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Chin Han, Jia Sidao, Jingim, Marco Polo, Mei Lin, Mongol China, Olivia Chang, Remy Hii
One of the more interesting elements of Netflix’ Marco Polo series is the way it explores the tensions present in early Yuan China between traditional Chinese culture and the upstart but now dominant culture of the Mongols. By the time Genghis Khan conquered China, Chinese culture was already thousands of years old. China had been ruled by emperors for about 1400 years. As a result, China was proud of its old, sophisticated culture and viewed the younger non-Chinese cultures around it as barbarians, upstarts, or uncultured, much the same way that the Romans and Byzantines thought of the cultures around them. The more influenced a culture was by Chinese culture, the more “cooked” it was in Chinese eyes. To be subjected to Mongol rule was a terrible shock, because they were “raw”, entirely uninfluenced by China when they arrived on the scene.
Chinese culture was heavily focused on agriculture and was in that sense sedentary. As befitting a true “civilization” (which technically refers to a culture that builds cities), China was characterized by permanent urban settlements that fostered substantial economic and cultural specialization. China possessed a complex and minutely graded state bureaucracy today referred to as the mandarins; to qualify for a position within the bureaucracy, a candidate had to have successfully passed rigorous civil service exams which emphasized practical bureaucratic skills such as knowledge of mathematics, taxation, and agriculture; military skills such as horseback riding, archery, and military strategy; and cultural skills such as music, court ritual, and the Confucian classics that underlay much of Chinese culture. As a result, the mandarins were both bureaucrats and scholars. The mandarinate was a meritocracy of knowledge and skill in applying that knowledge, and access to the system was surprisingly open, allowing many talented non-nobles to rise to high levels of power. Above the mandarins, however, was the emperor, who typically inherited his office from his father or other close kinsman.
In contrast, Mongol culture was nomadic and not urban in any modern sense of the term. The culture emphasized the maintenance of herds of horses and sheep. The horses were used for warfare and transport, while the sheep provided milk, meat, wool, and other necessities (although the Mongols definitely consumed mare’s milk and ate horseflesh to some extent). Because they lived off their livestock and the livestock had to have fresh supplies of grass to eat, the Mongols had to move around over the course of the year, which meant that they lived out of tents and did not build permanent structures or cities. As a non-urbanized people, cultural and economic specialization was low; most adult men were expected to engage in hunting, herding, and warfare. Leadership was based on a mixture of family ties, military skill, personal loyalty, and in the case of the khans, election. In other words, these two cultures had almost nothing in common.
Initially, Genghis and Ögedei simply imposed Mongol organization onto China. Those who possessed the khan’s seal were given near-total authority, and the Chinese were taxed almost arbitrarily. By the end of Ögedei’s reign, however, the Mongols had begun to standardize their rule of China, and Chinese advisors persuaded Kublai to embrace the role of a traditional Chinese emperor. His first major signal of this was his decision to abandon Karakorum, the traditional Mongolian “capital”, in favor of two cities, Shangdu in Mongolia as the summer capital and Khanbalik (modern Beijing) as the winter capital. As a result, Mongolia ceased to be the heart of the Mongol Empire early in Kublai’s reign. Then in 1271, he adopted the traditional nomenclature of the emperors, declaring a name for his dynasty, the Yuan. Over the course of Kublai’s reign, he increasingly adopted the Chinese model for his administration, while retaining the Mongol military system.
However, he imposed a distinctly non-Chinese social hierarchy, which put a tiny Mongolian elite at the top, followed by non-Chinese allied peoples, then residents of the former Jin and Xi Xia states in Northern China, and finally on the bottom the residents of the Southern Song in Southern China. This last group made up perhaps 80% of Yuan China’s population, paid the highest taxes, and in violation of the traditional mandarin meritocracy were excluded from high government office. The result was a system in which ethnic mixing was sharply discouraged, which led to the perpetuation of hostility against the Mongols by the native Chinese peoples who never fully accepted the Yuan as a truly Chinese dynasty.
In the Series
The series, to its credit, addresses this cultural tension in a variety of ways. The traditional Mongols are shown as one end of a spectrum of culture, the Southern Song as the other end, and Kublai’s court at Khanbalik as somewhere in between.
