Still Mysterious
Within mainland China today the ratio of Westerners to Chinese is probably no greater than it was in Marco Polo’s time seven hundred years ago. Sino-foreign contact is so minimal that it almost meets the old Taoist stay-at-home ideal, “to live hearing the dogs bark in the next village but never go there.” Peking and Washington indeed monitor each other’s barking, but they meet
Source: chinafile.com