It’s almost seven hundred years since Marco Polo died at the age of 69, having opened up the world of central Asia and China to the West. Although he was not the first Westerner to visit those regions, his explorations were recorded in books, the most famous generally known in English as A Venetian born into a trading family, he began his journeys as a teenager, notably travelled the Silk Road, and spent seventeen years in China. He returned to
