Travels Of Marco Polo: Eighty Nine

In the middle of these seven days you come to City called Quelinfu, very large and beautiful city.  It has three bridges; largest and most magnificent in the world.  These bridges are a mile long, and ten paces broad; built on the columns of marbles.  Its people live by merchandise and arts.  They have abundance of silk and ginger.  The ladies are very beautiful.  Their hens are very strange: they have no feathers, but their skin like the skin of a cat.  Their eggs are like that of ours, and very good eating. And in the remainder of these seven days' journey, we discover many cities and castles, merchants and merchandise, and men of art.  There are lions great and fierce doing much injury to the passengers, who on this account cannot travel without fear.  At the end of the journey comes a city called Unquem [1] where there is made much quantity of sugar, that the whole quantity of sugar worth much value was supplied to the court of Khan.  Beyond it is the large city of Fugui, the capital of the kingdom.

____________________________________

1. Fugui: Modern day Fuzhou in Fujian province.

2. Quelinfu: Modern day Quanzhou.