For the series, Mongol culture is very simple. They live on horseback and in gers (Mongol tents sometimes mistakenly called yurts, which is actually a Turkish version of the structure). Karakorum is depicted as being much less a city than a camp ground; the only permanent structures it seems to have are some grain bins. They feast vigorously on roasted sheep while sitting around campfires. For sport, they wrestle, and they allow women to serve as warriors. This last detail seems loosely accurate; historically Mongol women were given considerable domestic authority and participated in sports like wrestling, horse-racing, and archery, but probably did not engage in warfare on any regular basis. The Mongols dress in a mixture of leather, fur, and cloth, and wear a very distinctive haircut and beard. They don’t seem to have concubines, only a few servants.
In contrast, the Southern Song are entirely city-dwelling, with the major Southern Song characters living in complex palaces with large spacious rooms arranged around cultivated gardens. Their court protocols are complex and refined, and political intrigue takes the form of back-room deals and secret plotting. They wear fine silk clothing, go beardless for the most part, and instead of complex haircuts, they have elaborate hats. Whereas the Mongols are horse-riding nomads, Xiangyang has an enormous wall around it manned by archers. The women seem to live very different lives from the men, with numerous concubines. They occasionally impose foot-binding on their women, a genuine historical practice that literally crippled women so that they would have to be physically carried. The only sport they seem to possess is cricket fighting.
The court at Khanbalik has elements of both these cultural poles. It lives within a palace, although one that is much darker than the one at Xiangyang. Instead of a delicate lacquered throne, Kublai lounges in an enormous fabric-draped throne that seems made from stone. He and most of the other Mongols wear the traditional Mongol hairstyle, but their dress is more Chinese. Kublai’s elaborate Hall of the Five Senses is a sprawling harem populated by numerous concubines overseen by Empress Chabi herself, who personally selects her husband’s partners. The only game they engage in is a board game that looks like a version of chess. Kublai shows some respect for Chinese cultural traditions (in one scene, he consults the I Ching) but doesn’t seem to truly appreciate them.
The figure who most effectively represents this cultural tension is Prince Jingim (Remy Hii). For the most part, Jingim is shown as an ineffectual whiner who is constantly getting upstaged by Marco Polo (Lorenzo Richelmy), but he becomes interesting when he shows himself as torn between Mongol cultural and Chinese culture. He struggles to be militarily effective, knowing that the Mongols will not respect him if he is a poor war leader. But he dresses in a more Chinese style. His hair is styled completely differently than the other Mongols; he wears his hair long and either loose or in a bun, without braids or the distinctive Mongol forelock, and he doesn’t wear a beard. It has the effect of making him seem curiously feminine in contrast to all the bearded, braided men around him, but perhaps that’s meant to underline his ineffectiveness in Mongol eyes.
But Let’s Not Forget the Western Viewers
However, there’s a third culture relevant here, that of the Western world. In the series, that view is represented by Marco, but he rarely offers much pushback against either Mongol or Chinese culture. For the most part, he is presented as a tabula rasa for Eastern cultures to write on. He is Christian, but apart from one brief moment when his possession of a cross becomes an issue, he never expresses any religious opinions or any sort of alternate view of Mongol or Chinese morality. Perhaps the only time he truly criticizes Mongol culture is when he demonstrates horror and disgust after he realizes that the Mongols are literally butchering and stewing the captured soldiers of the Southern Song. The scene is truly horrific, but it’s not clear (at least to me) what the point of it was. Nor am I at all certain that this is historically accurate; I certainly haven’t been able to find any sources that claim the Mongols actually did that.
However, while Marco doesn’t really represent Western culture within the series, the fact that the series was made by Westerners for Westerners feels inescapable. Rather than seeking to explain Chinese or Mongolian customs in a way that will normalize them for viewers, the show tends to treat its setting as an excuse for gaping at how different Mongol and Chinese culture are. The series frequently resorts to clichéd notions of Asian society.
The most obvious way it does this with the excessive use of kung fu and occasional wire-fu stunts. The series suggests that knowledge of kung fu was wide-spread; Kublai has appointed the blind martial arts master Hundred Eyes (Tom Wu) to teach kung fu to various members of the court, including his son Jingim (Remy Hii) and Marco. The Song Chancellor Jia Sidao (Chin Han) and his sister Mei Lin (Olivia Chang) are both brilliant martial artists, as are at least some of the soldiers of the Song army and the assassins who attempt to kill Kublai. Another concubine, Jing Fei, also seems to know some martial arts. The Mongol princess Kokachin and Empress Chabi are apparently skilled archers.
