This was not just in the middle ages, but reaching as far back as the Roman Empire.
There were a handful of individuals who made similar trips though - aside from the famous ones like Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta, there's also a few envoys sent on behalf of the Franco-Mongol alliance.[2]
Or the Spaniards who went to the court of Timur: “Timour Beg turned to the knights who had seated around him… and said, ‘Behold! here are the ambassadors sent by my son the king of Spain, who is the greatest king of the Franks, and lives at the end of the world.’” [3]
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/28/495821834...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Mongol_alliance
[3] https://resobscura.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-spaniard-in-samark...
> Clavijo recorded his entrance to the capital in great detail, noting the stores of “silks, satins, musk, rubies, diamonds, pearls, and rhubarb” carried from China
Today, to me, rhubarb seems so mundane, and so British. And yet just a few hundred years ago, it was an exotic wonder from the east. Rather than from Yorkshire:
Wikipedia says it was known simply as "pie plant" in the US in the 19th century.
Although strawberry-rhubarb pie is a common combination, I recall pies of my childhood being rhubarb alone.
Examples include Venetian and Florentine trading posts in Beijing/Dadu and other cities in the Mongol Empire, Caucasians living in Xinjiang, and so on.
The issue has more to do with the lack of written records than anything else. Given how little we know about contemporary kingdoms and empires in other parts of the world, I wouldn't be surprised if there were significantly more Europeans in China and SE Asia, and at least a handful of East Asians in Europe and the Near East, during that time.
Exactly. Until 300 years ago, unless you were a nobleman or a religious scholar, you likely didn't know how to write (bar a few numbers you might have required for trading activities). Long trips were tiring and extremely dangerous; travellers were, more often than not, hard men doing a hard job, mercenaries, fugitives, "rolling stones", and so on. These people didn't care for poetry, so to speak. Even Marco Polo didn't actually write anything -- he dictated to a fellow inmate who (somewhat miraculously) happened to be a professional writer, when they really had nothing else to do while imprisoned.
There might have been a flow of goods, but it's doubtful there was free of movement of people, both as a practical matter of surviving a long journey, and having to explain oneself to authorities. The few documented adventurers and ambassadors travelled with an entourage, and news of their arrival often preceded them -- which was often necessary to avoid hostilities.
There was a robust black market of tributaries coming in but not quite making it all the way to the palace.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Roman_relations
And I'm sure we'll only ever know at best maybe a tenth of what happened. (Wild guess.)
The question is Middle man.
And in this disintermediation getting rid of middle man has means. But if the middle man is really in the middle, not sure you want to do it too openly. They would be in the way.
But if the middle man visits both sides ... Mongolian whilst you do not think they are tradesman (army is a kind of export actually but). They do not go to both sides. In fact it seems the famous one go to the other side is actually via Mongolian empire.