Was Marco Polo really in China?

Probably, but the question is genuinely contested among historians, and the doubts are more substantial than popular accounts suggest.

The book. The Travels of Marco Polo was not written by Polo. He dictated it around 1298 while imprisoned in Genoa, to Rustichello da Pisa, a writer of chivalric romances. That collaboration matters: Rustichello had a professional habit of embellishment, and passages in the Travels closely echo his other work.

The case for scepticism, argued most prominently by Frances Wood in Did Marco Polo Go to China? (1995):

Striking omissions. No mention of the Great Wall, of tea, of chopsticks, of foot binding, or of Chinese writing — all things a European spending 17 years there would surely notice.

No Chinese or Mongol sources record him, despite his claim to have served Kublai Khan and governed a city.

Verifiable errors, including claiming involvement in the siege of Xiangyang, which ended before he could have arrived.

Place names given in Persian rather than Chinese forms.

The case for authenticity, which most specialists now favour:

The omissions have explanations. The Great Wall as we know it is largely a Ming construction, built after Polo's time; earlier walls were ruined and unremarkable. Foot binding was not yet widespread. He travelled through a Mongol-administered empire, using Persian as the administrative language — which explains the place names.

Detailed accurate information on Mongol court practices, paper currency, the salt monopoly, coal use and postal systems that would have been difficult to obtain second-hand in Europe.

Hans Ulrich Vogel's work on Chinese currency, salt administration and revenue found Polo's descriptions unusually precise and consistent with Chinese records unavailable in the West.

The moderate position now common: Polo travelled at least as far as the Mongol empire's Persian territories and probably to China, exaggerated his own status considerably, and Rustichello added colour throughout.