All of this is improbable. While kung fu existed in this period, it certainly wasn’t widely known; it’s highly unlikely that concubines and foot soldiers would have been trained in it. The history of Chinese martial arts is quite complex and there seems to be considerable debate whether Shaolin kung fu was particularly common before the 16th century (some sources insist it was, while others argue that the historical evidence for this is largely fabricated by later generations). The mandarins did study military matters, but probably more from a theoretical perspective than as a matter of daily regimen (remember, they were bureaucrats and scholars), and there’s no evidence so far as I know that Jia Sidao was personally a warrior. Having so many characters be martial artists is really just pandering to Western audiences who have been trained to expect kung fu in any film set in Asia. In this, the series is perhaps slightly less racist than the embarrassing tendency of every Asian character in a 1980s Hollywood film to know martial arts (Short Round, I’m looking at you), but not by much.
Examples of Asian exoticism abound. Concubines are everywhere in Xiangyang and Khanbalik, and the series repeatedly dwells on the lurid sexuality of the Hall of Five Senses (the name a cliché in itself); in one scene we witness one concubine pleasuring another with a silk scarf. Jing Fei does exotic dances for Chancellor Sidao. Poison is a common method of assassination; the assassins who attack Kublai use it, and Mei Lin uses it in an attempt to kill Chabi (although I have to say that poisoning your lips strikes me as a particularly dangerous way to kill someone if you actually intend to live). Kokachin’s bodyguard is a eunich who needs a special instrument to urinate. Sidao is fond of insect metaphors; he gives the young Song emperor that most Chinese of insects, a preying mantis, as a moral lesson. Kublai Khan is a decent and rather sympathetic character, but he is also an autocratic military despot of an entirely non-democratic system (the series barely acknowledges that Kublai was actually elected by the Mongols), while Jia Sidao is an emotionless, calculating monster who whores out his sister, mutilates his niece, and orders his concubine to commit suicide. So the show gives us both stereotypes of Asian rulers at once.
In particular, Chang’s Mei Lin fits a lot of the stereotype of the Dragon Lady. She is an Asian beauty, very sexualized but also very dangerous, employing both seduction and violence as tools for assassination. Unlike some Dragon Ladies in Western literature, she is not a mastermind, but rather her brother’s puppet, but at the end of the season she appears poised to find her agency. In fairness, she’s motivated primarily by maternal love rather than lust for power, but in most other respects she fits the cliché. (As a side note, can I point out how odd it is in the last episode that, as she’s trying to escape captivity, she would pause to scrutinize a mural?)

This image of Mei Lin is probably the most cliché-ridden piece of advertising the show has produced.
The result of all of these clichés is to confirm Western stereotypes of China as mysterious, sexualized, and dangerous, as profoundly different from Western culture. This is perhaps the worst aspect of the series. On the one hand, it seeks to introduce Western viewers to a time and place that is little known to them, and it strives to have at least a semblance of historical accuracy (although it’s quite free in its manipulation of the facts), but on the other hand it feels a need to lure viewers in with familiar clichés and sexual debauchery.
And this, I think, is a big part of why the series has not done very well with critics and viewers. It seeks to emulate the HBO model offered by shows like The Sopranos and Game of Thrones, which draw viewers in with a promise of tits and ass and violence in every episode. But it also wants to have the more leisurely pace of a prestige drama on PBS. The result is a show that is too languid for those who want lots of sex and too sexual for those who want a period drama. It is too cliché-ridden and factually inaccurate to be highbrow and too talky to be lowbrow. While offering us the clash of Mongol and Chinese culture, it has accidentally situated itself within a very different culture clash of modern Western society.
I agree with what you get at the the last paragraph. The biggest problem the show has is a failure to commit one way or the other. It’s already missed the boat on attempt ing a serious look at the subject , and an accurate representation of history. So it only really works in those bits where it embraces all its kung fu movie aping nonsense. I think it’s best to consider the show a fun, pulpy action series with a surprising interest in history and Asian cultures. But it’s just a bit to cliche (love triangles! Dragon ladies!) And takes itself far to seriously to actually fit in that mold. And it certainly too slowly paced.
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sadly this is true. The characters are well rounded enough but they are a tad cliche. I would have kept Marco as more of a warrior but built up instead to the battle of Yamen.
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The christians aren’t nice either; Season 2 has the christians be xenophobic assholes out to exterminate even mongols who don’t particularly care about conquest. Kublai himself is VERY well done
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Mongol women actually were action girls believe it or not; in that regard they were more egalitarian.
