In Marco Polo's ancient footsteps

Start of the dream

As an undergraduate at the University of Oxford in 1961, Stanley Johnson, along with two friends, Tim Severin and Michael de Larrabeiti, embarked on an ambitious adventure through Turkiye, Iran, and Afghanistan as they inched closer to the Chinese border.

The trio was traveling on motorcycles and found they could not cross the Pamir Plateau between Central and South Asia on two wheels.

Forced to give up, they vowed to return and complete the journey together one day, but the dream did not come true for de Larrabeiti and Severin, who passed away in 2008 and 2020 respectively.

In 2023, accompanied this time by his son, Stanley picked up the unfinished journey he began six decades earlier and continued.

"This is the realization of quite a long-held ambition. I've been to China a lot of times, but I'd never done the whole route that I wanted to do," Stanley said at the premiere of the documentary film about his journey. "Sixty-two years ago, I first set out to try to follow Macro Polo's way to Beijing and didn't succeed. Sixty-two years later, we got there, we made it!"

Ref lecting on the seven-week journey, Stanley's son Max said: "It was Confucius who said 'a good son is an obedient son'. I am neither one nor the other, but I do try. And it was just great fun."

He added that the journey meant he got to spend cherished time with his father.

Max has also been to China before, and the first city he visited back when he was 20 happened to be Kashgar, in Xinjiang, which he got to visit again during the filming of the documentary last year.

"This time, I went back and to see the development was just incredible. And then obviously, I've been to Beijing. I live in Hong Kong. But to me, to see how much China developed, how quickly China developed, is very fascinating," said Max, who had previously studied in Beijing and who can speak fluent Mandarin.

"When you watch this film, just remember it was something in the spirit of let's do something. Let's make a film, go to China, and see what it's like for yourself," he told the audience at the premiere.