Daughter of Xanadu - Dori Jones Yang [1]
Beyond the far western edge of Emmajin’s grandfather’s empire, Marco Polo, at the age of seventeen, left his beloved home in Venice, Italy. It was the High Middle Ages, and many cities in Europe, then called Christendom, were building huge cathedrals. Venice was the richest city in Europe, and its traders brought home merchandise from far lands. But most of Europe was divided into tiny kingdoms that were relatively poor and powerless. When Marco’s father and uncle returned from a long journey and told of a fabulous, wealthy empire in the East, ruled by a wise, powerful emperor, with millions of citizens, huge armies, and rare gems, few believed them.
Marco joined them on their second journey to the heart of the Mongol Empire. Because of sickness, bandits, icy mountains, and endless deserts, that journey took more than three years. By the time Marco arrived at the Khan’s capital, in AD 1275, he spoke four languages and had many lively stories to tell.
Emmajin and Marco met in Xanadu, the Khan’s summer capital, then called Shangdu. Outside the gleaming marble palace stretched a glorious garden, a paradise of brooks and ponds, pavilions and pagodas, winding paths and blossoming trees. It was a land of myth and mystery, where the unthinkable could happen.
Years later, when Marco Polo returned to Europe, he wrote a book about what he had seen in this marvelous land. Some dismissed Marco’s book as falsehood, accusing him of exaggerating. But his writing fired European imaginations for centuries; five hundred years later it inspired a famous poem that begins “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan …” Most famously, Marco’s book motivated Christopher Columbus to set sail across the ocean to the West, hoping to find the treasures of the East.
The distant land that Marco Polo “discovered” had long been known to the people who lived there. Khubilai’s capital was in China, which had developed an advanced civilization with poetry, calligraphy, silk, and jade, and a written history of thousands of years. Khubilai’s people, the Mongols, had roamed for centuries across the grasslands of Asia as herdsmen and warriors, living in round tents they called gers, known to us as yurts. Some people called the Mongols barbarians because they had no written language, buildings, or even houses. But they perfected mounted archery and conceived brilliant military tactics that allowed them to quickly conquer much more advanced countries. Two generations earlier, Khubilai’s grandfather, Chinggis Khan, and his fierce horsemen had swept across northern China and central Asia, defeating land after land, reaching as far as Russia, Poland, and Hungary in present-day eastern Europe.
By the time Marco Polo arrived, the Mongols had conquered most of the known world. They had abandoned their nomadic lifestyle and were living in Chinese-style palaces, wearing silks and brocades and eating sumptuous banquets in their capital city of Khanbalik, now known as Beijing. Khubilai Khan loved entertaining foreign visitors and debating with them about the merits of their customs and religions. Admired for his wisdom, he remained determined to fulfill the mandate from his grandfather: to conquer the rest of the world, including Europe.
The young woman in these pages, Khubilai Khan’s eldest granddaughter, Emmajin, is purely fictional. But the details about the place and time and events are as accurate as possible, based on historical accounts. Many other people in these pages were real; I have imagined their personalities.
Like a lot of girls today, Emmajin dreamed big dreams. In her culture, the only way to achieve greatness was to prove your military skills on the battlefield. So that was what she set out to do. That is, until Marco Polo came along.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless