Joseph Conrad, Chinua Achebe, and Urban Legends

I finished reading Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness earlier this month. The Wikipedia entry for HoD contains this sentence:

In a post-colonial reading, the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe famously criticized the Heart of Darkness in his 1975 lecture An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", saying the novel de-humanised Africans, denied them language and culture, and reduced them to a metaphorical extension of the dark and dangerous jungle into which the Europeans venture.

Having just read the lecture, I think Achebe does a good job of debunking the universality of HoD; it is a product of the blind spots and biases of its author and period. However, Achebe has a blind spot of his own, or maybe just a bad case of astigmatism. :-) While criticizing Marco Polo for not mentioning the great wall, he repeats a common "urban legend":

... But even more spectacular was Marco Polo's omission of any reference to the Great Wall of China nearly 4000 miles long and already more than 1000 years old at the time of his visit. Again, he may not have seen it; but the Great Wall of China is the only structure built by man which is visible from the moon!

A little research (and a little common sense) puts the lie to this statement.

Incidentally, the works of Marco Polo are free for download at Project Gutenberg. A little grepping uncovers this passage:

... The Great Wall is never mentioned, though we have shown reason for believing that it was in his mind when one passage of his book was dictated. The use of Tea, though he travelled through the Tea districts of Fo-kien, is never mentioned; the compressed feet of the women and the employment of the fishing cormorant (both mentioned by Friar Odoric, the contemporary of his later years), artificial egg-hatching, printing of books (though the notice of this art seems positively challenged in his account of paper-money), besides a score of remarkable arts and customs which one would have expected to recur to his memory, are never alluded to. Neither does he speak of the great characteristic of the Chinese writing. It is difficult to account for these omissions, especially considering the comparative fulness with which he treats the manners of the Tartars and of the Southern Hindoos; but the impression remains that his associations in China were chiefly with foreigners. ...

Didn't write about tea?

Despite Achebe's criticism, HoD is an excellent book. Read it!