ABSTRACT
Apart from the Chinese official court records centered on the tribute-bearing delegations from the Southeast Asian kingdoms over the centuries, there are numerous valuable eye-witness accounts of travelers from China to Southeast Asia. In AD 399, Fa-hsien, at the age of sixty-five, set out westward from central China across the Taklamakan Desert, over the Pamirs to India to visit the sacred sites of Buddhism. The major Chinese traveler who left an account of Southeast Asia was Chau Ju-kua, a Chinese official with the title of Superintendent of Maritime Trade in the second half of the thirteenth century AD. The well-known traveler from China to Southeast Asia was Marco Polo, the Italian trader/traveler who accompanied the famous Polo brothers to the court of Kublai Khan, the Mongol emperor of China. Marco won the trust of the emperor and was made governor of the city of Yang-chow, and the Polos were sent on several missions in West Asia, Burma, Cochin-China, and Ceylon.