Chinese interaction with the West has been just as jerky: centuries of relative isolation followed by periods of openness, either voluntary or involuntary, which at times hid fears of cultural contamination. During the centuries following the fall of the Han Dynasty in the 3rd century, China actively embraced outside influence, developing a taste for Roman glass, tableware decorated with Christian motifs, and Iranian cloth; one 6th century general even had himself entombed with a silver pitcher depicting the Greek goddesses responsible for the Trojan War. China took a sharp turn inward after a period of hugely successful naval exploration in the 1400s, only to ease open again to receive Jesuit missionaries expert in Western science, who began arriving in the 1580s. The past 170 years have been particularly hard. Most Chinese would say the nadir of relations with the West came in the 19th century when the Opium Wars and their aftermath compromised China's national sovereignty in unprecedented ways and ushered in what President Hu Jintao still refers to as a "century of humiliation." Following Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution, the pendulum has swung back toward openness.

Gilles Béguin, curator at the Cernuschi museum in Paris, sees a recurring pattern in all this. Right from the days of Marco Polo, and particularly with the Jesuits who followed him into China, the West has idealized China as exotic, mysterious and inventive in a way that the Chinese themselves have encouraged and directed, he argues. "There's also been a commercial idealization," Béguin says. "Everyone gets excited that they'll buy a billion refrigerators. It's not true. They will buy four—one German, one French, one Italian and one American—and then they'll start making their own fridges based on those."

Philippe Lacoste knows all about that skill. The grandson of French sports star René Lacoste, he is external-relations director of the eponymous French clothing company with the green crocodile logo. Ask Lacoste about China as a market and he bubbles with enthusiasm. Today, the company has about 30 boutiques and 100 other points of sale in China, making it one of the company's top 15 markets. Within 10 years, he reckons, "China will be number one."

But it's not all about potential growth. Last year three million counterfeit Lacoste products were seized in raids worldwide, double the number of 2004, Lacoste says. Then there's the competition. Lacoste is engaged in a legal dispute with a Singapore rival called Crocodile International, which makes shirts and other products bearing an identical crocodile that faces the other way—a logo registered in its markets. With the Singapore company's polos retailing for about $40 each, half the price of a Lacoste one, complains Philippe Lacoste, "there's a real confusion for consumers."

Commerce is only a part of the mutual attraction and rivalry, however. Bernard Ollivier became a best-selling French author for very different reasons. When he turned 60 and retired as a journalist, he says, "I didn't want to stay inert or just hang out at the supermarket." Instead, he followed in the footsteps of Marco Polo, literally, by walking the Silk Road in four separate stages starting in 1999 from Polo's native Venice, and writing about his encounters as he went. "It was really an extraordinary dream," says Ollivier, still in awe at the hospitality he received in places like Iran, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The big disappointment came at the end, when he finally reached China. "There's a mistrust of foreigners, except for tourists because they bring money," he says. "If I had started out in China, I wouldn't have finished."

Chantal Chi, the Chinese wine writer, has had her disappointments, too, like famous wines that don't live up to their name or promise, but she doesn't let that bother her. Just as Marco Polo informed his readers about the wonders of the Great Khan's paper currency and his imperial postal service, so Chi gives her young Chinese public lessons on different wine regions and the various techniques they employ. When she first arrives at a winery, she says, the owners are often suspicious and test her knowledge. But she reckons she can soon win them over. "I like to ask questions," she says. More than anything, that spirit of inquiry is Marco Polo's greatest legacy.

With reporting by Susan Jakes/Beijing

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