Back during the Southern Song Dynasty when Hangzhou was China’s capital, the city was perhaps the biggest and richest in the world. The 14th century Moroccan explorer Ibn Battuta called it “the biggest city I have ever seen on the face of the earth.” While Marco Polo, whether he ever actually visited China or not, noted that “the number and wealth of the merchants, and the amount of goods that passed through their hands, was so enormous that no man could form a just estimate thereof.”

Read More →