I don’t mind the idea of action sequences or intrigue. In some ways the characters do get dignity and depth; Jingham is given reason to be resentful of Marco (Marco unintentionally humiliated him and given his massive daddy issues he has reason to be jealous.) Chabi shows humanity and decency in both seasons (she opposes killing the boy emperor and treats Ling nicely)
Speaking of which Season 2 isn’t too bad either; Ahmad (the evil viceregent) is given a sympathetic backstory and Marco manages to unintentionally derail his plan by being nice to mei lin (they’re sent together on a mission, work together and Marco treats her with respect despite the fact she dislikes him. As such when Ahmad betrays her Marco provides an out.) It subverts the whole “power has a price theme” in that marco being nice is what saves the day.
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So far as I know, there isn’t much evidence for Mongol women warriors (but I’m happy to be proven wrong about that). But they were much more public than Chinese or Muslim women were–no veils, for instance. They drove the wagons, so they were the 14th century equivalent of truck drivers. And they participated in athletics like wrestling.
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Personally I would have had THIS be the season
Season 1: We start with the battle of Curzola. Marco handles himself well but is captured. In jail he meets Rustichello, and after some banter Marco agrees to tell Rustichello his story. We get Marco stowing away on his father’s ship, the crossing the desert. The first episode ends with him meeting Kublai Khan. Over the season Marco is forced through training from hell (learning falconry, archery, and swordsmanship.) He gets stronger and as time passes he is treated with more trust and respect by the mongols, even being allowed to join the Mongol knights after saving Kublai from an assassination attempt by the Song Dynasty.
At the same time, in the Song Dynasty things are going badly. The boy emperor and his mother have surrendered to the Mongolians and the Song Dynasty is forced into ever more dramatic retreat. During all of this, Mei Ling and her daughter Ling Ling are the subject of increasing hostility and scorn; her brother is blamed for the fall of Xianyang. Mei Lin is given the chance by Liu Xiufu to “Redeem” herself by assassinating Kublai. When this fails she fears for her daughter’s life (Liu Xiufu made it clear that Ling Ling’s life might be in danger). Marco manages to win Mei Lin over by promising to help save her daughter and persuades Kublai to let him try to do so when they scope out the capital city. She, Marco and others are dispatched south and they manage to extract Ling Ling while getting key information. This leads to the capture of Wen Tianxiang. The stage is ultimately set for the final battle.
At Yamen things get nasty. We get a big budget naval sequence where the mongols outplay the chinese and take the flagship. Liu Xiufu and the boy Emperor flee to the top of the cliff with Marco, Mei Lin and some of the Keshig in pursuit. Marco confronts him at the top and tries to dissuade him from committing suicide with the boy. He also calls him out on threatening Ling Ling. Liu Xiufu admits that it was a bluff on his part; much as he disdains Jia Sidao he wouldn’t have taken it out on an innocent child (this shocks Mei Lin, since the entire reason she defected was to ensure her daughter’s survival). Liu Xiufu and Marco have a discussion about the nature of duty and loyalty. Ultimately Liu leaps into the sea and Marco is powerless to stop it. The rest of the court also commits suicide (this actually happened in real life).
In the present Rustichello is badly shaken by the description. Marco admits he can understand Liu’s point of view but is still shaken. He admits that he doesn’t like to think about it and still has nightmares of all the corpses floating in the bay
I think Liu Xiufu would have made more sense in that he’s not a monster. He’s trying to save what’s left of the Song Dynasty from conquest. Even his kick the dog moment being a bluff adds tragedy to the scenario. His and Marco’s final conversation would be fictional but I think dramatically cool.
There would be a timeskip to season 2 with Ahmad Fanakanti being the big bad; he tries to help Kaidu win a Kurultai like in season 2
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It’s amazing what the tv and movie industry could do if they just let us write the material.
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Thanks, a very good analysis.
I ran into mentions of the series while looking for good material about Marco Polo, and after reading this I will be giving it a wide berth.
Incidentally, do you know of any good documentary or movie about Marco Polo travels?
My kid showed some interest, so I was looking for something reasonably accurate and not too gruesome.
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Most films about Marco Polo have been pretty silly. There was a 1982 miniseries that I remember liking as a kid, and it gets fairly good reviews on Amazon, but I can’t swear that it stands up–I haven’t seen it as an adult. Here’s the link: http://amzn.to/2lNzCfp
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The show is good popcorn entertainment but it could be silly (Prestor John would have been the big bad of season 3)
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Did it not get a 3rd season? I’m not surprised.
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No. Season 2 cost too much money so they cancelled. But it was looking like Prestor John yes, THAT Prestor John would be the main antagonist of Season 3.
