Question

What information did the Europeans have about the cultures of China
​

Answer 1

Answer:

Given textual and archaeological evidence, it is thought that thousands of Europeans lived in Imperial China during the period of Mongol rule.[1] These were people from countries traditionally belonging to the lands of Christendom during the High to Late Middle Ages who visited, traded, performed Christian missionary work, or lived in China. This occurred primarily during the second half of the 13th century and the first half of the 14th century, coinciding with the rule of the Mongol Empire, which ruled over a large part of Eurasia and connected Europe with their Chinese dominion of the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368).[2] Whereas the Byzantine Empire centered in Greece and Anatolia maintained rare incidences of correspondence with the Tang, Song and Ming dynasties of China, the Holy See sent several missionaries and embassies to the early Mongol Empire as well as to Khanbaliq (modern Beijing), the capital of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. These contacts with the West were preceded by rare interactions between the Han-period Chinese and Hellenistic Greeks and Romans.

1342 tomb of Katarina Vilioni, member of an Italian trading family, in Yangzhou.

Mainly located in places such as the Mongol capital of Karakorum, European missionaries and merchants traveled around the Mongol realm during a period of time referred to by historians as the "Pax Mongolica". Perhaps the most important political consequence of this movement of peoples and intensified trade was the Franco-Mongol alliance, although the latter never fully materialized, at least not in a consistent manner.[3] The establishment of the Ming dynasty in 1368 and reestablishment of native Han Chinese rule led to the cessation of European merchants and Roman Catholic missionaries living in China. Direct contact with Europeans was not renewed until Portuguese explorers and Jesuit missionaries arrived on Ming China's southern shores in the 1510s, during the Age of Discovery.

The Italian merchant Marco Polo, preceded by his father and uncle Niccolò and Maffeo Polo, traveled to China during the period of Mongol rule. Marco Polo wrote a famous account of his travels there, as did the Franciscan friar Odoric of Pordenone and the merchant Francesco Balducci Pegolotti. The author John Mandeville also wrote about his travels to China, but he may have based these on preexisting accounts. In Khanbaliq, the Roman archdiocese was established by John of Montecorvino, who was later succeeded by Giovanni de Marignolli. Other Europeans such as André de Longjumeau managed to reach the eastern borderlands of China in their diplomatic travels to the Mongol royal court, while others such as Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, Benedykt Polak, and William of Rubruck traveled instead to Mongolia. The Uyghur Nestorian Christian Rabban Bar Sauma was the first diplomat from China to reach the royal courts of Christendom in the West.