Before I wrote SILK ROAD, I thought Xanadu was something Coleridge dreamed up during one of his opium-induced reveries.
Unfortunately someone interrupted him before he finished the poem, and he lost his flow. It has been suggested by some scholars that the person was actually his dealer. Others have suggested that this was just a fiction, an excuse Coleridge invented for not finishing and - as can happen to pantsers - he just lost impetus a third of the way through. We will never know!
But Xanadu - or Shang-tu - did exist, as the summer palace of the Mongol ruler Khubilai Khan. It was destroyed by the invading Ming army in 1369 and today just a few ruins remain in Inner Mongolia, about 350 kilometres north of Beijing.
The palace is described in detail in my best selling SILK ROAD.
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To whet your appetite, here’s a Xanadu that Coleridge, even in one of his drug-induced stupors, never dreamed - the Lego version!
For a long time I didn’t know Tombouctou was a real place - and then I went to see it for myself.
Place I’ve always wanted to go - my whole childhood I thought it was imaginary too. I’ve not got there so far. I wonder if I’d be disappointed? Were you?