I would have had season 1 build up to Yamen, Season 2 focus entirely on Ahmad’s machinations and the beginning of how things are fraying (the vietnam campaigns and Japan invasions fail and allow Kaidu to gain more support from Mongols who are disgruntled at Kublai’s forces getting repulsed) then have Kaidu and Nayan be the main villains of the final season. A nice three season epic
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The Prester John who was probably a distorted memory of the Christian kings of Ethiopia?
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To be fair Prestor John WAS rumored to be in Asia too but it was still weird bringing supernatural stuff into it (Prestor John is definately supernatural.)
What did you think of my Yamen idea
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From an historical standpoint, it sounds like a good idea.
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Ahmad would be the big bad of season 2; it would focus on internal conflicts and set the stage for Kaidu as the big bad.
I’d have the assassin hunt occur then. Ahmad tries to kill Kublai and when that fails he frames Yusuf. Marco doesn’t believe it so he and Byamba go out to seek the truth. At the same time Ahmad tries to work up the totem pole and isolate Kublai. Marco returns in time with the truth, and ultimately Ahmad is thwarted.
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What got me banging my head against the desk (aside from by far the highest frequency of naked women I have ever seen in a historical drama, other than possibly in that surprisingly high-quality, tender-hearted and roughly historically faithful (except for the styling of the actors) gore-and-softcore-porn-with-plot show “Spartacus”, which at least had a policy of equal opportunity nudity instead of just sexualizing the women), was the way “Marco Polo” turned the leader of the Song Chinese into a complete psychopath – apparently for no reason other than to make Kublai look less bad for attacking the remnant of the population his father and grandfather had conquered. I mean, come on, just embrace that conquest is a part of Mongol culture! Or give a political reason for why it would be better for everyone involved to be under one rule instead of at a stage of protracted civil war.
From what I could tell from Wikipedia and a college course on Chinese history, the real guy was just some random general who got saddled with the duty of defending the besieged city for a child emperor, failed (if I remember corrently, the actual battle that decided it was largely a naval conflict because the city with its high walls was impregnable by land), and was killed by his own people for incompetence. His relationship with the Empress-Dowager apparently was the opposite as was depicted in the show.
I don’t mind the little detail of the foot-binding (sensationalist and orientalist, yes, but large-scale historical mistreatments of women shouldn’t be swept under the carpet and they couldn’t very well have any of the actual adult actresses stumble around hobbled all the time), or even the “whoring out” of his sister, as you so insultingly put it. At least, I wouldn’t have minded if the latter had been presented in a historically accurate, or at the very least not completely stupid manner. From what I understand, it was perfectly normal in ancient China for noble families to send some of their teenage girls into the palace to become the Emperor’s concubines. The hope was that she would one day bear the heir to the throne and thus gain her family power and influence once she’s the reigning Emperor’s mother (considerably more powerful position than being the Emperor’s lawfully wedded wife, especially if the heir comes to the throne at a young age). Or at the very least, if the girl manages to gain the Emperor’s interest at all (not automatically the case just because she’s officially a concubine – there are ranks and lots of infighting in harems to even gain access to the Emperor at all), she could then talk him into favouring her male relatives for positions at court, land grands, etc. In this sense, “whoring out” one’s sister was perfectly acceptable behaviour for an ambitious Chinese nobleman; in fact it was duty to family and ancestors / descendants. What does not make sense AT ALL, is that he would send his sister into other guys’ beds after she started being a concubine of the old Emperor. I’m pretty sure that would have been outright treason in this time period (she could get pregnant, after all, and pass of the kid as the Emperor’s). The palace was staffed by eunuchs, and concubines of a dead Emperor (if not mothers of his children) were generally sent into retirement as nuns (not allowed to marry someone else), for a good reason. Even in the context of the show (psychopath, no family to think of), why on Earth would he risk his head like that, or as Regent at least severe political backlash from his own people and the Empress-Dowager?! It’s just suicidally stupid behaviour.
