act upon our decisions. Secondly, although exoticism may be our first response to the “other,” as in, for instance, the West in the eyes of the East or the East in the eyes of the West, differences should not be used as an excuse for distortion.

In this regard, Marco Polo’s greatness lies is his matter-of-factness and his objective examination of the things around him. He was a humble student, coming to China neither as a missionary envoy, nor for the purpose of expansion. Therefore, he avoided a simplistic caricature or a distorted picture of a culture, and instead stayed true to reality. This objectiveness and modesty facilitated mutually beneficial cross-culture communication.

Nonetheless, even in the case of Marco Polo, obstacles are inevitable as soon as cultural “borders” are crossed. Self-closing, for instance, renders segregationlegitimate and justifies local protectionism. As Prof. Zhang wrote in his thesis,“anything will eventually turn bad if it goes to an extreme.”

He warned Scholars of the danger created by the isolation of cultures and the clashes of civilizations brought on by deeply embedded bias and misperception, like the oft-described incompatibility between the East and the West. Indeed, cultural conflict should and can be avoided before it reaches “the invalid and unhelpful extreme.” When it comes to framing a culture, we should bear in mind that there is not a single, infallible narrative, let alone a self-sufficient paradigm to evaluate it. In reality, every culture has many facets, and similarly there is more than one model of East-West encounter. Recognizing the limitless possibilities and variations is therefore the first step to overcome the obstacles in cross-culture communication.

By Huang Fangyuan, Shen Jingsi and Tian Meng

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