C Marco Polo was born in Italy in 1254. When he was 17 years old, he traveled across Europe and Asia with his father , who wanted to do trade with the Chinese . Eventually , they arrived in Beijing .At that time, China was ruled by the Yuan Dynasty Emperor, Kublai Khan. Kublai Khan welcomed Marco and his father. He was very happy to meet two foreigners and wanted to learn all about Europe. Marco and his father were guests at the Emperor’s Palace. Although Marco was young, he was very clever and could already speak four languages. The Emperor was impressed by him and they became friends.He asked Marco to serve in his court and sent him to do many important tasks across the country. In 1291, after 17 years of service to the Emperor, Marco returned to Italy. He was now a very wealthy man. Not long after his return , a local war broke out near his town. During the war, Marco was the captain of a warship but was caught by the enemy and put into prison. However, Marco was lucky enough to meet another prisoner who enjoyed listening to his stories about China. The prisoner was an author and he took dictation while Marco told all his stories to him. The prisoner then wrote the stories in a book called The Description of the w orld, which became one of the best-selling books in Europe. Although people enjoyed reading his book, many of them thought that Marco’s stories about China were too fantastic to be true. But Marco always stood by his tales. Just before w hen Marco was asked the question, “Was it all true?”, to which he replied, “I have only told a half of what I saw!”