And then they eventually tried to make the siblings more sympathetic by giving them a background as poor peasant orphans. This is ridiculous. Aside from the fact that the real historical leader of the Song Chinese was of course a nobleman (who may or may not have had a sister in the Emperor’s harem – quite likely, see above), the sheer idea that an impoverished peasant kid, no matter how much of a gifted genius, could pass the entrance exams to high public office is laughable. Yes, sure, in theory peasants could participate in this “meritocracy”, but studying the classics (or even managing to memorize the thousands of Chinese characters necessary to read them) took literally years. Sometimes rich merchants may have gotten a son into government position this way, but if your family was too poor to spare your labour throughout your teens while you got the equivalent of a college education, then you had no chance to pass those exams. Especially not the higher level ones for non-rural bureaucracy. Also, I think I remember that in this time period, it was still necessary for the young man to undergo castration for a position in the palace bureaucracy – though I may be mixing that up with a later dynasty. (I don’t quite remember when the Emperor started relying more on eunuchs to shift power away from the traditional military nobility. But I think it was around the same time the exam system rose to central importance when allocating government jobs.) Not full castration as depicted in the show, though, just the testicles – I’m can’t be sure in the Chinese case, but I read that full castration had a 90% death rate when it was done (by Christian monks) to Slavic slaves sold to the Ottoman Empire, and in the survivors it would have caused chronic urinary tract infections (easily lethal if they go up to the kidneys), so I don’t believe for a minute that thousands of Chinese men did that voluntarily just to satisfy their ambition. (Slaves who were just used as guards or to scrub the floors, perhaps, but not powerful mandarins.)
In reality, I imagine a member of an old and powerful noble family probably chose the military career path to power, not the much slower examination path through the ranks of rural and then central bureaucracy.
(Also, I rolled my eyes when they showed the sister as a little girl being an apparently self-employed prostitute, and controlling her own income. Seriously? In Confucian China?! The child prostitution part I believe, but not that there wasn’t some man forcing her to do it and taking the money – if not her elder brother (who according to pre-modern Chinese culture is supposed to control her entire life if the father isn’t in the picture anymore), then some other asshole who could easily exploit such completely defenseless children. The only reason her elder brother wouldn’t be working himself and in any case controlling their money is if he’s mentally disabled. There just is no way to get from the boy in that scene to the scheming, controlling and supposedly highly intelligent adult man. And I do not believe that the Emperor would ever have taken a professional prostitute (or any non-virgins, really) on as a concubine. It’s not about bedroom skills. It’s about cultural refinement, noble blood, and guarantied sexual faithfulness for the candidates that might become mothers of his heirs. And why would he want to risk getting a disease (even at a time when there weren’t any guarantied-deadly STDs in Eurasia yet)? There were reasons for the whole historical virginity-before-marriage ideal, it wasn’t just arbitrary cruelty by misogynist assholes.)
P.S. Apparently a man nick-named “Hundred Eyes” really did exist. But he was a Mongolian general involved in the siege, not a captive Chinese monk. And it’s highly unlikely that he was disabled, at least while still actively taking part in battles. But I guess the “kung fu is magic” trope was too hard to resist.
And I’d like to add that, while I’m not overly familiar with Asian ethnicities, it still took me ages to realise that Kublai’s wife wasn’t some Chinese princess he’d gotten in a political marriage / as a hostage, but rather a Mongol lady who’d just decided to embrace Chinese culture and dress to appease her husband’s subjects. Maybe they shouldn’t have cast an actress that didn’t look the epitome of a Han Chinese lady then? Similar issues with the “Blue Princess”. (Who in reality was probably not even born yet at the time when Marco Polo first arrived in China. He did claim to have had an affair with her, but that was like 20+ years later, when he was around 50 and was using her journey west to her wedding to some other Mongol prince ruling in the Middle East as a way to get back home to Europe. Supposedly, it was largely a ship voyage and they got stranded on an island for a while.) What, were Mongolian women (generally more round-faced and full-figured) not considered attractive enough to play roles alongside the convincingly Mongolian-looking male actors? How is that better than having a Caucasian Cleopatra, for example?
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All good points. I just want to add one nit-pick to the main article: foot binding didn’t typically cripple women to the point that they had to be carried everywhere. Certainly, some very wealthy upper-class girls may have been carried everywhere on divans after having their feet bound, so that they eventually lost their ability to walk, but by the time the practice became popular enough that poorer women were doing it, there were women with bound feet working in rice paddies, and performing other jobs. There are a couple of different stories about the origin of foot-binding, but it was probably originally used by dancers to enable them to dance on their toes (sort of like pointe shoes for ballet), so they certainly weren’t crippled. It wasn’t until later that it was used for permanently altering the shape of and stunting the growth of girls’ feet. And when it eventually died out in the early 20th century, it was mainly due to fashion, again. Women wanted to start wearing expensive imported shoes from europe, and couldn’t wear them with bound feet.
Excellent article, though
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